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Rebirth pangs
Karzzzz
When Subhash Ghai8217;s Karz came out in 1980, there were mutterings about how it had ripped off the 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 crueler, classier vamp than Simi Garewal, 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 Zs 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 28 years after the fact, this is how it goes. Pop star Monty Himesh starts having visions8212;of a man and a woman, a huge mansion in the hills, a kali ka mandir, and an airplane going up in flames. It8217;s a case of punarjanam, a psychiatrist declares sagely. And whoosh, we are launched into a series of flashbacks, unraveling 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 dukhiyari maa utter lines like these: mere kaleje ke tukda, she goes, mere laal.
Moral: if you can8217;t make, don8217;t re-make.

Shoot down
Shoot on Sight
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 Scacchi, 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 mullah advocating jihad Om is all surface8212;he strokes his beard, recites from the Koran, and colours impressionable minds.
More predictabilities abound. Rebellious Muslim teenager facing off dad8212;he won8217;t let her date white boys who want to go all the way. Jolly meat-shop owner doling out 8216;gosht8217; 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.

Opportunity lost
Cheenti Cheenti Bang Bang
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 have 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 nestanabood, yudhh ka danka baja diya, yunki baat ki baat hai, mere dil mein saadh hai. And an old ant called Lal Boodha who8217;s supposed to have leered at a comely young thing, tells the ant queen: 8220;woh mardood hamare badan pe toot pada8221;.
Huh? This is supposed to be a film for little children?

SHUBHRA GUPTA

Terror talks
Body of Lies
RIDLEY Scott8217;s Body of Lies raises a potentially disturbing question. If terrorism has become boring, does that mean the terrorists have won? Or, conversely, is the grinding tedium of this film good news for our side, evidence of the awesome might of Western popular culture, which can turn even the most bloodthirsty real-world villains into fodder for busy, contrived and lifeless action thrillers?
The second answer seems more plausible, but there are other puzzles in Body of Lies that are not so easily solved and that may distract from sober contemplation of geopolitical pseudo realities like Leonardo DiCaprio8217;s accent or Russell Crowe8217;s body mass index. DiCaprio, as CIA operative Roger Ferris, once again shows his commitment to full employment for dialect coaches, following Blood Diamond and The Departed, with some good-old-boy inflections that are helpfully identified by Crowe8217;s character as originating in North Carolina.
Crowe, meanwhile, plays Ferris8217;s supervisor, Ed Hoffman, who has no specified regional background to explain his odd drawl. At times Crowe, showing the linguistic chameleonism 8212; the birthright of every Australian actor 8212; spits out his words with an emphatic twanginess that suggests, if not George W Bush himself, then perhaps Jon Stewart impersonating Bush. It8217;s possible that this resemblance is meant to imply their immunity to self-doubt and allergy to second thoughts about the righteousness of their actions.
Hoffman is fighting a war whose terms he lays out in a few set-piece speeches. The gist is that no one is innocent and that the ends justify the means. Deceit, torture, the sacrifice of non-American lives 8212; all is permissible in the fight against a superjihadist Al-Saleem Alon Aboutboul, carrying out suicide attacks around Europe. The contradictions and unintended consequences of Hoffman8217;s tactics are borne by Ferris, who finds his credibility undermined, his friends and his life in danger.
All of which would be fine if Body of Lies8212;based on a novel by David Ignatius8212;was clearer about its themes or its plot. As it is, the movie is a hodgepodge of borrowings and half-cooked ideas, flung together into a feverishly edited jet-setting exercise in purposeless intensity.

AO SCOTT/NYT