As Darwaza Bandh Rakho (2006) begins, failed
businessman Kantilal Shantilal Shah (Ishrat Ali) is enjoying a quiet
evening at home with his family, when four armed, masked men burst in.
The men are kidnappers, looking for a place to hide out and keep their
captive, spoiled heiress Isha (Isha Sharvani) quiet. Soon, Isha, Shah,
and his family are tied together and being held, at gunpoint, in a dark
room. And, as you may have already guessed, the film is a comedy.
The four kidnappers are recently unemployed waiter Ajay (Aftab Shivdasani), recently unemployed driver Raghu (Chunky Pandey), recently unemployed roadside paan seller Goga (Snehal Dabi), and ticket scalper Abbas (Zakir Hussain). They are, in other words, ordinary guys who have fallen on hard times and made a terrible, if desperate, choice.
As kidnap gangs go, they’re also pretty hapless. They try to contact Isha’s wealthy father (Gulshan Grover) in order to make their demands, only to discover that he’s on a plane headed for America; rather than hiding out in Shah’s house for a few hours, they’ll have to spend at least a day there. And people keep showing up! The maid (Divya Dutta) is hiding in the closet. Her husband (Ravi Kale), an off duty police officer, shows up looking for her. Nobody has money to pay the pizza deliveryman (Nitin Raikwar), so he joins the other hostages. Raghu invites Julie (Manisha Koirala) a door to door shampoo saleswoman, to come inside, so that’s one more. By the end of the movie, the gang have collected at least fourteen hostages (I may have lost count) and, naturally, wackiness ensues.
Not as much wackiness as you might think, though. Darwaza Bandh Rakho has a perfect setup for a farce, with each of the many hostages introducing a new set of comic problems, some clever (Mughal E Azam, the pizza delivery boy, wants to be a gangster and tries to prove his worth to the kidnappers) and some cliche’ (one of the hostages has heart trouble, and the only doctor they can find to treat him is a vet! Ha HA! Comedy!) There aren’t as many jokes as you’d expect from a farce, though, because the film is so relentlessly focused on plot. With this many characters, there’s a lot of plot to get through, so the movie doesn’t have time to really focus on any one character’s set of gags.
Another side effect of the focus on plot is that what little character development we get is inconsistent, with characters suddenly changing in order to facilitate the next twist. Julie the shampoo saleswoman is a particularly glaring example; she changes from a saintly dispenser of sage advice to a greedy, scheming mini-Lady MacBeth when it’s time for the kidnappers and hostages to turn on one another. There’s no real reason for the sudden change in personality, it just happens when the plot requires it.
Darwaza Bandh Rakho is billed as “An edge of the seat comedy from Ram Gopal Varma,” and while Varma only produced the film, rather than directing, there’s a definite influence there. The film is written as a wacky comedy, but it’s shot as . . . well, as a Ram Gopal Varma film, with moody lighting, strange camera angles, and absolutely no musical numbers. Taken as a whole, it’s a strange and worthy experiment, a farce that focuses on plot and looks like a serious movie, but it doesn’t quite work. This is a dumb movie that could stand to be a good deal dumber.
The four kidnappers are recently unemployed waiter Ajay (Aftab Shivdasani), recently unemployed driver Raghu (Chunky Pandey), recently unemployed roadside paan seller Goga (Snehal Dabi), and ticket scalper Abbas (Zakir Hussain). They are, in other words, ordinary guys who have fallen on hard times and made a terrible, if desperate, choice.
As kidnap gangs go, they’re also pretty hapless. They try to contact Isha’s wealthy father (Gulshan Grover) in order to make their demands, only to discover that he’s on a plane headed for America; rather than hiding out in Shah’s house for a few hours, they’ll have to spend at least a day there. And people keep showing up! The maid (Divya Dutta) is hiding in the closet. Her husband (Ravi Kale), an off duty police officer, shows up looking for her. Nobody has money to pay the pizza deliveryman (Nitin Raikwar), so he joins the other hostages. Raghu invites Julie (Manisha Koirala) a door to door shampoo saleswoman, to come inside, so that’s one more. By the end of the movie, the gang have collected at least fourteen hostages (I may have lost count) and, naturally, wackiness ensues.
Not as much wackiness as you might think, though. Darwaza Bandh Rakho has a perfect setup for a farce, with each of the many hostages introducing a new set of comic problems, some clever (Mughal E Azam, the pizza delivery boy, wants to be a gangster and tries to prove his worth to the kidnappers) and some cliche’ (one of the hostages has heart trouble, and the only doctor they can find to treat him is a vet! Ha HA! Comedy!) There aren’t as many jokes as you’d expect from a farce, though, because the film is so relentlessly focused on plot. With this many characters, there’s a lot of plot to get through, so the movie doesn’t have time to really focus on any one character’s set of gags.
Another side effect of the focus on plot is that what little character development we get is inconsistent, with characters suddenly changing in order to facilitate the next twist. Julie the shampoo saleswoman is a particularly glaring example; she changes from a saintly dispenser of sage advice to a greedy, scheming mini-Lady MacBeth when it’s time for the kidnappers and hostages to turn on one another. There’s no real reason for the sudden change in personality, it just happens when the plot requires it.
Darwaza Bandh Rakho is billed as “An edge of the seat comedy from Ram Gopal Varma,” and while Varma only produced the film, rather than directing, there’s a definite influence there. The film is written as a wacky comedy, but it’s shot as . . . well, as a Ram Gopal Varma film, with moody lighting, strange camera angles, and absolutely no musical numbers. Taken as a whole, it’s a strange and worthy experiment, a farce that focuses on plot and looks like a serious movie, but it doesn’t quite work. This is a dumb movie that could stand to be a good deal dumber.
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