Movie reviews

When Subhash Ghai8217;s Karz came out in 1980, there were mutterings about how it had ripped off cheesy Hollywood drama The Reincarnation of Peter Proud.

KARZZZ
CAST: Urmila Matondkar, Himesh Reshammiya, Shweta Kumar, Gulshan Grover, Dino Morea;
DIRECTOR: Satish Kaushik
When Subhash Ghai8217;s Karz came out in 1980, there were mutterings about how it had ripped off cheesy Hollywood drama The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. But they soon subsided, not only because Ghai cleverly admitted to copying, having out-cheesed the original effortlessly. It was also because Karz was a cracker of an entertainer: as the born-again hero, Rishi rocked, there8217;s never been a crueller, classier vamp than Simi, and if ever there is a compilation of classic movie themes, the haunting Ek Hasina Thi is sure to top the list.
This Karzzz, despite the extra zees for luck, is a blot. Except for the names of the characters, which are exactly the same, nothing else is: the treatment is sloppy, even by Satish Kaushik8217;s standards, and the acting is plain execrable.
For those who8217;ve come in twenty-eight years after the fact, this is how it goes. Pop star Monty Himesh starts having visions 8212; of a man and a woman, a huge mansion in the hills, a 8220;Kali ka mandir8221;, and an airplane going up in flames. It8217;s a case of 8220;punarjanam8221;, a psychiatrist declares sagely. And whoosh, we are launched into a series of flashbacks, unravelling how Monty is actually rich businessman Ravi Varma Dino re-incarnated, and has come into the world to wreak revenge on the murderous, greedy-for-his-millions wife Kamini Urmila.
Himesh adds a hair transplant and a smile to his extremely-limited repertoire in his last year8217;s debut Aap Ka Suroor, he had appeared throughout in his till-then trademark baseball cap, and scowl. A badly-made up Urmila dons skin-tight gowns, large tracts of her chest gleaming with bronzer, gold trousers, and scarlet lipstick. She also sounds distressingly like Archana Puran Singh when she simpers: hard to think that she was once an A-list actress. There8217;s also a new girl, Shweta director Indra Kumar8217;s daughter getting a brief look-see: all she has to do is to gaze adoringly at Himesh. That must have been tough.
Even the climactic song-cum-whodunit denouement, which has been lifted completely, is mangled. In between, you can hear Rohini Hattangadi, who plays the 8220;dukhiyari maa8221; utter lines like these: 8220;mere kaleje ke tukda8221;, she goes, 8220;mere laal8221;.
Moral: if you can8217;t make, don8217;t re-make.

SHOOT ON SIGHT
CAST: Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Brian Cox, Greta Scacchi, Gulshan Grover;
DIRECTOR: Jagmohan Mundhra
JAG Mundhra8217;s films have topical, relevant subjects. That8217;s the good part. The bad part is that they do not possess a single subtle note: everything is heavily underscored, leaving no place for understatement or nuance.
And that8217;s something one misses sorely, especially in a film like his latest. Shoot On Sight is based on the London bombings in 2005, which unleashed a whole spate of racial profiling. Is it a crime to be Muslim? Are all Muslims terrorists? These questions, asked by sundry characters in Shoot On Sight yield answers which, for all their truth, seem like they are stating the obvious.
It8217;s not as if Naseer, as Commander Ali of Scotland Yard, doesn8217;t know the pitfalls of playing a Muslim cop in a still-white country. In his scenes with 8216;gori8217; wife Greta, defiant daughter, couple of openly racist colleagues, and sympathetic boss Brian, he shows as much deftness as the script allows. But that8217;s not much at all: Ali8217;s childhood friend from Lahore, now a 8220;mullah8221; advocating jehad Om is all surface8212;iquest; he strokes his beard, recites from the Koran, and colours impressionable minds.
More predictabilities abound. Rebellious Muslim teenager facing off da8212; iquest; he won8217;t let her date white boys who want to go all the way. Jolly meat-shop owner doling out gosht and good cheer. Good white wife trying to balance the tensions in her family, and his. We8217;ve seen all this before, with much more depth: there8217;s more to multi-culturalism, and the problems of being brown, post 9/11, than these very broad, too familiar brush-strokes.
The Hindi dub flattens the film even more; catch the English version, if you have to.

CHEENTI CHEENTI BANG BANG animation
Voices by Ashish Vidyarthi, Mahesh Manjrekar, Asrani, Anjan Srivastava
DIRECTOR: R D Mallik
TWO colonies of ants live on either side of a river bank. Lal Cheentas and Kala Cheentas have presumably lived happily before the evil Ghun arrives in their midst to sow dissent and discord. This could have been a fun flick: ants, and other cute creepy-crawlies, lend themselves well to animation Antz, A Bug8217;s Life. Some money and effort has been spent on the production, but the characters are all cardboard, not being able to create the slightest interest in the proceedings.
What you get is endless, inane chatter peppered with creaky dialogue 8220;nestanabood8221;; 8220;yudhh ka danka baja diya8221;, 8220;yunki baat ki baat hai8221;, 8220;mere dil mein saadh hai8221;. And an old ant called Lal Boodha who8217;s supposed to have leered at a comely young thing, who tells the ant queen: 8220;woh mardood hamare badan pe toot pada8221;.
Huh? This is supposed to be a film for little children?

8212;SHUBHRA GUPTA shubhra.guptagmail.com

BODY OF LIES
CAST: Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe
DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott
8220;THERE8217;S nothing to like in the Middle East,8221; mumbles Ed Hoffman, a CIA top-notch played by Crowe, trying to dissuade Roger Ferris DiCaprio from staying back in Amman. Of course, the shoe can be on the other foot. From that part of the world, there8217;s little to like in America. And Body of Lies, written by the screenwriter of The Departed and Kingdom of Heaven and adapted from a book of the same name by The Washington Post8217;s David Ignatius, is certainly not going to help the US cause.
Pitched as a terror/spy thriller 8212; 8220;Trust No One. Deceive Everyone.8221;8212; Body of Lies makes no bones about its politics. If the utter disgust for the war being waged in the name of jehad is supposed to be an inverse joke on how the Bush Administration is fighting it, or a view of the war on terror that is refreshingly politically incorrect, the message is lost. And that8217;s despite the trite use of W H Auden in the beginning: 8220;Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.8221;
As Hoffman and Ferris proceed to see it, though, there are absolutely no grounds for the evils being wrought in the name of God. A suicide bomber who has lost his nerve tells Ferris: 8220;If they think you know too much, they say martyrdom.8221; Looking for 8220;low-level al-Qaeda operatives8221; for a counter-operation, Ferris seeks: 8220;Basically someone between Osama and Oprah.8221; Another faithful is dismissed as 8220;so he touches his head to the ground four-five times a day8221;. All it takes for Ferris to smoke out to use the famous expression the dreaded terror head is cooking up a fictitious terror group of his own over the net.
The story basically deals with the hunt for that terror head, Al-Saleem, of undefined al-Qaeda links who has threatened to target places in the US and UK. Ferris speaks Arabic, often dresses up like an Arab, wears a helpful goatee and is not averse to being hit by missiles or bitten by rabid dogs. Hoffman is his CIA handler, keeping a watch on him via an eerily clear satellite.
True to the film8217;s theme, there is an underpinning of distrust in the relationship between Ferris and Hoffman. While Ferris is the one taking all the risks, from Iraq to Jordan, Turkey and Dubai to Syria, as a boorish Hoffman tries to instruct him 24/7 on earphon8212; while chaperoning his kids to school or ballgames 8212; Crowe gives Hoffman the sense of credibility that comes with age and experience. When Ferris urges that a local accomplice be protected or looked after, or strikes up instant likes and dislikes, you tend to agree with Hoffman that he could be naive.
However, the abilities of Crowe and DiCaprio or director Ridley Scott 8212; who has enough Middle East under his belt but handles this one like The Gladiator 8212; can8217;t keep away the disquiet over how the highly wrought and complex issue of terror has been handled.
Even as tokenism, the film doesn8217;t make a nod to the history that tinges and singes the region8217;s geography. Instead, look at the tokenism it does employ: if DiCaprio is called Ferris, sounding closely like Faris meaning a Knight in Arabic, his love interest is a woman of Iranian descent called Aisha the Prophet8217;s wife8217;s name; she didn8217;t exist in the book. Aisha8217;s nephews don8217;t like their mother8217;s cooking; they would rather have pasta, spaghetti. Me too, chuckles Ferris.
The Jordanian intelligence chief is an enigmatic gentleman by the name of Hani Mark Strong, who handles what8217;s engulfing the region without having his dinner jacket cuffs soiled. In the heat of the Jordanian desert, he doffs his best suits for interrogation. In contrast, Hoffman is overweight, and underwashed. Another message? The role Hani ultimately plays is unclear, to say the least, but he at least knows what he is getting at. Al-Saleem, who stands in for Osama we presume, on the other hand, is shown smoking away into the phone at one time.
One year ago, The Kingdom came out of Hollywood, featuring government agents sent into Riyadh to investigate the bombing of an American facility. Whether tackling the question of terror, culture clash or religion, the fear and uncertainty on the ground, or the American dilemma in the Middle-East, it was a far superior effort.
Body of Lies, on the other hands, is full of half-truths. And that8217;s worse.

8212;SHALINI LANGER
shalini.langerexpressindia.com

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