Ignore it royally

Yuvvraaj finds him totally bereft of new ideas. The self-styled showman falls back on the baroque sets, grandiose story-telling, and swelling orchestral music that used to work for him back in the 80s, and gives us Taal all over again, without any of its soaring qualities.

In just under three painful hours, three estranged brothers, Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor and Zayed Khan, discover each other. Salman, starting off being rude to ladylove Katrina Kaif, admits to having a soft corner for her. Zayed, who only wants his share of the property, is suddenly and unconvincingly overwhelmed by brotherly love. Dim-witted eldest sibling Anil, who8217;s been left all the lovely lolly, overcomes death-by-poisoning. The dastardly villains, who include a vamp dressed in plunging spaghetti cholis and poisonous smiles, are vanquished. And they all live happily afterward.

To prove to his audiences that he is very up-to-the-minute, Ghai makes his heroine a gown-wearing cellist. Katrina lives in Prague in a mansion that looks like a museum. Boman Irani, who8217;s turning into the new Anupam Kher with all the heavy father roles he seems to be playing, rejoices in calling his future-son-law 8216;donkey, monkey, flunkey8217;. Salman smiles when he hears this, shakes his earrings he wears large hoops in both ears, and changes his hair style and colour every couple of reels.

Anil is made to smile daftly, and spend all his time with a little boy: We hear the term paagal only a handful of times. Ghai makes up for that by getting a doctor to pronounce that Anil has a 8216;genius disorder8217;. When Anil is not playing with balloons, he is singing classical ragas.

Time for Ghai to put a pause to his empty directorial flourishes. And stick to producing films.

Rusty Metal
Movie Name:Death Race
Directed by:Paul W.S Anderson
Cast:Jason Statham, Joan Allen
Showing at:Adlabs- Chinchwad, City Pride- Kothrud, City Pride-Satara Road, E-Square, Gold Adlabs

There8217;s something to be said for a movie that knows exactly what it is and then whacks that knowledge home like a rusty pipe in the face. Case in point: Death Race, a delectable bit of B-movie savagery that actually does feature pipe melees, among much other kicky and punchy and impaled-by-a-metal-spike ultra-violence.

Out on Terminal Island, where the worst of the worst participate in the wildly popular Death Race showdown.

Framed for the murder of his wife and shuffled off to Terminal Island, fury mounting and muscles rippling, former racing champ Jensen Ames Jason Statham is pressed into fending off a grimy assortment of gear-head sociopaths with the promise that if he wins the race he8217;s free to go. Needless to say, things are about to blow up, quite literally, in everyone8217;s face. Extended over three increasingly frantic, vividly murderous rounds, the Death Race itself is a tour de force of no-nonsense neo-grindhouse.

NATHAN LEE/ NYT