It's no secret that I love Juhi Chawla. That's why I decided to watch Andaz (1994.) Yes, it was directed by David Dhawan, who is known for incredibly broad and sometimes tasteless comedies and directs with all the subtlety and grace of a brick to the head, but it's a Juhi Chawla movie! How bad could it be?
Ajay Saxena (Anil Kapoor) is a new teacher at the S. T. School, his alma mater, run by a kind, dedicated, and apparently nameless Principal (Kader Khan). I think he teaches history, but it's hard to tell, because he spends most of the time dealing with the antics of his unruly students. There are a lot of them, but only two are really important: Jaya (Karisma Kapoor) and Shagun (Shakti Kapoor). Jaya is brilliant, talented, and an incorrigible prankster, while Shagun is the absolute worst. He actually attended school with Ajay but kept getting held back far past the point of plausibility, and now he is a lazy, surly, deeply annoying adult who expects special treatment from his old classmate and is angry when he doesn't get it.
During a school picnic, Ajay manages to win over his students the old-fashioned way, by beating up a terrorist in front of them. (There's a whole terrorist subplot, but it's not that interesting and doesn't really become important until the climax.) However, Shagun was not on the picnic, since Ajay had suspended him for being the worst, so he is not won over. Shagun takes his revenge by planting fake love notes which are supposedly from Jaya, and when Ajay "returns" them to her, she thinks they are love notes from the teacher. Before the confusion can be cleared up, rumors are flying all around the school, and even some of the other teachers join in mocking and harassing the unfortunate pair.
Despite being the worst, Shagun eventually confesses, and Ajay and Jaya apologize to one another. She suggests that, since their reputations are already ruined, they should go ahead and get married. Ajay is rightly horrified by the idea (and so am I. What the hell, movie!) but Jaya is persistent. She leaves the hostel and takes a room next door to his house, and becomes such a nuisance that Ajay leaves home.
He comes back with his new wife, Saraswati (Juhi Chawla, finally!), a local orphan. He married Saraswati in a hurry, not realizing that she can't speak English, can't sing, can't cook, and can barely read; at the orphanage they taught her to just smile and say yes when her husband asks her something she doesn't understand, and Ajay is apparently bad at asking follow up questions. Fortunately for her, Jaya is there to teach her everything she needs to know, and the two women quickly become very close.
(As an aside, while she's poorly educated, Saraswati does seem to have a natural talent for the marital arts, since she and Ajay spend an awful lot of time canoodling. Like a lot of Bollywood movies of the time, the film cuts to a song whenever the characters are about to get frisky, but in Andaz the lyrics are unusually filthy; nothing actually explicit, but there are many references to trains and overheating engines and banging on the door.)
The plot makes it sound like Andaz is a psychological thriller about a man whose life is torn apart by a deranged stalker, but no. This is a romantic comedy. Jaya is presented as a wonderful, loving person who's determined to land her man, and as the perfect romantic partner for Ajay, if it weren't for that pesky "under-aged student" thing. Karisma Kapoor was twenty when this movie came out, but she's very clearly playing younger here, with glasses, pigtails, a breathy little girl voice, and some very short skirts. It's creepy.
But even setting aside the creep factor, the movie is a slog. The students are supposed to be charming scamps, but they come across as sadistic jerks. Every second that Shakti Kapoor is onscreen is excruciating. The terrorist subplot provides the occasional bit of dramatic relief, an escape from the oppressive comedy, but the action scenes are not that interesting and drag on too long.
And Juhi? She's fine. "Uneducated but spunky village belle" is a stock part that she plays really well, but I can see her play that part in better movies than this one.
Saturday, May 30, 2020
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Tainted Love.
Iru Mugan (2016) draws its inspiration from European history, particularly the Second World War, when Adolf Hitler used a drug called "Speed" to turn his troops into invincible super soldiers who rampaged across Europe, only to face defeat when said invincible super soldiers went berserk and turned on their own officers. If you squint, you can see elements of actual history here, but it's possible that the filmmakers were not entirely rigorous in their historical research.
The Indian embassy in Malaysia is attacked by one old man who displays amazing superhuman strength and reflexes, killing several security guards before abruptly collapsing. The old man has a heart tattoo on the back of his neck, leading RAW chief Malik (Nassar) to believe that mysterious and supposedly dead drug lord Love is responsible. Malik calls in Akhilan (Vikram), the man who supposedly killed Love, then walked away after his former partner and new wife Meera (Nayantara) was murdered. And because Akhilan is a disgraced former agent and loose cannon who plays by his own rules, junior agent Aayushi (Nithya Menen) is assigned as the official agent in charge of the case and Akhilan's unofficial babysitter.
The pair arrive in Malaysia and get to work. Akhilan quickly establishes himself as the brutal and driven renegade who will let nothing stand in his way, while Aayushi provides the requisite conscience. After a bit of investigation and violence and violent investigation they find a corrupt scientist to deliver the necessary exposition: Love is indeed back, and has recreated Speed, which works by flooding the body with adrenaline for exactly five minutes.
Despite the pulpy premise, Iru Mugan feels like a relatively grounded action movie; the action is sometimes over the top, but the story is centered on Akhilan working through his pain. And then Love appears onscreen. Love, also played by Vikram, is introduced wearing a gas-mask and a fabulous suit, and while the gas-mask is quickly set aside, the suits only get more fabulous. Love is flamboyant, fey, capricious, and deadly, like the Joker if he were inspired by Bea Arthur rather than clowns. he is, in other words, a bundle of problematic stereotypes with no apparent motivation beyond "is evil," yet still manages to be an active and interesting character with agency. (Evil agency.)
There's no real reason for Love and Akhilan to be played by the same person. The pair never switch places; there's no suggestion that they look at all alike, even. Whatever the reason, Vikram turns in an impressive pair of performances, since Love and Akhilan are not just completely different people, they come from completely different genres. Even though he's the hero, I think Akhilan is the odd man out. Everything about him screams gritty spy drama, but he is navigating a world where Hitler's lost super soldier formula is a matter of public record. A murderous super-chemist/fop fits right in.
The Indian embassy in Malaysia is attacked by one old man who displays amazing superhuman strength and reflexes, killing several security guards before abruptly collapsing. The old man has a heart tattoo on the back of his neck, leading RAW chief Malik (Nassar) to believe that mysterious and supposedly dead drug lord Love is responsible. Malik calls in Akhilan (Vikram), the man who supposedly killed Love, then walked away after his former partner and new wife Meera (Nayantara) was murdered. And because Akhilan is a disgraced former agent and loose cannon who plays by his own rules, junior agent Aayushi (Nithya Menen) is assigned as the official agent in charge of the case and Akhilan's unofficial babysitter.
The pair arrive in Malaysia and get to work. Akhilan quickly establishes himself as the brutal and driven renegade who will let nothing stand in his way, while Aayushi provides the requisite conscience. After a bit of investigation and violence and violent investigation they find a corrupt scientist to deliver the necessary exposition: Love is indeed back, and has recreated Speed, which works by flooding the body with adrenaline for exactly five minutes.
Despite the pulpy premise, Iru Mugan feels like a relatively grounded action movie; the action is sometimes over the top, but the story is centered on Akhilan working through his pain. And then Love appears onscreen. Love, also played by Vikram, is introduced wearing a gas-mask and a fabulous suit, and while the gas-mask is quickly set aside, the suits only get more fabulous. Love is flamboyant, fey, capricious, and deadly, like the Joker if he were inspired by Bea Arthur rather than clowns. he is, in other words, a bundle of problematic stereotypes with no apparent motivation beyond "is evil," yet still manages to be an active and interesting character with agency. (Evil agency.)
There's no real reason for Love and Akhilan to be played by the same person. The pair never switch places; there's no suggestion that they look at all alike, even. Whatever the reason, Vikram turns in an impressive pair of performances, since Love and Akhilan are not just completely different people, they come from completely different genres. Even though he's the hero, I think Akhilan is the odd man out. Everything about him screams gritty spy drama, but he is navigating a world where Hitler's lost super soldier formula is a matter of public record. A murderous super-chemist/fop fits right in.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
Behold the eldritch terror of commercial zoning!
As the title suggests, Gang of Ghosts (2014) contains many, many ghosts. They're not really a gang, though; it's really more like a retirement community of ghosts. The movie opens with an animated song and dance number featuring wacky dancing skeletons (the best kind of skeleton) singing about the plight of the modern ghost in a world in which old, hauntable buildings are being knocked down at a steady pace. And yes, this is a movie about the housing problems of the dead. It's kind of like Bollywood Beetlejuice, except different in nearly every conceivable way.
Aditya (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) is an ad director, scouting for a location for his next commercial. He finds the perfect place in the Royal Mansion, a ruined building gently decaying in Mumbai. The mansion has only escaped being torn down because there is an ongoing legal dispute about exactly who owns it; this will be important later. Due to a series of contrived events, Aditya winds up staying the night in the mansion, where he meets Raju Writer (Sharman Joshi), an aspiring but so far failed script writer who finally convinces Aditya to listen to his movie pitch, and that is the framing story.
As Raju explains, the Royal Mansion once belonged to Gendemal Hemraj (Anupam Kher), a local nobleman who rose to prominence by selling his mill to the British; the mill workers are so poorly treated that they finally burn the mill down, with Gendemal inside. Post-death, he returns home and commences haunting the Royal Mansion, where is is quickly joined by the ghost of British officer Ramsey (J. Brandon Hill.)
As the years pass, more and more homeless ghosts movie into the mansion. The ghost of fading Bollywood starlet Manoranjana Kumari (Mahi Gill) is followed by Bengali apothecary Bhootnath Bhaduri, murdered nobleman-turned-chef Akbar Kwaja Khan (Rajpal Yadav), Brigadier Hoshiar Singh, deceased (Yashpal Sharma), burned out rock star Robin Hooda (Vijay Varma), star-crossed lover Tina (Meera Chopra), and Atmaram (Asrani), a poor taxi driver run over by a rich man whom the movie pointedly does not name. They are an odd bunch, drawn not only from different times and places, but from different film genres.
And for a while, the ghosts just sort of . . . hang out. Bhootnath and Akbar and Singh all compete for Manoranjana's affections. Tina has a crush on Robin. Atmaram drives them places. There's really nothing overtly supernatural going on, apart from a brief bit of haunting to drive away an intrusive film company. And then, disaster strikes. The court case about the Royal mansion's ownership is resolved, and the building is sold to greedy (and generally terrible) developer Bhuteria (Rajesh Khattar), who plans to knock the place down and build a shopping mall. The desperate ghosts turn to SpookBook (really!) to look for help, and wind up with Babu Hatkaka (Jackie Shroff), the one armed ghost of a gang lord and representative of yet another genre.
While he's a freelance ghost hired by some desperate spooks to chase away some pesky humans, Babu isn't very much like Beetlejuice at all; he's a gangster in death as he was in life, and plan for dealing with Bhuteria is just to shoot the guy. The others talk him out of it, and together they come up with a more . . . creative solution.
This is possibly the least overtly supernatural movie about ghosts I have ever seen - it's about as Gothic as a baby duck on a sunny day. The ghosts eat, they sleep, they buy things at the store, they go to the beach. It's almost as if the whole ghost thing is an excuse to turn a strange assortment of characters into a little community, then threaten that community with encroaching gentrification. Still not much of a gang, though.
Aditya (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) is an ad director, scouting for a location for his next commercial. He finds the perfect place in the Royal Mansion, a ruined building gently decaying in Mumbai. The mansion has only escaped being torn down because there is an ongoing legal dispute about exactly who owns it; this will be important later. Due to a series of contrived events, Aditya winds up staying the night in the mansion, where he meets Raju Writer (Sharman Joshi), an aspiring but so far failed script writer who finally convinces Aditya to listen to his movie pitch, and that is the framing story.
As Raju explains, the Royal Mansion once belonged to Gendemal Hemraj (Anupam Kher), a local nobleman who rose to prominence by selling his mill to the British; the mill workers are so poorly treated that they finally burn the mill down, with Gendemal inside. Post-death, he returns home and commences haunting the Royal Mansion, where is is quickly joined by the ghost of British officer Ramsey (J. Brandon Hill.)
As the years pass, more and more homeless ghosts movie into the mansion. The ghost of fading Bollywood starlet Manoranjana Kumari (Mahi Gill) is followed by Bengali apothecary Bhootnath Bhaduri, murdered nobleman-turned-chef Akbar Kwaja Khan (Rajpal Yadav), Brigadier Hoshiar Singh, deceased (Yashpal Sharma), burned out rock star Robin Hooda (Vijay Varma), star-crossed lover Tina (Meera Chopra), and Atmaram (Asrani), a poor taxi driver run over by a rich man whom the movie pointedly does not name. They are an odd bunch, drawn not only from different times and places, but from different film genres.
And for a while, the ghosts just sort of . . . hang out. Bhootnath and Akbar and Singh all compete for Manoranjana's affections. Tina has a crush on Robin. Atmaram drives them places. There's really nothing overtly supernatural going on, apart from a brief bit of haunting to drive away an intrusive film company. And then, disaster strikes. The court case about the Royal mansion's ownership is resolved, and the building is sold to greedy (and generally terrible) developer Bhuteria (Rajesh Khattar), who plans to knock the place down and build a shopping mall. The desperate ghosts turn to SpookBook (really!) to look for help, and wind up with Babu Hatkaka (Jackie Shroff), the one armed ghost of a gang lord and representative of yet another genre.
While he's a freelance ghost hired by some desperate spooks to chase away some pesky humans, Babu isn't very much like Beetlejuice at all; he's a gangster in death as he was in life, and plan for dealing with Bhuteria is just to shoot the guy. The others talk him out of it, and together they come up with a more . . . creative solution.
This is possibly the least overtly supernatural movie about ghosts I have ever seen - it's about as Gothic as a baby duck on a sunny day. The ghosts eat, they sleep, they buy things at the store, they go to the beach. It's almost as if the whole ghost thing is an excuse to turn a strange assortment of characters into a little community, then threaten that community with encroaching gentrification. Still not much of a gang, though.
Saturday, May 9, 2020
Movie, you had me at "Murder Truck"
I have a theory about film. (I have many theories about film, but this is the one I keep coming back to.) My theory is this: any situation can be turned into a comedy by adding the words "wackiness ensues when . . ." to the beginning of the synopsis. In the case of Maragadha Naamayam (2017), wackiness ensues when a pair of petty criminals resort to necromancy in their pursuit of a cursed emerald.
Senguttavan (Aadhi) and Elango (Daniel Annie Pope) are aspiring jewel smugglers, apprenticed to Nochukuppam (Ramdoss), a surprisingly sensible smuggler who deliberately avoids the big scores, opting to just smuggle enough to get by. Senguttavan is frustrated, since he got into the business in order to make money, but Nochukupam is determined to play it safe.
Senguttavan is a little distracted from his pursuit of the smuggler's craft by his hopeless crush on Chanakaya (Nikki Galrani). He's never spoken to her, only pined from afar, and before he can approach her, she becomes engaged to another man, who turns out to be an abusive jerk.
And then Senguttavan gets his big chance. (His big chance to make money smuggling, that is; Chanakaya marries the abusive jerk and vanishes from the movie. For now.) A local fixer named John (Mime Gopi) is looking for someone to bring him a huge emerald called the Maragadha Naanayam, or the "Emerald Coin" if the subtitles are to be believed. None of the local smugglers will take the job, not even the infamous Twinkle Ramanathan (Anandaraj), because the emerald carries a deadly curse.
Nochukuppam wants nothing to do with the job, but Elango agrees to help, as long as Senguttavan agrees to visit a priest first and seek spiritual protection. The priest shows them the spirits of the 132 previous victims of the curse, all run over by the same truck, and gives them a lemon, along with a mantra to summon the spirit of one of the previous victims to possess the lemon, which should ward off the murder truck.
The pair try the mantra, attempting to summon the spirit of Elango's uncle Chidambaram, but it does not seem to work, and then they are told that Nochukuppan has suddenly died. They dutifully attend the funeral of their beloved mentor, and the lemon drops unnoticed into the grave. That night, the hapless smugglers are confronted by the ghost of Chidambaram in Nochukuppan's body. The ghost uncle is bound to help the pair retrieve the emerald safely, whether they want him to or not. (They do not.) But he insists on bringing over three of his friends to help, so after a late night search for recently deceased bodies, one of which turns out to be Chanakaya, there are three (and occasionally four) dead bodies walking around, Twinkle is suddenly interested in the emerald after all and happy to kill to get it, and then things start to get weird.
Maragadha Naanayam has all the ingredients for an incredibly broad black comedy/slapstick farce, but instead it's the surprisingly nuanced story of two petty criminals learning to trust and appreciate their zombie cohorts. Don't get me wrong, this is a farce, and some of the jokes are quite dark, but the humor is grounded in character, and the characters are layered and well rounded. They even handle the "ghost of a male wrestler inhabiting the corpse of the female love interest" plotline with a deft touch. I was expecting more wackiness, but I can live with a good movie instead.
Senguttavan (Aadhi) and Elango (Daniel Annie Pope) are aspiring jewel smugglers, apprenticed to Nochukuppam (Ramdoss), a surprisingly sensible smuggler who deliberately avoids the big scores, opting to just smuggle enough to get by. Senguttavan is frustrated, since he got into the business in order to make money, but Nochukupam is determined to play it safe.
Senguttavan is a little distracted from his pursuit of the smuggler's craft by his hopeless crush on Chanakaya (Nikki Galrani). He's never spoken to her, only pined from afar, and before he can approach her, she becomes engaged to another man, who turns out to be an abusive jerk.
And then Senguttavan gets his big chance. (His big chance to make money smuggling, that is; Chanakaya marries the abusive jerk and vanishes from the movie. For now.) A local fixer named John (Mime Gopi) is looking for someone to bring him a huge emerald called the Maragadha Naanayam, or the "Emerald Coin" if the subtitles are to be believed. None of the local smugglers will take the job, not even the infamous Twinkle Ramanathan (Anandaraj), because the emerald carries a deadly curse.
Nochukuppam wants nothing to do with the job, but Elango agrees to help, as long as Senguttavan agrees to visit a priest first and seek spiritual protection. The priest shows them the spirits of the 132 previous victims of the curse, all run over by the same truck, and gives them a lemon, along with a mantra to summon the spirit of one of the previous victims to possess the lemon, which should ward off the murder truck.
The pair try the mantra, attempting to summon the spirit of Elango's uncle Chidambaram, but it does not seem to work, and then they are told that Nochukuppan has suddenly died. They dutifully attend the funeral of their beloved mentor, and the lemon drops unnoticed into the grave. That night, the hapless smugglers are confronted by the ghost of Chidambaram in Nochukuppan's body. The ghost uncle is bound to help the pair retrieve the emerald safely, whether they want him to or not. (They do not.) But he insists on bringing over three of his friends to help, so after a late night search for recently deceased bodies, one of which turns out to be Chanakaya, there are three (and occasionally four) dead bodies walking around, Twinkle is suddenly interested in the emerald after all and happy to kill to get it, and then things start to get weird.
Maragadha Naanayam has all the ingredients for an incredibly broad black comedy/slapstick farce, but instead it's the surprisingly nuanced story of two petty criminals learning to trust and appreciate their zombie cohorts. Don't get me wrong, this is a farce, and some of the jokes are quite dark, but the humor is grounded in character, and the characters are layered and well rounded. They even handle the "ghost of a male wrestler inhabiting the corpse of the female love interest" plotline with a deft touch. I was expecting more wackiness, but I can live with a good movie instead.
Saturday, May 2, 2020
The unbearable lightness of being a spy.
It's been a rough week for Bollywood. Irrfan Khan, one of India's best actors, a man who effortlessly slipped between boundaries, from character roles to lead roles, from arthouse cinema to popular blockbusters, and even from Bollywood to Hollywood, died suddenly. The very next day, beloved Bollywood fixture Rishi Kapoor died as well. Kapoor started is career as a fresh-faced romantic lead, but his acting career really blossomed when he grew older and moved to character roles. It's like the industry lost its favorite quirky uncle and its jolly grandfather the same week.
Khan and Kapoor did one movie together, D-Day (2013.) It's billed as an action thriller, but it's very much an actor's movie, giving both men plenty of scope to display their talents. The usually affable Kapoor plays Goldman, India's most wanted, responsible for several terror attacks on Indian soil. Goldman is quick to point out that this isn't a matter of ideology for him; he's not a terrorist, he's a don. He only kills people because the money's good.
Goldman is currently hiding out in Pakistan under the watchful eye of the ISI, but he's determined to attend his son's wedding, and that gives Indian intelligence an opening. RAW chief Ashwini (Nassar) assembles a team of four deniable agents to bring him back alive. The team includes petty criminal Aslam (Aakash Dahiya), explosives expert Zoya (Huma Qureshi), brutal mercenary Rudra (Arjun Rampal) and Wali Khan (Irrfan Khan), an agent who has spent nine years undercover as a barber in Karachi, and is now married to Nafisa (Shriswara), with a son (Dwij Handa.) Rudra is qhuick to criticize Wali for his family entanglements but that doesn't stop him from drifting into a relationship with a local prostitute (Shruti Haasan).
Plans are made. Wali arranges for his wife and son to fly to London, then burns dowwn his own house to cover his tracks, and then the quartet spring into action. It's a good plan, and almost nothing could go wrong, but it's April 14, 2010, and nobody counted on a volcano erupting in Iceland and completely disrupting air travel to and from Europe. Wali's wife and child are not safe, and everything quickly spirals out of control.
This is probably the most somber spy movie I've ever seen. Nobody's really happy; Wali is racked with guilt over his double life, Zoya is quarreling by phone with her husband (Rajkummar rao), Rudra has stumbled into human emotion for the first time in years . . . even Goldman is bored and anxious. I suppose the wedding singer (Rajpal Yadav in a cameo) is having a good time. The action scenes are brutal and quick rather than flashy, the technology used is completely plausible, and the agency really is willing to disavow all knowledge of their agents.
In the end, though, this is an actor's movie, and the acting is good! I've been a bit hard on some of Arjun Rampal's performances in the past (the phrase "entirely made of wood" may have been involved) but I have to admit that Rampal is very good here. Rudra needs to silently smolder while trying to keep emotion at arms length, and Rampal smolders well. Rishi Kapoor is cast against type here; he's usually cast as the lovable but wise father figure, while Goldman is a monster. he's jolly, but the smile never quite reaches his eyes. And Irrfan Khan is really good as a man torn between his family and his country and constantly on the verge of losing everything. Bollywood tends to default to big: big action, big dance numbers, big displays of emotion. Irrfan Khan was a master of small, able to convey tremendous feeling with a glance or a gesture.
Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor were both prolific actors, and I've seen only a fraction of their respective bodies of work; I'll be enjoying their performances for years to come. Still, the industry is diminished by their passing. They will be missed.
Khan and Kapoor did one movie together, D-Day (2013.) It's billed as an action thriller, but it's very much an actor's movie, giving both men plenty of scope to display their talents. The usually affable Kapoor plays Goldman, India's most wanted, responsible for several terror attacks on Indian soil. Goldman is quick to point out that this isn't a matter of ideology for him; he's not a terrorist, he's a don. He only kills people because the money's good.
Goldman is currently hiding out in Pakistan under the watchful eye of the ISI, but he's determined to attend his son's wedding, and that gives Indian intelligence an opening. RAW chief Ashwini (Nassar) assembles a team of four deniable agents to bring him back alive. The team includes petty criminal Aslam (Aakash Dahiya), explosives expert Zoya (Huma Qureshi), brutal mercenary Rudra (Arjun Rampal) and Wali Khan (Irrfan Khan), an agent who has spent nine years undercover as a barber in Karachi, and is now married to Nafisa (Shriswara), with a son (Dwij Handa.) Rudra is qhuick to criticize Wali for his family entanglements but that doesn't stop him from drifting into a relationship with a local prostitute (Shruti Haasan).
Plans are made. Wali arranges for his wife and son to fly to London, then burns dowwn his own house to cover his tracks, and then the quartet spring into action. It's a good plan, and almost nothing could go wrong, but it's April 14, 2010, and nobody counted on a volcano erupting in Iceland and completely disrupting air travel to and from Europe. Wali's wife and child are not safe, and everything quickly spirals out of control.
This is probably the most somber spy movie I've ever seen. Nobody's really happy; Wali is racked with guilt over his double life, Zoya is quarreling by phone with her husband (Rajkummar rao), Rudra has stumbled into human emotion for the first time in years . . . even Goldman is bored and anxious. I suppose the wedding singer (Rajpal Yadav in a cameo) is having a good time. The action scenes are brutal and quick rather than flashy, the technology used is completely plausible, and the agency really is willing to disavow all knowledge of their agents.
In the end, though, this is an actor's movie, and the acting is good! I've been a bit hard on some of Arjun Rampal's performances in the past (the phrase "entirely made of wood" may have been involved) but I have to admit that Rampal is very good here. Rudra needs to silently smolder while trying to keep emotion at arms length, and Rampal smolders well. Rishi Kapoor is cast against type here; he's usually cast as the lovable but wise father figure, while Goldman is a monster. he's jolly, but the smile never quite reaches his eyes. And Irrfan Khan is really good as a man torn between his family and his country and constantly on the verge of losing everything. Bollywood tends to default to big: big action, big dance numbers, big displays of emotion. Irrfan Khan was a master of small, able to convey tremendous feeling with a glance or a gesture.
Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor were both prolific actors, and I've seen only a fraction of their respective bodies of work; I'll be enjoying their performances for years to come. Still, the industry is diminished by their passing. They will be missed.
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