John Woo presents Jane Austen's 'Persuasion'

 If you're looking for a Bollywood Christmas movie, pickings are decidedly slim.  There's Bada Din, which is fantastic and which I reviewed years ago, and there's Hide & Seek, an okayish slasher movie featuring a killer Santa prowling through a deserted shopping mall, but after that you have to settle for vaguely Christmas adjacent movies like Dilwale (2015), set in largely Christian Goa, in which Christmas lasts just long enough to rip off a scene from Love, Actually.

 

Let's start with Veer (Varun Dhawan.)  Veer works as a mechanic in the garage owned by his brother Raj (Shah Rukh Khan.)  Veer is a simple soul; he likes fast cars and . . . well, that's pretty much it.  Fast cars.  Until, that is, he meets Ishita (Kriti Sanon), and immediately falls in love.

One night while out on the town the pair run afoul of a gang of drug dealers.  Veer beats them up, but later they ambush him and beat him badly enough to put him in the hospital.  At which point his older brother Raj, gentle, responsible Raj, covers his face, tracks the drug dealers to their lair, beats them all up, then burns their merchandise.  When the goons say that they work for King (Boman Irani) and he'll have his revenge, Raj tells them to look for Kaali.

And we flash back fifteen years to an unnamed city in Bulgaria, where two crime cartels are battling for control of the city, one run by Dev Malik (Kabir Bedi) and one by Randhir Bakshi (Vinod Khanna) and his son and right hand man, Kaali (SRK).  

During a car chase, Kaali accidentally hits a woman named Meera Dev Malik (Kajol) with his car, and if you noticed her surname, you're paying more attention than Kaali is.  Kaali is fascinated by her, and she is surprisingly open-minded about the whole "brutal gangster" thing, so he wages a full Shah Rukh Khan charm offensive and apparently wins her over. 

 

It's obviously a trick.  Meera is Dev Malik's daughter, and ambushes Kaali and his men during a gold shipment.  On a whim, she leaves him alive.  Soon after, he saves her from falling off a cliff (long story) and she falls for him. Will she be able to win him back?  Yes, thanks to the most expensive musical number in Bollywood history.  They resolve to tell their respective fathers about the relationship, and it goes badly.

 

The movie flashes forward to 2015 Goa.  Veer wins Ishita's heart thanks to the aforementioned scene from Love, Actually and the nice young couple decide to tell their respective family, starting with Raj.  Raj is delighted, and goes to meet with Ishita's sister to formalize the proposal, only to discover that the sister is Meera.  The young lovers find themselves suddenly star-crossed, and since it is really, really obvious that Raj and Meera have a history together, they resolve to get their older siblings to fall in love . . . again. What could possibly go wrong?

Let me deal with my Festivus grievances before I get to my Christmas delight.  Boman Irani is a fine actor, more than capable of playing a genuinely menacing character.  That's not what he does here; King is a buffoon who is consistently played for laughs, and because he's the designated villain for the Goan sections of the story, that undercuts a lot of tension.

More seriously, because we see the flashbacks almost entirely from Raj's perspective, we understand his perspective and actions in a way that Meera can't, which means that he comes across as noble and self-sacrificing, while she seems like a terrible person.  The fact that she is still somewhat sympathetic is entirely due to the strength of Kajol's performance.

 

And that leads me to the Christmas delight.  The plot may be a bit muddled at times, but the cast is stellar.  I would happily pay good money to see Shah Rukh and Kajol read the phone book together.  It's not just their well-publicized chemistry; the pair work best when they are playing grown-ups with grown-up concerns, balancing their responsibilities with their love lives.  It gives the relationship more weight than you get when Shah Rukh is cast opposite a youngster like Anushka Sharma or Deepika Padukone.

The first time I watched Dilwale, it struck me as a version of Romeo and Juliet gone wrong.  On a second viewing, though, it seems more like something out of Jane Austen.  He's too proud, she's too quick to judge, and they're both missing a key piece of information which will help them unravel their competing priorities.  More gunfights than you usually see in Austen, though.

Actors never stay in the jeep.

 Sometimes you can just look at a character in a movie and see that they're doomed.  In Main Khiladi Tu Anari (1994), that character is Arjun Joglekar (Mukesh Khanna, who will always be Shaktimaan to me.)  Arjun is an incorruptible supercop and thorn in the side of drug kingpin Goli (Shakti Kapoor.)  He's also a devoted family man, with a wife (Beena Banerjee) that he just learned is pregnant, and a spunky younger sister, Shivangi (Raageshwari).  And of course he's in a big budget Bollywood movie, but played by an actor who is mostly known for his television work.  He's doomed.

Goli asks bar dancer Mona (Shilpa Shetty) to lure Arjun to her apartment and offer him a bribe.  She does, and Arjun refuses the money and delivers a lecture about honor and duty which, to be fair, is exactly what Shaktimaan would do. And then Goli and his henchmen walk in the door and kill him.  Traditionally, the actual hero (usually another cop) enters the movie at this point, vows to take care of his fallen comrade's family, and spends the rest of the movie seeking justice and maybe finding love in his spare time.  And that's exactly what happens here.

Said actual hero is Arjun and Shivagi's brother Karan (Akshay Kumar), who is also an incorruptible supercop, but he's played by a film actor so he's probably safe.  Karan quickly convinces Mona to testify against Goli, but before that can happen Goli uses a helicopter to sneak up on them and shoots her dead.  And even though Karan saw the whole thing, Goli is too powerful and connected to be charged with a crime without hard evidence.  (The testimony of a police officer who witnessed everything directly isn't enough.)

While he waits for another chance to take down Goli, Karan busies himself with actual police work, and by actual police work I mean he hears about a corrupt and mob-connected film producer assaulting aspiring actresses, so he goes to the man's office and beats him to a bloody pulp.  Film star Deepak Kumar (Saif Ali Khan) happens to be there to see the beating, and he thinks that Karan is so incredibly cool that he must play him in a movie.  Deepak makes arrangements to shadow a reluctant Kumar in order to research the character.

Meanwhile, Kumar stumbles across Basanti (also Shilpa Shetty), a street performer who happens to look exactly like Mona.  Suddenly Deepak is useful!  Deepak trains Basanti to impersonate Mona, then they install her in Mona's old job and apartment so that she can spy on Goli's organization.

(Side note - Basanti is very obviously based on Hema Malini's performance as Geeta in the long lost twin drama Seeta Aur Geeta; she dresses like Geeta, speaks like Geeta, and even even threatens to demolish a police station like Geeta.  However, she's named after Malini's character in Sholay.)

And while Basanti is risking her life in the figurative lion's den, Karana nd Deepak . . . mostly muck about and engage in buddy comedy hijinks.  There's a lot of bickering, and each man has his own deeply problematic romantic arc.  Shivangi is a Deepak Kumar fan, but they only realize how big a fan she is when she cuts herself badly while trying to carve his name into her hand.  Apparently this level of extreme devotion is just what Deepak is looking for in a woman, because before long they're talking about marriage.  Karan is an obstacle, but Deepak tries to deal with the problem by tricking Karan into falling in love with Basanti, a plan which revolves around getting Karan drunk and then, in the morning, convincing him that he had taken advantage of Basanti.  It's . . . it's not good.  Shaktimaan would not approve.

Dysfunctional courtship is kind of a hallmark of mid nineties Bollywood, and, as usual, once the respective relationships are established with their respective dance numbers, the characters start acting like relatively reasonable people again.  It does take a little while to get there, though.

Icky romance isn't the only nineties trope on display here.  The plot is lifted from an American movie that I haven't seen (The Hard Way), the film meanders from genre to genre, there's a board meeting of international criminals, Goli has a right hand man with a distinctive look and a stupid haircut, and Johny Lever, Kader Khan, and Shakti Kapoor all have significant roles.  (Much to my surprise, Shakti Kapoor isn't terrible here.)  It's like a microcosm of the Bollywood of nthe era; mostly big dumb fun, but there are elements that have not aged well at all. 

The fly who loved me.

 The reincarnation revenge drama, like the snake movie, is one of those subgenres you don't normally see outside of India.  (Sometimes reincarnation revenge dramas are snake movies!)  It's a fairly simple formula: our hero is brutally murdered, but he comes back in his next life to defend his loved ones and avenge his own death.  Of course, they tend to have the same problem.  It takes time for the reincarnated hero to grow up and get into revenge-taking shape, so no matter how you dress it up, in the end you have a virile young hero beating up an old guy.  Eega (2012) finds a way around the problem, though, and it is clever.

Nani (Nani), a poor but charming fireworks salesman, lives across the street from Bindu (Samantha), who works for a charity and creates micro-art in her spare time.  (All of this will be important later.)  Naturally he loves her, but she studiously ignores him.  He is convinced that she's just playing hard to get. (Ugh.)

Bindu's charity needs money, so she approaches suave businessman Sudeep (Sudeep).  Sudeep is happy to help, because he is a sexist creep who believes that he can have any woman in the world and who probably murdered his wife.  Sudeep doesn't just donate money; he hangs around and feigns interest in the charity's work, all to get closer to Bindu.  He is worried about Nani, though.  And he is right to be so, because Bindu really has been playing hard to get. (UUUUGHH.)

Before Bindu can tell Nani how she really feels, Sudeep's men kidnap him, and Sudeep steals his phone, reads Bindu's romantic text messages aloud, then kills him.  Fortunately, Nani is immediately reincarnated . . . as a housefly, which means it's time for a quick change of genre as Nani explores his strange new oversized world.  He eventually winds up in Sudeep's office, though, and immediately regains his memory, so it's time for REVENGE!

Or not.  The tiny fly literally bounces off Sudeep.  Nani settles for an ongoing campaign of harassment, leaving Sudeep twitchy and paranoid.  But despite his best efforts (including a car crash), it's clear that he's going to need some help.  Thanks to Bindu's powerful magnifying equipment (because micro-art) and some spirited gestures, Nani explains who he is and what happens to him, and Bindu immediately joins Team Kill Sudeep. She makes him tiny armor and weapons, there's a training montage, and I suddenly find myself wondering exactly who the target audience for this movie is.

For the most part, Nani's crusade against Sudeep is played for laughs; it's more Tom and Jerry than The Punisher.  Nani's early experiences as a fly are very light-hearted and filled with wonder as well as danger.  And there's a light framing story in the opening credits, with a father telling the tale of the bad man and the fly to his young daughter.  And yet the hero is murdered onscreen, Nani and Bindu are planning to kill Sudeep, and the final confrontation is brutal and bloody.  Is this a particularly violent kid's movie, or an unusually whimsical action movie?  I don't know.

What I do know is that Eega manages to neatly sidestep the "beating up an old guy" problem.  You can't help but be the underdog when you're a literal housefly.

Legal action!

 Bollywood is better known, but the Telugu film industry produces some of the most innovative and exciting films in India, often kicking off major cinematic trends for the subcontinent; Bollywood is still trying to make its own Baahubali, and many new Bollywood pictures are remakes of Tollywood films.  Tollywood has a reputation for films of epic scale and high quality . . . now.  Vicky Dada (1989) comes from a different time.

Vikram (Nagarjuna) is a young, idealistic law student.  He'd better be idealistic; his mother Srividya (Srividya), a judge, raised him to respect the law and seek justice whenever he can.  Vikram does have a bit of a temper, especially when his girlfriend Shyamlee (the incomparable Juhi Chawla) is threatrened.  But I'm sure this will have no negative consequences.

Shyamlee is called away to tend to her ailing sister in America.  Vikram graduates, and immediately begins work as a prosecutor.  His first case (tried in front of his mother, which is far from the worst conflict of interest in a courtroom scene in this movie) involves Savitri (Radha), who has been accused of prostitution.  Vikram wins easily, because he is good at lawyering, but when he realizes that Savitri was framed as part of a land grab masterminded by corrupt politician Ranganatha Rao (Ranganath), he pays her fine and uses his lawyering skills to stop the land grab.

Thwarted, Rao calls on crimelord Prabhakar (Tiger Prabhakar) for help.  Prabhakar sends his goons, one of them kills a guy, and Vikram vows to bring the killer to justice.  Prabhakhar uses his corrupt influence to threaten the eyewitnesses, and the goon is set free.  Vikram doesn't give up, though.  He and his sister, the plucky aspiring reporter Rekha (Vara Lakshmi), team up to find out more about him.  Unfortunately, Rekha decides to break into Prabhakar's evil lair and film him.  She's caught and kidnapped, but not before she mails a cassette tape to Vikram, revealing what's happened.

Vikram has Prabhakar arrested, and prosecutes the case.  (Again, in front of his mother, which also means that both the prosecutor and judge are related to the victim.  And yet that's still not the worst example of conflict of interest in the movie.)  Prabhakar gets off, thanks to some genuinely ridiculous legal trickery, and because Vikram was provoked into throttling the defense counsel, he's suspended.  Vikram declares that he doesn't want to be a lawyer anymore anyway, and runs off to become a violent (but stylish) vigilante.

Vigilante stuff happens.  Vikram and his dog wage war on Prabhakar's criminal empire, beating up vast quantities of henchmen and picking off the gang's lieutenants one by one, then using his lawyer skills to get off scot-free. Yes, I'm kind of glossing over the vigilante action, but the movie does as well, because surprise!  This is actually a romance!  Shyamlee returns from America and wants to continue their relationship, but Vikram dispenses justice on a freelance basis now, and feels he no longer has anything to offer her, so he pushes her away.  Savitri, meanwhile, has fallen hard for the man who has saved her so many times.  It's a good old fashioned love triangle, with occasional action scenes.

About halfway through Vicky Dada, I realized that it's probably not a very good movie.  The plot doesn't really make sense, the action scenes are enthusiastic but sloppy, the court scenes are enthusiastic but really sloppy, the dance numbers are phantasmagoric, and why does Prabhakhar have a jeep with an infinite number of rockets, anyway?  More seriously, the movie indulges in some of my least favorite eighties Indian movie tropes, particularly the hero's sister meeting a dire end in order to motivate the hero.

And yet, bad movie or not, I was glues to the screen the whole time.  Maybe it's the fantastic cast, who treated the wobbly material with a respect that it may or may not have deserved.  Maybe it's the sheer enthusiasm of the thing.  Maybe I just wanted to see what the hell the dancers would be wearing in the next number.  Whatever the reason, Vicky Dada is possibly bad but definitely watchable.