Tag: bollywood

Monica, O My Darling

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https://www.bollywoodmdb.com/

Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Starring: Rajkumar Rao, Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte, Sikander Kher, Sukant Goel, Akansha Ranjan Kapoor, Bagavathi Perumal,
Where to watch: Netflix
To watch or not to watch: A neo-noir movie which tries too hard and fails. Skip this one

Jayant (Rajkumar Rao) is a star robotics engineer at Unicorn Robotics, and is in a relationship with the owner’s daughter Nikki (Akansha Ranjan). He hails from a small town, intent on escaping it and lands at Pune. Now things are all looking up for him and he is as susceptible to ego as any human, and gets into a casual relationship with the secretary to his future father-in-law, Monica Machado (Huma Qureshi). She claims to be pregnant with his child and is blackmailing him. He is spooked, and rightly so, as it threatens his rise up the company. It turns out, she has been blackmailing other heterosexual male members of the company, namely Arvind Manivannan (Bagavathi Perumal) and Nishant Adhikari (Sikander Kher). The three of them hatch a plan to kill Monica and dispose of the body in a rather Strangers on a Train way. The case is handled by ACP Naidu (Radhika Apte). Needless to say, the plan goes awry and then there is confusion, anxiety and insecurity, which enhances the chaos.

The problem with any such movie (read: Netflix Originals and Bollywood) is that they try too hard. They have tried to do everything the great masters have done in their art, for example, there is quirkiness of Knives Out, confusion of Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, opening credit fonts of Quentin Tarantino (seriously, this has to be the biggest crime of this movie, touching something so holy), etc. The idea of the movie, which by the way, is taken from a Keigo Higashino book titled Burutasu No Shinzou (Heart of Brutus) (another blasphemy), is superb, and so are the performances. What else to expect from Rajkumar Rao, Huma Qureshi and Radhika Apte. But everything else just doesn’t reach the mark. The storyline is unnecessarily convoluted, with random flashbacks and parallels which do not add to the mystery, only serves as a distraction. There are multiple plot lines they tried to address, but couldn’t do justice to a single one. Radhika Apte as a sarcastic-comic police inspector adds no entertainment value, only succeeds in being a slight annoyance. Disappointing.

The movie gets aa few things right – Huma Qureshi’s femme fatale is no simpering mess in size 2, she is comfortable in her skin, slays in her character and succeeds in getting all men’s attention without trying too hard. Maybe this movie has rightly projected that it is not always the vampy females who manage to trap guileless men. It is the men who need to be better and not villainize females. It also shows Radhika Apte as a not-too-honest police inspector, something we don’t see, and don’t associate with females. Rajkumar Rao’s Jayant is thankfully not a toxic masculine person either, though is toxic in general. All these points, while good, do not a good movie make. A movie is an amalgamation of direction, story, screenplay, editing and acting. The other points defying convention only enhance it. And in this case, it was simply disappointing to waste so much good because some aspects did not put in the work required. Skip this one without regrets.

Dial 100

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https://www.bollywoodmdb.com/movies/

Rating: 2 out of 5

Starring: Manoj Bajpayee, Neena Gupta, Sakshi Tanwar, Abhijeet Chavan, Nandu Madhav

Streaming on: Zee5

To watch or not to watch: Extremely predictable, with good performances

Nikhil Soni (Manoj Bajpayee) is a police officer supervising emergency calls, when they receive a call from a woman in distress, who is planning to commit suicide. She is depressed because of the death of her young son in an accident the previous year. Meanwhile, Nikhil is also dealing with a domestic situation – his 17 year old son has a criminal past and is doing little to mend his ways, giving his mother Prerna (Sakshi Tanwar) sleepless nights. The suicidal woman (Neena Gupta) reveals her true agenda, which is vendetta against the people responsible for her son’s death.

It all sounds thrilling, right? Yea, it’s not. From the first, it is obvious the caller lady is connected with Nikhil Sood and has something to do with the crime connected to his son. All the thrill of the movie is collected in the trailer, which undoubtedly is compelling. The whole is lackluster to say the least. The fact that Manoj Bajpayee is a police officer, same as in Family Man, which was rightfully popular, does not seem like a coincidence. It is definitely clickbait. The actors have all delivered flawless performances. Special mention of Sakshi Tanwar, who is not praised nearly enough and who has delivered absolutely believable performance – quality stuff.

This was another disappointing release by Zee5 and another one which was tirelessly promoted across all platforms. Another release with class A performance and script from the bottom of the barrel. It is fundamentally wrong to continuously produce low quality content, specially by a production house as big as Zee. It is our responsibility as consumers to respond by our actions and not watch or promote content which is bad and plain lazy. As for the movie, nothing against the performances, but don’t watch it.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

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headlinesoftoday.com

To watch or not to watch: Better watch the original BBC Criminal Justice or the American series The Night Of

Starring: Vikrant Massey, Pankaj Tripathi, Jackie Shroff, Mita Vashist

An innocent man Aditya (Vikrant Massey) is in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is regular college student, looking to get to a party by driving his father’s cab. A pretty, rich girl gets into his cab looking to hire and asks him to take her from one location to another and was obviously on drugs. Because of the delay, he misses his party and the girl invites him over to her place, where they drink alcohol, do drugs and have sex. Aditya wakes up in the middle of the night and finds the girl stabbed to death. He remembers nothing and tries to flee the scene of the crime with the murder weapon in hand. Ensues a long legal battle, Madhav Misra (Pankaj Tripathi) being the constant as legal help on the outside, even though he is way out of his depth in this case. Aditya also becomes street smart in the jail with Mustafa’s (Jackie Shroff) help, who runs a gang in the jail. The whole experience strips Aditya of his innocence and takes his family through emotional, financial and societal roller coaster.

The series is a play-by-play adaptation of The Night Of starring Riz Ahmed and John Tuturro, which is in turn an adaptation of the BBC series called Criminal Justice.

It is a 10 episode series which could have just as easily been wrapped up in 5; it is unnecessarily stretched. Pankaj Tripathi outshines everyone as always, playing the role of a down-on-his-luck lawyer with the heart of gold with élan. He is eccentric with little social skills and gives comic relief along with intensity seamlessly. Vikrant Massey is believable as a wronged college student and the character arc throughout the series is heartwarming. Jackie Shroff is given a lot of screen time to appease the star of yesteryear and is the only actor the series could have done without. If someone is watching the series, they can simply skip the parts with him in them.

There is nothing exceptional or attention grabbing in the direction or cinematography – it is primarily about acting and secondarily about the plot. It could have been much better if the social issues like the drug abuse amongst youngsters and class discrimination had been woven into the story line and made part of the reason of accusation, but they lost a lot of opportunity to make the series stand for something and be more than just storytelling. Viewers can easily swap Criminal Justice with The Night Of, which is also on Hotstar.

Rangoon

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rangoon-review-1
koimoi.com

My rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Starring: Shahid Kapoor, Kangana Ranaut, Saif Ali Khan, Richard McCabe

The movie is set in 1944, the time of freedom struggles of Mahatama Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose, and Work War II. Julie (Kangana Ranaut) is a spoilt actress who used to be a gypse, until she was rescued at 14 by Rusie Billimoria (Saif Ali Khan), a successful movie producer, and now is his mistress. Nawab Mallik (Shahid Kapoor) is a serious, stoic soldier assigned to be her bodyguard, on the trip to Indo-Burma border. In that entourage, is a Indian National Army loyal, carrying a valuable sword from a Maharaja to be given to INA to fund their freedom struggle. Enroute, the Japanese forces attack and Julie with Nawab are separated from others, and fall in love with each other. Nawab takes his responsibility of a bodyguard seriously and successfully returns Julie to the destination, there ensues a series of events full of intrigue, action and suspense.

All the three main characters of the movie are crafted carefully and are immensely intriguing. Shahid Kapoor is one of the most brilliant actors in Bollywood these days, and delivers the role of a stoic soldier shouldering responsibilities way beyond his stature, to the T. Kangana Ranaut’s performance steals the show. It is so powerful that it shadows over everything else. And everything else isn’t much. The story line, while sounding good off-hand, was killed by poor execution. Eroticism was prioritised over plot, drama over direction. At some points it looked like a spoof of a heist movie. The first half was only a build up to what audience can expect from the second half, and second half was anti-climactic. The dialogues were clichéd, the songs over long, unnecessary background details of characters, made the movie long and tiring. It lost the focus from the love-triangle in a war torn land and freedom struggle and instead, focussed on multiple insignificant things, like bad Hindi accents of Britishers. Vishal Bhardwaj has broken the hearts of many hard-core cinema lovers. He does deserves a mention for creating the sublime music this movie has. All in all, this movie should be missed.