Showing posts with label Why the fuck did I watch this?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Why the fuck did I watch this?. Show all posts

Tuesday, 30 July 2013

Shootout at Wadala(2013), Genre:Crime/Thriller/Drama, run time: 137 minutes, 1.5/5

Imagine you are a contract killer and you have just bumped off a newspaper owner whom the Haskar brothers, the dreaded gangsters of Mumbai, considered their Godfather. Would you be sucking off on a lolly on a roadside stall the very next day? More importantly, why would you be surprised if they turned up behind you to tear you apart?

The second half of the movie is full of such absurd scenes. However, the start is kind of promising.

Manya Surve has been shot in an encounter and is being taken to the nearest hospital by Inspector Baagwan. Before croaking, Surve tells the inspector the story of his transition from a law abiding youngster to a dreaded gangster.
 
John Abraham surprisingly acts pretty well during the first seventy odd minutes. As a student who gets framed along with his brother, as a helpless prisoner and as a lover who sees his inamorata getting hitched to another man, he lets his eyes talk. 

The first irritant which I encountered was Tusshar(I hope I spelt the fucker’s name correctly). He is supposed to be this Morgan Freeman type prisoner who keeps on dispensing obscene lines which would leave you disgusted. One sample of the junk he spouts out of his mouth “ I am Bruce who hasn’t fucked someone in eight years- Main Aisa Bruce hoon jisne aath saal se kisi kee lee nahin hai”. 

What struck me as really funny bit was every time someone lit up a cigarette on the screen, a message would pop up telling that smoking causes cancer. However, no such warning appears when the characters trade deeply offending insults and disparage women.

Kangana plays Abraham’s love interest. She is literally manhandled by him in their supposedly love making scenes which come off more as rape attempts.

Anil Kapoor plays the cop. He looks awesome for a guy who is approaching sixty. His fitness is even more accentuated in scenes wherein he acts along with Jackie Shroff who was once his contemporary and now looks at least ten years older than Mr. Kapoor due to his booze afflicted eye lids and protruding tummy.
 
There are enough twists and turns in the plot to keep the viewer sufficiently interested till the half way mark. After that it seemed as if the director wanted to screw away to glory. There are clichés piled upon more banalities, sufficient enough to give you long lasting migraine.

For reasons unclear to me, the Kaskar siblings (Dawood and his elder bro) are named Haskar. Manoj Vajpayee is becoming expert in dying the Sonny Corleone way. After the epic scene in Gangs of Wasseypur, here he again is bumped off in the same manner. 

Sonu Sood as Dawood is fucking hilarious. He is supposed to convey dead seriousness by his quite manner. In most of the scenes he looks like an amnesia afflicted patient, one who has forgotten his lines.

However, the absolute worst part of the movie was to see Sunny Leone speak Hindi and act as the love interest of Vajpayee. It lasted for around one minute only but nearly drove me batty, ape shit crazy.

I had the pleasure of reading Dongri to Dubai some time back. It is a fantastic book, one which would make you proud of an Indian author. Six pages of it were dedicated to the Wadala encounter. Those six pages were bloated with enough nonsense to give birth to this two hours long shit fest.  

Watch only if you have a masochistic streak.

Wednesday, 17 July 2013

My son, my son , What have ye done? (2009), Genre: Drama/Thriller, Runtime: 88 minutes, 2/5



Supposedly based on real events, this is the story of a son who does something abominable to his mother (The last words of the mother have been taken as the title of the movie). 

Shot on a budget which seems to have been lesser than the cost of a shoe string, this begins with two cops (William Defoe, playing a veteran on the force and Michael Pena,a novice) getting a call informing that a crime has been committed in their vicinity. They rush out to the area, find neighbors surrounding a house and meet a mysterious man (Michael Shannon) who chants some mambo jumbo and then walks off to the neighboring house. He is soon recognized as the prime suspect and the rest of the duration of the movie deals with police’s attempts to bring him out of the hiding place and Citizen Kane like reconstruction of Michael Shannon’s life by his fiance and friend.

Herzog, for me, is one of the very few directors whose very name on a DVD’s spine makes my heart race. My love affair with his work started after watching Bad Lieutenant wherein he nearly single handedly resurrected Nicholas Cage’s career. My respect for him grew leaps and bounds after watching his other masterpiece Aguirre: the wrath of God, Rescue Dawn and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Hence, I had high hopes from this.

These hopes were further raised by the fact that David Lynch, the God of surrealistic cinema was the producer. This was supposed to be a fusion of two great minds and hence my expectations became sky high. 

Alas, soon they came crashing down with a thud.

This is a combination of police procedural with the cops trying to get Shannon to surrender and mystical scenes which show how Shannon’s thought process began to change after a visit to Peru. However, at times it seems too pretentious for its own good and alienates the viewer with its un-involving narrative. 

The one front wherein this doesn’t disappoint is the acting with Shannon again doing his “intense” stuff brilliantly. He is one of the best actors around and whenever he is on the screen, the watcher cannot look anywhere else, glued as he is to the magnetic charisma which Shannon exudes. The others have two bit roles and are generally wasted.

This is the fourth consecutive misfire on the movie front for me this month and is very nearly on top of “The movies which I would love missing even if I am paid a million dollars to watch” list. Watch it at your own risk.