Pride and Punchability

 Khiladi 786 (2012) is the most recent installment in the long-running Khiladi series of films, but all the movies really have in common is Akshay Kumar in the lead role and "Khiladi" in the title, so there's no need to watch the other 785 first.  

Kumar plays Bahattar Singh, who is introduced as a heroic Punjabi police officer who intercepts goods being smuggled in food trucks, and is honest, incorruptible, fearless, and so good at fighting that the laws of physics are merely polite suggestions.  Except he's not really a police officer; Bahattar and his family are criminals who hijack the trucks, let the police arrest the smugglers, and then split the proceeds with their corrupt police pals.  Business is good, but the family's reputation is bad enough that no Indian family will let their daughter marry Bahattar.  His grandmother, mother and sister-in-law are African, Canadian, and Chinese, respectively, but he's hoping to find a traditional Indian bride.

Meanwhile, marriage broker Champaklal Desai (Manoj Joshi) and his son Mansukh (Himesh Reshammiya) are celebrating another successful match made.  The bride's father insisted on an arranged marriage rather than a love marriage for his daughter, but Champaklal actually arranged for the daughter to marry her long-time boyfriend, and they're only pretending not to know each other.  As Champaklal explains to his son, a little fibbing is okay if it leads to a marriage.  Mansukh repeats his father's words to a potential client, while standing next to a live microphone, at the actual wedding.  Suddenly the wedding is of and a furious Champaklal throws Mansukh out of the house for ruining yet another marriage.

Mansukh and his friend Jeevanlal (Sanjay Mishra) are drinking and lamenting this turn of events when Jeevanlal tosses a bottle away and it crashes through the windshield of Indu (Asin), who was driving through the street at breakneck speed in order to scare away a potential groom.  Indu is the sister of powerful gangster TTT (Mithun Chakraborty) so Mansukh and Jeevanlal are quickly surrounded by armed men, but when TTT finds out that Mansukh is a marriage broker, he's happy to forgive everything, as long as Mansukh can find Indu a groom from a  good family within ten days.

Fortunately, Mansukh met what he assumed was a heroic policeman while visiting Punjab for a wedding, and he knows that Bahattar is looking for a bride.  He heads to Punjab to arrange the match, and when asked tells Bahattar's family that Indu comes form a family of police officers.  Both families are criminals, but they both believe that the other family are police, and so wackiness ensues.

Indu, meanwhile, does not want to marry Bahattar because she already has a boyfriend, hapless Azad (Rahul Singh), who is in prison and constantly on the verge of being released before he screws it up again.  She uses all her tricks to frighten Bahattar away, but he's a card-carrying action hero, so he can take it.  He's also a decent and kind person and Azad is not, so she's a little conflicted, suddenly.

Khiladi 786 is the Khiladiest of all the Khiladi movies.  It's got an engaging farcical premise wrapped around the romantic storyline.  It's got Johny Lever. It has absolutely ridiculous action scenes; Bahattar is outright superhuman for no apparent reason, and other characters comment on it.  It has back up dancers in astonishingly skimpy outfits and an R. D. Burman themed nightclub.  And unfortunately it has Akshay Kumar wearing dark makeup to play his own long lost brother, which is really not cool.

And ultimately, it's nonsense piled on top of further nonsense.  Literally nobody wants to marry the handsome, rich action hero who only steals from criminals and has a notoriously good heart?  Can't TTT just hire a marriage broker rather than literally finding one on the street?  And why does Azad, who has been a low level criminal loser throughout the entire movie, suddenly have a small army of goons working for him just in time for the climax?  Doesn't matter.  Back to the farce and punching.

Everyday I read the book.

One of the supporting characters in 18 Pages (2022) accuses heroine Nandini (Anupama Pareswaran) of essentially being a 90's Indian romantic comedy heroine, and it's a fair cop.  That applies to the whole movie, really, because it has all the hallmarks of that era: attractive leads, huge emotions, a completely bonkers plot, and a wild shift in genre.  All that's really missing is Johny Lever.

But we need to start with Siddhu (Nikhil Siddhartha.)  Siddhu is a software designer who is passionate about everything.  He dotes on his girlfriend to the point where it interferes with work, forcing his sassy platonic galpal Bhagi (Sarayu Roy) to cover for him.  he's broken ties with his parents since his grandfather went missing.   And when he learns that his girlfriend has been cheating on him, he does a Devdas speedrun, going from lovestruck hero to bitter alcoholic in the space of a day.

Bhagi suggests that he burns the mementos of his girlfriend so that he can have closure and get back to work.  He does, but he uses a page from a book he found by the side of the road as kindling, and starts reading as it burns.  The book turns out to be the diary of a girl named Nandini, and Siddhu is immediately hooked and starts reading the rest of the book (without lighting it on fire.)

Nandini is a whimsical free spirit, wise beyond her years, and you can tell because she doesn't have a cell phone, refuses to sue any sort of social media, and records her life in a diary rather than taking pictures.  She has an aphorism for every occasion, and she's quick to help everyone she meets.  Nandini is in Hyderabad in order to deliver an envelope for her grandfather, and because of the aforementioned "no cell phones" rule, that means she needs to spend days wandering the streets, touching lives and sharing life lessons.

Siddhu is drawn into the diary immediately, though he seems to be taking time reading it, which means he gets worked up about plot twists when, as Bhagi keeps reminding him, he is reading a book and he can just look at the next page to find out what actually happened.  However, Siddhu also takes Nandini's philosophies to heart, putting away his cell phone and paying attention to the world around him, which is how he discovers his missing grandfather.

Meanwhile in the past, Nandini's search has taken a dark turn.  She accepts a ride form a stranger who offers to take her to the man she's supposed to deliver the envelope to, but it's a trap. She's nearly kidnapped, but is saved by an orphan boy she befriended earlier and the handsome doctor (Dinesh Tej) he asked for help.  It looks like Nandini and Doctor Sandeep might start a relationship and Siddhu is devastated, especially when he realizes that Sandeep is his married new neighbor, but when he meets Sandeep's wife she keeps talking about her phone, and Siddhu realizes that she can't be Nandini.

He turns the page.  Nandini lets Sandeep down gently, explaining that love shouldn't have a reason, and she resumes her search.  Finally the man she's searching for makes contact.  She meets him in the park and then . . . nothing.  The diary ends there.  Siddhu is devastated again, but Bhagi points out that the diary has Nandini's address in it.  he goes to her home village and learns that she died in a car accident shortly after the last entry.  Rather than wasting time being devastated yet again, Siddhu devotes himself to fulfilling all of Nandini's dreams and goals, which means buying presents for the orphans at the nearby orphanage she used to volunteer at, punching a welder, putting her roommate through school, returning money she borrowed from a bus conductor, and so on.

Siddhu isn't exactly happy. but he's content.  And yet, as he goes around helping people, he starts finding clues that maybe the accident wasn't really an accident, and that Nandini might be alive after all.  Suddenly the movie is a mystery, and Siddhu untangles a mystery which ties all of the seemingly unrelated plot threads together, leading to the movie's first sensible decision.

18 Pages is completely ridiculous, largely due to Siddhu's habit of overreacting to absolutely everything.  He also doesn't seem to grasp the concept of books, demanding that Baghi help him rescue Nadini even though, as Baghi points out, the kidnap attempt was over a year ago, and all he can really do is turn the page.  On the other hand, he does get better, and following Nandini's path inspires him to fix what's broken in his own relationships as well.

And honestly, "completely ridiculous" is not a bad thing for a movie to be.  18 Pages operates on the same kind of heightened reality as RRR or Bahubali, but instead of elaborate action scenes, the movie gives us the world's most elaborate meet cute. 

Bela Lugosi's Dad.

1943's Return of the Vampire was a spiritual sequel to Tod Browning's Dracula, bringing Bela Lugosi back to play a legally distinct version of the vampire who made him famous.  Dracula's Daughter (1936), on the other hand, is the direct sequel to Browning's film, and begins just as the previous film ended, with two comic policemen discovering Renfield's body sprawled across a street in Whitby.  Soon after they find Von Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) and the body of Dracula (a wax dummy), and Von Helsing is arrested, which means that both films revolve around characters being investigated for the murder of Bela Lugosi.

(And that's not a typo - it is Von Helsing in this movie, rather than Van Helsing.  Apparently the good professor changed his name between movies.)

Von Helsing proudly admits to driving a stake through Dracula's heart, but explains that it can't be murder when Dracula has been dead for centuries.  The police are skeptical, but Von Helsing refuses an attorney, instead asking for Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger), a psychologist and former student, as he believes that Garth is the only man in London who could possibly understand what happened.  There's no mention of contacting any of the surviving characters from the previous movie, though Von Helsing should know by now that ignoring Mina is always a mistake.

As it happens, Garth is not in London.  He's on a hunting trip to Scotland complaining bitterly about the women in his life when he's interrupted by his secretary Janet Blake (Marguerite Churchill), who's come up from London to fetch him.  Garth and Janet bicker on the way home.  They're clearly supposed to have a light-hearted and flirtatious relationship straight out of a screwball comedy, but it doesn't really land; Garth comes across as a sexist jerk, while Janet plays silly and sometimes mean-spirited pranks on him.

Meanwhile, Von Helsing's Dracula problem solves itself, as the Count's body vanishes form police custody.  No, Dracula has not risen from the grave; the body was taken by Dracula's daughter, the Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden) and her manservant Sandor (Irving Pichel.)  Marya hopes that destroying the Count's body will free her from the curse of vampirism and burns the body on a pyre, but Sandor is pessimistic, telling her that all he sees in her eyes is death.

Marya begins the next night still hopeful, proclaiming that "I can live a normal life now, think normal things.  Even play normal music." But Sandor is correct, as a heartbroken Marya realizes when the lullaby she's playing on the piano turns dark and spooky.  She resumes the hunt.

All murder and no play makes Marya a dull girl, though, so she also mingles with high society, and at a party she runs into Garth, who is expounding on psychological treatments for addiction and obsessive thoughts.  She's fascinated and even hopeful, and makes an arrangement to meet Garth the next night, while Janet and Sandor glower in the background.  

That night Marya tells a piece of her story, talking about dark thoughts and influences brought on by a dead man, and Garth suggests that she try confronting her cravings rather than hiding from them.  Marya takes his advice, and goes to her studio to paint.  Sandor collects a young woman named Lili (Nan Grey) on the street, dragging her to the studio to serve as a model, and Lili relaxes when she sees the Countess, despite the multitude of red flags raised by the situation.  Marya tries, she really does, but in the end she cannot resist and attacks Lili.

The young woman survives and is brought to the hospital where Garth works, suffering from anemia and amnesia.  Garth tries to treat her with hypnotism, but Lili dies after revealing just enough information that Garth realizes it was Marya who attacked her.  After Von Helsing explains things in very small words, Garth realizes that Marya is a vampire.  Marya, in turn, decides that there is no cure for her condition, and plans to go back to Transylvania with Garth; when he refuses she and Sandor kidnap Janet and take her to the old country, thus forcing Garth to follow.

Dracula's daughter is probably best known today for lesbian subtext, and there is definitely subtext.  Marya talks about Garth as her potential consort and companion through eternity, but she does not look at Garth like she looks at Lili and especially Janet; there's a long lingering shot of Marya slowly leaning in to a mesmerized Janet, a long prelude to a kiss that never happens thanks to Garth's sudden arrival.  And the movie is about a woman struggling to overcome or at least conceal her true nature so that she can live like everybody else, though that particular metaphor shatters when you remember that her true nature is "undead monster who must kill to live."  It's tangled and complex, making this a movie that people can and do write papers about.

Marya is also an early cinematic example of the angsty and reluctant vampire, more Louis than Lestat.  It's certainly a compelling performance; Holden's magnetic eyes draw the viewer in, inviting the viewer to sympathize with the monster.  

That said I still have questions about the "daughter" part.  According to Von Helsing, Marya's barely over a century old, while Dracula is well over five hundred.  is she supposed to be his biological daughter, or daughter in the sense of "vampiric offspring?"  Or both?  Either way, she certainly isn't shy about moving into Castle Dracula.

It was a graveyard smash.

 Naangam Pirai (2013) , also known as Dracula 2012, hints at an intriguing premise; what if Dracula traveled to India, and had to navigate an entirely different supernatural world while quenching his blood thirst.  That was the premise of Hammer Studio's Kali, Devil Bride of Dracula, which was never filmed but later was released as an audio drama, The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula.  Naangam Pirai, on the other hand, flirts lightly with that premise but instead answers an entirely different question:  What if we remade 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula, only set in India and with a budget of thirty five dollars?

 

Roy Thomas (Sudheer Sukumaran) and his new wife Lucy (Priya Nambiar) are traveling to London for their honeymoon, but at Roy's insistence they spend a few days at Bran Castle in Romania.  Roy has always been fascinated by the legend of Count Dracula, and he hopes to find his way into the sealed room in the basement where, as everybody knows, Dracula was entombed after being defeated by the Romanian Bishops.  Before making the attempt, though, he calls his guru, the pandit Suryyamoorthy (Nassar) to confirm that Indian spiritual practices can invoke foreign spirits.  Suryamoorthy says yes, and does not ask any follow up questions, which in retrospect was a poor decision.

Roy finds his way into the secret room in the basement, because security at the castle consists of one guy stationed outside.  he succeeds in contacting Dracula's spirit, and Dracula explains, in English, that he needs to possess a dead body in order to walk freely through the world.  The door opens, and Dracula enters in the form of a genuinely terrible CGI demon bat thing.  Said demon bat thing slooowly kills Roy, over the course of an entire day, while Lucy and the police search the castle.  Then Lucy goes back to the hotel to take a bath, and Dracula, now in Roy's body, shows up to bite her.

Back in India, Roy's brother, a policeman named Benny (Krishna) and the rest of the family are worrying about Roy and Lucy, who have vanished without a word.  Meanwhile, Raju (Aryan) delivers a set of long boxes filled with dirt to the mansion of one Doctor William D'Souza.  D'Souza is strange (and is also Roy.Dracula using an alias), but Raju is easily impressed, especially after D'Souza saves him from a pack of wild dogs and invites him to stay overnight.  And D'Souza is absolutely fascinated when he spots a picture of Raju's fiance Meena (Monal Gajjar), who is, of course, the reincarnation of the Princess of Transylvania, Dracula's long lost love.

Meena is Suryamoorthy's daughter, but the old pandit is away on a pilgrimage.  The real problem for Dracula is Meenat's sister Taara (Shraddha Das), who has sensed unspecified danger and is performing a ritual to keep her family safe.  Dracula uses Raju to gain an introduction to Taara, and asks her about the ritual.  She explains that once it's finished, the family will be safe from supernatural attack, which means that Taara is suddenly Dracula's first target.  He puts on his fightin' cape and interrupts the ritual.  Taara bravely defies him until he tears off her protective amulet, then she's immediately overcome by his hypnotic powers.

Meanwhile, Benny has been approached by the mysterious Doctor Paul Robinson (Rabhu), who explains the whole vampire business and steps into the Van Helsing role.  And when Suryamoorthy returns from his pilgrimage and learns what happened to his daughter, the stage is set for an epic battle of good versus evil.  or it would be, if the fearless vampire hunters weren't so incompetent.  They make too many mistakes to list here, most crucially, they know that Meena shouldn't be left alone at night.  Meena explains as clearly as she can that she shouldn't be left alone, because she can't resist Dracula when he's with her.  They promise Meena that they will not leave her alone.  Then they immediately leave her alone so that they can grab something from outside, only to be menaced by a swarm of easily avoided bats.  

Fortunately for Meena and the world, Dracula is also not very good at his job, which means that the fate of the world comes down to Raju and Dracula having a shirtless fist-fight in a cemetery.

 Nangaam Pirai has a low budget and it shows, especially in the Shaktimaan-level special effects.    And that's fine, even when they insist on bringing back the unconvincing demon bat thing over and over again.  The acting is . . . . not subtle, and that's fine, too.  A bit of scenery chewing can be fun sometimes, and good writing makes up for a lot.

And then there's the writing.  I don't generally like the "Mina is Dracula's reincarnated lost love" plotline, but it can absolutely work in an Indian context.  It does not work here, because the movie doesn't do anything with it.  It's an excuse for Dracula to go after Meena, but Dracula doesn't need an excuse to go after Meena.  He's a vampire!  It's what they do.

The real problem with the movie is that you can see occasional flashes of a better movie, which then get dropped.  Taara is set up as an intriguing foil for Dracula, then she immediately crumbles and becomes one of his brides.  Both the brides of Dracula have fleshed out characters and a real connection to the heroes, but they vanish for most of the movie.  Suryamoorthy musters all his spiritual strength and calls upon his Goddess, promising an epic supernatural climax, but nope, shirtless fist fight.  

Ignore the hints of a better movie, and Naangam Pirai is reasonably entertaining nonsense; for all its many flaws, it's not boring.  But if you try to take it seriously, it's a bit frustrating.

First, do no harm. Okay, maybe a little harm.

 Mersal (2017) looks like a big dumb action movie, but it's a big action movie that makes a very particular point.  It also has a surprisingly complicated plot told through a series of nested flashbacks; it's not hard to follow but it is blooming hard to explain.

After four medical professionals are kidnapped in flashy and almost magical fashion, police arrest Doctor Maaran (Vijay).  This leads to immediate public protest, because Maaran is the "5 Rupees Doctor," who will treat anyone with any ailment for only five rupees.  Naturally, he's very popular in his community.  Police inspector Rathnavel (Sathyaraj) begins his interrogation, and the movie switches to the first flashback.

Two years earlier, Maaran and his compounder/sidekick Vadivu (Vadivelu) arrive at the airport in Paris (a strange alternate Paris where everyone speaks English and nobody has a French accent) and are immediately pulled aside by security, though Maaran gets a chance to show off his medical prowess and soon everybody in the airport is applauding them.  Maaran is in Paris to accept an award for his charity work, and he takes the opportunity to deliver a speech about medical care as a human right rather than a business opportunity.  This offends Arjun (Hareesh Peradi), a wealthy and successful doctor who first tries to lure Maaran into private practice, then threatens to end his career.  Maaran gives him a well earned telling off, then leaves.

That evening, Maaran and Vadivu meet Arjun's assistant Anu (Kajal Aggarwal), and saves her from a robbery using magic tricks.  Over the next few days they grow close, and he shares his dream of succeeding as a professional magician.  He reveals that he has a stage show coming up, and invites Anu.  Since she has to stick close to Arjun, he tells her to invite him as well.  

At the show, a masked Maaran amazes the audience, then calls for a volunteer.  Arjun is selected, and Maaran kills him onstage.  The resulting investigation attracts the attention of Arjun's associate, the even more evil Doctor Daniel Arokiyaraj (S. J. Suryah.)

Cut to the more recent past, back in India.  The reclusive Maaran accepts a request for an interview from newly minted journalist Tara (Samantha Ruth Prabhu), which gives him another opportunity to publicly share his belief in the need for easily available health care.  This attracts Daniel's attention; the five rupee health care is cutting into his business, but Daniel seems to have a personal grudge against the young doctor as well, and sends thugs to take care of the problem.

Fortunately, Maaran is saved by . . . Maaran?  No, the second Maaran is Vetri (Vijay), a stage magician and vigilante who happens to be identical.  Back in the police interview, Rathnavel realizes that Vetri was the one who killed Arjun, and that it's Vetri wearing handcuffs and sitting before him.  Vetri reveals that the four kidnap victims were all responsible for the death of a young girl and the financial ruin of her parents.  She could have lived if she had reached a capable doctor ten minutes earlier, and now the kidnapped men will live if the police find them within ten minutes.  Even with Vetri's directions, they don't, but by that time Vetri has escaped.

While Rathnavel tracks down an old, blind magician in search of backstory, Maaran finds and confronts Vetri.  What;s the relationship between the two identical men?  Could they be brothers?  The answer is provided in another flashback, with Vijay playing another role, but to make a long story short, yes, they are.  Also everybody Vetri has killed so far was very bad indeed, and yes, Vadivu has been acting as a sidekick to both brothers all along.

Action movies with a social message are surprisingly common in Indian cinema, and this is a pretty good example.  Daniel is an awful person, but the true villain here is lack of widespread access to affordable and timely health care, and the movie makes absolutely sure that you know it.  Still, it never forgets to be an action movie, with some impressive set pieces.  And while the plot is very complicated and highly improbable, it does  hang together in the end.  It's an action movie, and it's big, but it's not dumb.