Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Fighter (2024) doesn't look like a historical drama, but the movie centers around a highly fictionalized depiction of the  2019 Pulwana attack and the Indian Air Force's retaliatory strike in Balakot, Pakistan, wrapped around the story of a maverick fighter pilot learning to work as a part of a team as he rides into the danger zone.  If it sounds like Top Gun with more crying, that's because it's very much like Top Gun with more crying.

The hotshot maverick fighter pilot in question is Shamsher "Patty" Pathania (Hrithik Roshan), and as expected he's highly skilled, supremely confident, but secretly haunted by the death of his fiance, helicopter pilot Naina (Seerat Mast).  The rest of the Air Dragons are drawn just as broadly, including Patty's old rival Taj (Karan Singh Grover), married to Patty's old friend Saanchi (Sanjeeda Sheikh); Rockjy (Anil Kapoor), the crusty commander who is consistently right about everything but resents Patty for reasons that will become clear later; Minal "Minny" Rathore (Deepika Padukone), the fearless and feisty helicopter pilot who isn't impressed with Patty's swagger, and a few others, most notably Guy Who Is Obviously Going To Die.  (I'm not going to spoil which character it is, but the foreshadowing is pretty heavy.)

Rocky may be a curmudgeon, but he encourages the members of the squadron to get to know each other and form strong bonds, so they spend the opening scenes hanging out, telling jokes, and dropping hits about their respective backstories; they're stationed in chilly Kashmir so they play kabaddi in the snow rather than volleyball on the beach.  And Minny and Patty are clearly headed for a romantic relationship, though he can't bring himself to say anything

But the good times can't last forever.  Fictional freelance terrorist Azhar Akhtar (Rishabh Sawhney),working for the real world terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed, organizes a suicide strike on a CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) convoy.  (The film goes to great lengths to point out that Akhtar is not Pakistani, a tiny smidgen of nuance that will not last long.)  Casualties are high, and the Indian government decides to retaliate by flattening the Jaish training camp in Balakot, within Pakistan's borders.  The mission is a complete success, though there are some tense moments as Patty clashes with Pakistani air ace Red Nose (Behzaad Khan).  

Pakistan retaliates against the retaliation, and the Air Dragons fight back, but in the process Patty and Taj fly across the Line of Control into Pakistani airspace and Taj's plane is shot down in an ambush.  Taj is alive but a prisoner, and while the inquiry board clears Patty of any wrongdoing, Rocky still has him transferred to the Air Force Academy as a flight instructor.  Patty has to regain his confidence, return to Kashmir, rescue Taj, win back Minni, defeat Red Nose, reconcile with Rocky, and somehow manage to get into a fistfight with Akhtar, and he does.  Though not necessarily in that order.

So, did Fighter take my breath away?  No, and I'll tell you why.  To be clear, this is a very well made film; the cast is great, the action scenes are as dynamic and visually interesting as you can get with planes, Hrithik and Deepika both get a chance to show off their dance moves, and the dialogue is incredibly on-the-nose but delivered with conviction.  But everything is so predictable; the fate of Guy Who is Obviously Going to Die is an obvious example, but every single plot twist is blindingly obvious well in advance.  

And then there's the lack of nuance.  The Spy Universe movies tend to be very "Rah, Rah, India"," and Tiger is consistently referred to as an Indian agent while his wife Zoya is labelled a Pakistani spy, but the heroic rogue agents are consistently working for peace, risking life and limb to protect the peace process and the good people of Pakistan who are tired of the fighting.  In Fighter, negotiating with Pakistan is portrayed as a waste of time, and while fighting Akhtar Patty delivers a speech about Kashmir that ends up sounding like a supervillain rant.  This is a strongly nationalistic movie, and it's using a sensationalized version of real world events to present its vision.

Kashmir is a very complicated topic.  Fighter is not a complicated movie, but perhaps it should have been.

Indian Proposal

 The apparent moral of Judaai (1997) is “If someone offers to buy your spouse for twenty million rupees, say no.” I’m enough of a crazy optimist to believe that most people already know that. If they don’t, I doubt even Sridevi can convince them. No, the real moral of Judaai is “Before marriage, it’s best to do a little research.”

The film opens with the wedding of Raj (Anil Kapoor) and Kaajal (Sridevi). Kaajal’s father (Kader Khan) is thrilled with the match; Raj in an engineer, and should make good money, with plenty of extra income from bribes. He’s a little taken aback when he sees Raj refusing a very expensive wedding gift from a contractor because he does not intend to do business with the man, and Kaajal herself is disappointed when she arrives at her new marital home only to discover that there is no air conditioning, and not even a refrigerator.

Poor but honest is still honest, though, and Kaajal and Raj (and eventually their two children) settle into a reasonably happy life. Kaajal still longs for more material things, but it’s a Lucy Ricardo or Hyacinth Bucket sort of longing; she’s a bit pretentious, and sometimes she spends too much money or lies to the neighbors, but she loves Raj and he loves her and in the end they always make up.

Meanwhile, Kaajal’s Bollywood-obsessed brother Harilal (Johny Lever) provides another example of “look before you buy.” He hears a mysterious voice singing, and assumes that the singer is Vani (Upasna Singh), daughter of Raj and Kaajal’s landlord Hasmukhlal (Paresh Rawal). Hari has seen Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, so he assumes the role of the heroic suitor trying to win over his beloved’s stern father. While he’s no Amrish Puri, Hasmukhlal is in fact sort of intimidating; he dominates every conversation with a never ending stream of questions, and even has a question mark on his forehead like a low-rent Indian version of the Riddler. Hari brings home the bride, but it isn’t until the wedding night that he realizes that Vani has a severe case of Bollywood Mystery Disease, and the only thing she’s able to say is “Abba dabba jabbha.” (The entire subplot basically goes nowhere, but it’s worth mentioning because while the basic premise is stupid, Johny Lever is actually really funny in this movie.)

Raj works for Mr. Sinha (Saeed Jaffry). Sinha has a niece, Janhvi (Urmila Matondkar) returning from America. Since all of his drivers are out on other jobs, he sends Raj to the airport to collect her, and the pair immediately start arguing. Janhvi is intrigued, however, and soon decides that Raj is the man for her. Finding that he’s married really doesn’t deter her. As she sees it, Raj would hardly be the first man in India to take a second wife.

(A slight digression - Janhvi is terribly impressed upon seeing Raj refuse a lucrative job offer because, unlike the prospective employer, Sinha gave him a chance when he was just starting out, and he refuses to betray him. This is portrayed as a wonderful demonstration of loyalty, but it strikes me as arrogance more than anything. Raj has a family, money is definitely tight (they’re saving up to buy a small cassette player) and financial issues are a constant source of strain in his marriage. While ethics are important, there’s nothing wrong with finding a better job for the sake of your family, or at least asking your obviously very rich employer for a raise. Working exactly the job you want without caring about the money is a luxury best reserved for the single.)

Raj has no interest whatsoever in marrying another woman; despite the occasional arguments, he loves Kaajal. Janhvi refuses to give up, and so she approaches Kaajal at the temple and makes an indecent proposal. Kaajal will receive twenty million rupees if she convinces her husband to take Janhvi on as a co-wife. Kaajal is shocked and horrified, but then she keeps thinking about all she could do with the money. She had always wanted to put the children into a good, English, school, and they could move to a better house, buy a nice car instead of taking the bus everywhere . . . Her father thinks it’s a great idea, while her mother (Farida Jalal) tries to explain how insane the very notion is.

Kaajal makes her decision. When Raj refuses to even consider the idea, she goes on a hunger strike until he agrees. Finally he breaks down, she and Raj get a divorce, he is married to Janhvi, and they all teleport to Las Vegas for some very bad dancing before moving in together. What could possibly go wrong?

While he’s agreed to the marriage, Raj is sullen and wants nothing to do with Janhvi. Kaajal is so consumed by her new life as a wealthy woman that she has no time for anything else, though, while Janhvi transforms herself into the perfect submissive Indian wife. She wins over the children with what may well be the lamest joke ever written, and patiently sets out to woo Raj. He’s reluctant, but he finds himself more and more drawn to the woman who’s actually paying attention to him. Kaajal and Raj keep drifting farther apart, Janhvi and Raj keep drifting closer together, and then, finally, Kaajal realizes what she’s given up and decides she wants it back.

Judaai has a great cast. It is always nice to see Farida Jalal in action, and Johny Lever was (as previously mentioned) genuinely funny. Sridevi, meanwhile, is fantastic. The early portions of the film showcase her comic talents (when Janhvi approaches her at the temple, she hides behind a pillar with a strange little hop that was so funny I had to rewind and watch it again) and in the second half of the film she displays considerable dramatic depth.

On the other hand, the message of the film is a bit muddled. The idea is that Kaajal has done wrong and needs to purify herself through suffering. The characters in the film go to great lengths to point out that yes, Kaajal did ruin her own life, but it’s not until the very end of the movie that someone points out the simple fact that there were other people involved. The whole thing was Janhvi’s idea, after all, and if Raj had been more concerned about the welfare of his family than with his personal code of honor, the whole mess could have been avoided. Most importantly, Raj and Kaajal could have saved themselves a lot of grief by sitting down and talking for half an hour before marriage.

No, I mean it. Don't stand so close to me.

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.

You can tell they're twins because they have the same mustache.

Twin movies are fairly common in Bollywood, and they tend to follow the same basic formula. Identical twins are separated at birth. One twin grows up poor and feisty, raised by humble working folk. The other twin grows up wealthy and meek, terrorized by evil rich relatives who are after their money, though the rich twin usually also has a good-hearted but vulnerable relative that they need to protect. Just when it seems all hope is lost, the twins accidentally trade places, with the poor twin overcoming the villains, the rich twin developing a spine, and everybody gaining a love interest. Kishen Kanhaiya (1990) follows this formula as well, but with some surprising tweaks.

The film begins just as you might expect; tragic birth, dead mother, one twin spirited away to be raised by the midwife, while the other is left with his wealthy and now widowed father, Sunderdas (Shreeram Lagoo). While Sunderdas is a devoted parent, he’s overwhelmed, and decides to marry Kamini (Bindu), the sister of his employee Gendamal (Amrish Puri). Gendamal and Kamini are, of course, evil, and soon Gendamal arranges for Sunderdas to take a convenient fall, leaving him mute and paralyzed. Thanks to a complicated will, though, Gendamal needs to keep Sunderdas and baby Kishen alive until Kishen’s 24th birthday, then force the young man to sign over the property. And in order to make this possible, Gendamal and Kamini raise the boy through terror and abuse. By the time he grows into an adult (and is played by Anil Kapoor), Kishen is basically a servant, completely cowed by his uncle, stepmother, and her illegitimate son Mahesh (Dalip Tahil).

Kanhaiya (Anil Kapooor), on the other hand, was raised by the midwife (Subha Khote), and has grown up fearless, lazy, and a bit shady, but basically good hearted. Kanhaiya is obsessed with movies, and spends his days at the movie theater, dressed in fancy clothes borrowed from his best friend Lobo (Johnny Lever). After inadvertently picking a fight with a much larger man, his filmi fisticuffs catch the eye of fellow cinemaniac Anju (Madhuri Dixit), daughter of wealthy and cranky businessman Vidya Charan (Saeed Jaffrey), who happens to be a close friend of Gendamal.

And at this point, with the characters clearly established, that you’d expect the twins to switch places. But no, not yet. Both brothers have fully developed romantic subplots under their own identities, rather than meeting their love interests while switched. Kishen falls for milkmaid Radha (Shilpa Shirodkar), and surprisingly, Gendamal is all for the match, figuring that a wife would help keep Kishen docile, and an educated woman would be harder to control.

Kanhaiya, meanwhile, grows closer to Anju, who assumes that he’s also the child of a rich family. While pursuing this relationship. Kanhaiya casually and repeatedly humiliates Anju’s “uncle” Sridhar (Ranjeet), a business associate of her father’s. Sridhar has an unhealthy interest in Anju, and is nasty enough to expose Kanhaiya’s poverty, have the young man brutally beaten, kill his adopted mother, and then shoot him in the head.

Kishen, meanwhile, suddenly grows a spine and refuses to mark the papers transferring control of the family fortune, because Radha doesn’t want him to. Gendamal does not take this refusal well, and orders Mahesh to kill Kishen and dump his body in the sea. And then, with Kishen presumed dead and Kanhaiya’s life in ruines, Kanhaiya’s adoptive father explains the switch, and Kanhaiya deliberately assumes Kishen’s identity in order to root out the villains and perhaps discover what happened to his twin.

Kishen is not really dead, of course. Anju discovers him wandering the city street and thinks he’s Kanhaiya; he cannot contradict her, because he has amnesia. Anju tries to help him recover his memories by dressing up as Raj Kapoor, but surprisingly it doesn’t work.

Kishen Kanhaiya hits many of the same story beats as, say, Seeta Aur Geeta, but it steers clear of some of the twin movie cliches. (Kanhaiya lets all the nice people know who he is as soon as possible, for instance, so there’s no tearful rejection by the family he’s trying to save.) It’s an old story, but different enough to be interesting, and the cast is full of people I like, so I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

Community theatre saves lives.

One of the fringe benefits of watching a lot of movies made in a language I do not speak, from a country where I do not live, produced by an industry that I don't really follow, and advertised on TV channels that I do not watch is that often when I sit down to watch a movie, all I have to go on is the Netflix summary and maybe a few familiar names listed in the cast. Even today, I can be surprised. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (2019) surprised the hell out of me. That said, I'll be spoiling all of the things, so if you want to be surprised too, stop reading, turn on Netflix, watch the movie, then come back. I'll still be here.

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. There's a boy, struggling Delhi playwright Sahil (Rajkummar Rao). There's a girl, small town garment factory heiress Sweety (Sonam Kapoor.) Boy meets girl, girl tells boy his play sucks because he's obviously never been in love, boy helps girl escape from an angry man who turns out to be her brother Babloo (Abhishek Duhan). Boy discovers that girl is from a small town, and decides to produce his next play there, with local talent, assisted only by the theater company's caterer (and wannabe actress) Chatro (Juhi Chawla, who, I believe I have mentioned, is the absolute best.)

And at first, everything happens just as you would expect. Sweety's father, Bablbir (Anil Kapoor, Sonam's actual dad) is strict but loving. He also always wanted to be a chef, but was prevented by his own strict parents, so naturally Sahil meets him while he's cooking and assumes he's the family chef. Rumor has it that Sweety is in love with a Muslim man, and everybody (including Sahil) assumes that man is Sahil. It's not. Drama! Complications! Then Sahil confesses his love, and Sweety tells him the truth: she's not in love with a Muslim man, she's in love with a Muslim woman, Kuhu (Regina Cassandra.)

Sahil quickly gets over himself and resolves to help Sweety. (One of the more subtle Good Things about this movie is that this isn't presented as an act of amazing nobility or anything; Sahil's just being a decent person.) Of course, when all you have is a playwright, every problem looks like a stage, so Sahil comes up with the fairly terrible plan of producing a play about a young Indian woman played by Sweety in love with another woman, played by Kuhu. Sweety's family will be so moved by the play that they'll accept Sweety when she comes out to them. Things fall apart in short order, with Sweety outed ahead of schedule, but she insists on continuing the play anyway, not because she thinks it will help her now, but because it would have been a lifeline to her younger self, something to show her that she's not completely alone.

Ek Ladki is not much of a romance. Sweety and Kuhu are already in an established (if secret) relationship, and the onscreen relationship is incredibly chaste, to boot; there's some hugging and some earnest conversations, but Chatro and Balbir get to display a lot more chemistry. But that doesn't really matter, because Sweety is right; this is not a movie about romance, it's about representation. The emotional climax happens before the happy ending, during the play's performance, as the audience realizes what the play's actually about. Some people stay, some people storm out, but the camera lingers on one young girl's face as she suddenly realizes that she's not alone.

It was a nice surprise.

Gurudev

When reviewing a movie, I usually like to summarize just enough of the plot to establish who the main characters are and just what the basic conflict is. The trouble is that often an Indian movie will take its sweet time in establishing character and conflict. It’s not at all unusual for a movie about a bitter divorce to open by showing how the couple first met and fell in love, and a movie like Gurudev (1993) will spend two hours setting up a conflict and a half an hour to resolve it. I shall try to condense.

Khakan (Danny Denzongpa) is a wealthy single father and evil businessman. He and his driver Satyen (Satyendra Kapoor) have sons of nearly the same age, and the boys spend most of their time together being doted on by Satyen’s wife Saraswati (Seema Deo). During a routine shady deal, Khakan betrays gangster Bhola Pandey (Kiran Kumar) for no particular reason, earning a life-long enemy and subsequently attracting police attention. He gets away from the police by pinning everything on Satyen. After sending his loyal driver to jail for life, Khakan tells the man’s family that he is dead, and “nobly” agrees to take financial responsibility for them. His plan, as he tells his trusted friend Parshuram (Pran), is to raise Dev to be a police officer, thus giving himself influence in the department. (Insert evil laughter here.)

Time passes. We know this because Kkakan’s hair turns white, and because Dev and Guru are now played by Rishi Kapoor and Anil Kapoor, respectively. The pair live with Dev’s mother, and there is much talk about how they are one big happy family despite not being related by blood. Guru has tickets to a stage show, but Dev has just been notified that he has been accepted as a police officer, and so he decides to investigate the postman’s claim that he’s been cheated out of his bicycle first, and join Guru later. At the bar, he meets Rosy (Sridevi), the swaggering, tough-talking bar owner/con artist. He sees straight through her current ruse, and sparks immediately fly.

Guru, meanwhile, attends the show alone. He is captivated by the performance of Priya (Sridevi). After the show, Priya is brooding about her missing identical twin sister when Guru arrives with flowers. He does his level best to charm her and fails spectacularly; she slams the door in his face. Twice.

After the show, the boys get together and compare notes, with Dev stretching the truth a little and Guru stretching the truth a lot. Dev borrows Guru’s car so that he can go see Rosy again, and narrowly avoids being killed by a car bomb planted by Bhola Pandey’s men.

With Dev recovering in the hospital, Guru goes to Bhola Pandey’s place and delivers a drive-by beating. (Literally; he drives his jeep through the wall, and reaches through the window to deliver punches.) It turns out that in this movie the good-hearted son of the villain is not only aware of the shady side of his father’s business, he’s a willing participant.

The various plotlines simmer for a while. Dev and Rosy continue with their fun flirtation. Guru eventually wins Priya over, apparently through sheer persistence, since I didn’t notice any conceivable reason for her to change her mind. The war between Khakan’s clean-cut syndicate and Bhola Pandey’s rowdy band of gundas heats up. Police inspector Dev bends the law for Khakan’s benefit, but his superior, Khan (Kader Khan, in a rare non-comedic role) starts to rouse his slumbering conscience. And finally, at the two hour mark, Dev learns the truth about his father and the film rockets toward its climactic hail of bullets.

The pacing in Gurudev is definitely off; there’s simply too much premise for the two and a half hour running time. It’s as if the film maker5s had an outline of the plot, but just started filming without deciding how much time to spend on each plot. But the real problem with the film is that there’s simply not enough Sridevi. While Priya is a bit dull, Rosy is a great character, and showcases Sridevi’s strengths well. The film does almost nothing with either one of them, though; the only time one girl is mistaken for the other is during a rather cruel practical joke. Sridevi is a terrible thing to waste.

Family ties.

If I ever become a Bollywood villain with bulging eyes and a fanatical devotion to Kali (and believe me, there are days when I am this close,) I hope I have the good sense to avoid courting unnecessary irony. When you believe in a goddess who is known for protecting women and children and the poor, and especially for avenging wrongs done to mothers, you really should be careful about how you treat the assorted mothers who cross your path. Otherwise, you wind up like Kooka Singh, the villain of Trimurti (1996).

Kooka (Mohan Agashe, doing a very good Amrish Puri impression) really loves the goddess. He loves her so much that he spent a great deal of money renovating the local temple. Being a villain, he now considers the temple to be his private domain, and orders his goons to keep the local populace away. However, heroic (and pregnant) policewoman Satyadevi (Priya Tendulkar) stands in his way.

Kooka has an astrologer on his payroll who gives him very useful and specific advice; none of this “Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until/Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill/Shall come against him.” business; the astrologer tells Kooka, in very specific terms, that messing with Satyadevi and her family will lead to destruction. Kooka thinks he can weasel around the prediction, however, and so the conflict escalates until Kooka frames Satya for murder, and she is sent to prison.

While in prison, Satya gives birth to her third son, Romi. She instructs her brother Bhanu (Saeed Jaffrey) to take the baby to be raised by her other sons, Shakti and Anand, and to tell the boys that she has died; she very sensibly believes that the boys need to live their own life rather than devoting themselves to her vengeance. (I like this woman.)

Giving two preteen boys responsibility for raising their baby brother can lead to problems down the line. The two brothers have very different views of their situation; Shakti is fiercely traditional and moralistic, while Anand wants to improve their situation, and is willing to sell black market liquor to do so. Shakti finds out, there’s an argument, and Anand leaves home to work for Peter, one of Kooka’s henchmen. When Kooka discovers who he has working for him, he offers Peter an enormous amount of money to kill the boy, but Anand is bright and charismatic enough to convince Peter that ultimately letting him live will be a better investment.

Time passes. Anand is presumed dead (though we know he really isn’t.) Shakti (Jackie Shroff) is a truck driver in the army, still traditional and moral, and the kind of guy who will stroll into a factory that is in the process of being evacuated due to a bomb on the premises, grab the bomb, and carry around until he finds a convenient cliff to throw it off of. Shakti loves Jyoti (Guatami), but won’t marry her until he’s gotten Romi settled in life.

Romi (Shahrukh Khan) has just returned from college, and isn’t interested in anything other than his childhood sweetheart, Radha (Anjali Jathar). Since Radha’s family is rich and evil, while Shakti and Romi are poor and good, no one approves of the match and Romi is forced to use a variety of tricks in order to get into the house to see her, including resorting to unconvincing drag.

Finally, Romi convinces his brother to go to Radha’s family and formally ask for her hand. It does not go well; Shakti is casually humiliated, and the family arrange a match between Radha and the son of a rajah instead. The match is above their station, and the rajah’s family demand an exorbitant dowry, but Radha’s uncle Himmat (Tinnu Anand) has a cunning (and evil!) plan. he convinces Romi that the only way to win Radha is to become rich, and the only way to become rich in a hurry is to become a criminal. Himmat introduces Romi to Kooka’s organization, and in the process makes sure Kooka knows exactly who Romi is.

Displaying his usual foresight, Kooka takes the boy into the organization rather than, oh, shooting him. He has Romi apprenticed to the coolest of his henchmen, Sikander (Anil Kapoor). Sikander is, of course, secretly Anand and has a heart of gold. He takes Romi under his wing even before he realizes who he is, and once he makes the connection, he forges a very close bond without revealing the nature of the relationship. He also gives Romi some spectacularly bad advice about Radha that turns out very well. Soon the young lovers are united, and Shakti and Romi’s new boss are bonding. The future looks bright, as long as Shakti doesn’t find out who Sikander works for and what he does for a living.


Shakti finds out. Soon more secrets are revealed, driving a further rift between the brothers, leaving Shakti devastated and driving Romi even further into Kooka’s organization. Kooka takes Radha prisoner, and tells Romi that the price for her life is that he kill an old woman who has just been released from prison . . .

Trimurti is a very straightforward film. While it’s three hours long, a good pace is carefully maintained throughout, and it never drags. The performances of the three leads, though, really make the film. Shroff is very good as the straightforward and admirable (but not terribly bright) Shakti, and gets to display most of the angst. Shahrukh is as charming as ever as the bumbling but sweet Romi, and gets beaten up a lot. And Anil Kapoor steals the show as the dapper, brilliant, and charismatic Anand. He’s like a Bollywood Han Solo, only with a mustache and impeccable dress sense. Great performance, very entertaining movie.

The system works.

The first post here at the Gorilla’s Lament was made on April 18, 2004, making this our one-year anniversary, and I cannot think of a better way to celebrate than to spend the day with Amrish Puri. Our associates over at Army of Monkeys have recently reviewed Taarzan - the Wonder Car, spotlighting Puri’s softer, more avuncular side. Our entry in the Amrish Puri tribute, though, is Nayak (2001), featuring Puri at his villainous best.

Puri plays Balraj Chauhan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra and a very, very bad man; we get an early glimpse of his badness when he very casually cripples an overenthusiastic fan. Still, you need more than evil to become Chief Minister, and Chauhan gets a chance to display his impressive political skills when simple village belle Manjari ( Rani Mukherjee) criticizes him at a publicity stop in her village. She’s perfectly correct, and he’s clearly in the wrong, but he manages to turn the situation around completely; he’s even got the chutzpah to publicly honor Manjari for bringing the matter to his attention.

Q-TV cameraman Shivaji Rao (Anil Kapoor) is present at the same publicity stop, and immediately falls for Manjari. She vanishes into the crowd, though, and Shivaji returns to the city, where he and his trusty assistant Topi (Johny Lever) get caught up in a riot. Shivaji gets some great footage of the riot, including footage of the police Commissioner being ordered (via radio) by the C.M. to stand down since both factions in the riot are political supporters. When he discovers a young college student bleeding to death on the pavement, though, he puts down the camera and carries him to the hospital, racing across the tops of buses as Topi films him from the ground.

Thanks to his actions during the riot, Shivaji is promoted to senior reporter and given his own interview show (though it’s clear the network did not use the footage of the Commissioner). He returns to the village in search of the girl from before, and wins her heart by secretly following her around and filming her (and since this is Bollywood, this is Romantic and Not At All Creepy). When he approaches her father (Shivaji Satham), though, he’s refused out of hand; Dad wants her to marry someone with a government job, figuring that that is the only way to ensure she has real security. Shivaji returns home and starts looking for a government job.

New job aside, though, Shivaji has a show to do. His first scheduled interview is with Chief Minister Balraj Chauhan; Chauhan arrives expecting a glossy puff piece, but Shivaji immediately attacks his record. When Balraj tries to dismiss the charges, Shivaji produces copious documentation, including the footage of the Police Commissioner being ordered to do nothing. Finally, frustrated, Balraj declares that no one can know the pressures of being C.M. until they’ve actually become Chief Minister. He challenges Shivaji to take on the job for one day, and Shivaji, while very reluctant, finally agrees, much to Balraj’s shock.

Cut to Balraj’s cronies trying to find a legal reason to call off the challenge. Balraj, though, isn’t worried, figuring that by the time Shivaji starts to figure out how things work, the day will already be over. However, Shivaji has done his homework yet again; the first thing he does as C.M. is open every pending court case against a government official on charges of corruption, and suspend the officials involved. (This is a populist fantasy, so the notion that someone might be innocent never really comes up.) It’s only the beginning, though; Shivaji has a guy with a typewriter following him around as he tours every level of Maharashtra’s government, and as soon as the merest hint of corruption is discovered, the offender is handed a letter of suspension on the spot. Shivaji takes a quick kung fu break, chasing a local gunda across the top of several busses before beating him into submission, then it’s back to the suspensions. Consulting with Balraj’s honorable assistant Bansal (Paresh Rawal), he traces the corruption back to twelve government Ministers, so he has them arrested and then, with five minutes to spare in his term of office, has Balraj locked up as well.

Now, no character played by Amrish Puri will ever put up with that kind of treatment. Late at night, Shivaji is attacked, doused in gasoline, and set on fire; he breaks away, submerges himself in mud, and then drives off the attackers, stumbling into the street the next day only to be bathed in milk by sympathetic townsfolk. The entire sequence is clearly a symbolic cleansing and rebirth; the mud-covered Shivaji seems to have mystical powers, and at one point throws a truck at his tormentors.

Balraj is quickly released, but the ensuing scandal topples his government. (Say what you will about parliamentary democracy, but it makes for some great plotlines.) We see a series of interviews with the man (and woman) on the street about who they’d like as the next C.M., and the will of the people is clear: “Shivaji Rao.” “Shivaji Rao.” “Amitabh Bachchan.” “Shivaji Rao.” Since Amitabh isn’t in the film, Shivaji soon has a huge crowd camped out in front of his house, asking him to run. He doesn’t want to enter politics, though, especially when Manjari and her father show up as well, asking him not to run (with an implied “So that you two kids can get married in peace.") Still, when Bansal takes him out to see the hope on the faces of the common people gathered around, he can’t help but be moved. He runs.

And wins, rather handily, and off screen. The election itself isn’t really important, it’s what comes after. While Shivaji’s “real” term in office is just as revolutionary as the day-long term was, he has less and less time to spend with Manjari, leading to the worst disguise in the history of film; a character played by Anil Kapoor puts on a fake moustache in order to sneak out and see his girlfriend. More seriously, though, being out of office just means that Balraj doesn’t have to worry about negative publicity when plotting his evil schemes.

Nayak is, essentially, populist fantasy. It’s about one honest man, untainted by politics, cleaning up the entire system from within. By the end, though, the film becomes much more nuanced; Shivaji is ultimately tainted by his struggle with Balraj, but still makes the world a much better place. Some interesting ethical questions are raised, but the film doesn’t presume to answer them.

Amrish Puri is at his best here. Balraj isn’t exactly charming, but he’s a consummate politician who takes an obvious joy in playing the game. he’s not an anti-hero or misunderstood or remotely sympathetic, but he is very, very interesting, and he dominates every scene he appears in. It’s the kind of over-the-top yet completely sincere villain that Puri specialized in, and I cannot think of a single actor who could have played the part better.

Anil Kapoor takes a similar approach; Shivaji Rao is an honest, heroic man, and Kapoor plays him with complete sincerity. Because Shivaji is so wonderful, he is necessarily less interesting than Balraj is. As for Rani . . . the DVD cover calls Manjari “the simpleton in Anil’s complex world” and it’s not that far from the truth. Manjari is drawn as broadly as the others, so Rani is sweet and simple and stunningly beautiful and largely irrelevant.

Without the songs, Nayak is an entertaining and surprisingly nuanced action movie. With the songs . . . well, I wish I had a computer that could do screen captures, because the only word that comes to mind is “phantasmagoric.” Bright colors, dancing vegetables, Sushmita Sen, a cosmic game of snakes and ladders, and a stick dance that would make Sigmund Freud’s head explode. It’s a remarkable experience.

This was obviously written before I saw Khushi.

Someone, somewhere makes a living writing capsule descriptions for Bollywood movies. I’m convinced that there’s only one person doing it, and thanks to Mumbai’s high annual output, he’s only ever able to watch the first fifteen minutes of a film before writing the blurb and moving on to the next film. For instance, here’s what Netflix says about
Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rehte Hain (1999)

A traditional Indian father welcomes home his only son, fresh from studying abroad in America. But while the young man would rather keep his exciting American lifestyle, his father has other plans. His dying wish is for his son to settle down with a nice Indian girl and take over the family business. A diligent secretary may be up to the task of becoming his wife – especially if it means she can sing and dance her way out of her own family.

That’s almost accurate. The father (Anupam Kher, wearing a silly mustache and with a pillow stuffed under his shirt) isn’t really dying, he just pulls the old “If my son doesn’t want to get married, I don’t want to live, so I’ll eat this sugar” trick in order to guilt his son Vijay (Anil Kapoor) into agreeing to marry. And the secretary, Megha (Kajol), may be frustrated with her own family, but she’s a Good Indian Girl, and would never try to escape, especially since she’s her own families sole financial, emotional, and intellectual support.

The summary doesn’t just get a few facts wrong, though; it also somehow fails to mention the entire premise of the film. Having picked up a bad case of Western values, Vijay is simply not interested in an arranged marriage. he has one simple term for agreeing to the marriage: Bride and groom will sign a contract stating that at the end of one year if either partner decides they do not want to spend the rest of their lives with this person, they will divorce. Megha is understandably shocked, but her home situation has deteriorated; her brother is still unemployed one sister has been sent back by her husband until she can get a heart condition fixed, and the other sister (Gracy Singh!) is three months pregnant, and can’t marry until she raises a sizable dowry. In order to save her family, Megha agrees.

The two marry, and sparks decidedly do not fly. Vijay both intrigues and confuses Megha with his enlightened attitude toward women, while Megha behaves as the perfect Indian wife, taking care of the household, providing emotional support for her husband, gently nagging him into doing the right thing, and even nursing him back to health after a crippling injury. Still, when the year is up, Vijay decides that he doesn’t feel that special something for Megha, and so decides to end the marriage, cheerfully offering to give her a ride home.

Vijay changes his mind, though, when events conspire to remind him that they are actually in India, and that he has rather casually ruined Megha’s life. He offers to take her back, but she refuses flatly (not that I blame her), and so Vijay is forced to spend the rest of the movie trying to win her back.
I’ll say up front that Anil Kapoor is far too old to be playing a recent college graduate. Still, he does good work in HADMRH; Kapoor’s characters tend to be sunny, charming, and downright saintly, but Vijay is surprisingly ambiguous, capable of great kindness and thoughtless cruelty. In Kapoor’s hands, we never quite lose sympathy for Vijay, even at his worst.

As good as Anil is, though, Kajol carries most of the movie. Megha is an archetypal Good Indian Girl, but Kajol never lest her descend into cliché. Megha is very well drawn, and clearly no victim. While they don’t display a lot of romantic chemistry (which is probably for the best) the two leads work well together, with neither one being entirely good or bad.

For some reason Anupam Kher is dressed like a pregnant walrus, but he does a fine job regardless. A number of other actors, including Johny Lever , turn up in a comic subplot that is occasionally mildly amusing and has no real connection to the main plot. Music is by Anu Malik, and is generally good, but the first number is the worst song I have ever heard in any context whatsoever.

HADMRH is an odd movie. It’s clearly a movie about married love rather than romantic love, and takes a remarkably even-handed approach to the conflict between traditional and modern values. It features strong performances by the leads and some of the supporting cast. it also features a tacked-on and unfunny comic subplot, far too many dramatic reaction shots, an ending which is completely over the top, even for Bollywood, and the Worst Song in the History of the World. I’d hate to have to sum this one up in a single paragraph.

Mr. India

Mogambo (Amrish Puri, with a toupee that makes him look like he’s wearing a dead squid on his head) doesn’t want to rule the world. He wants to rule India. Why India? He never says, but he does seem to hold some sort of personal grudge against the Indian people, since he plans to crush them before commencing his reign of evil and badness. To that end, his minions are spread throughout India, selling guns and drugs, tampering with food, running gambling dens, and generally making India a bad place to live.

To his credit, while otherwise completely evil, Mogambo is a big believer in diversity in the workplace. His minions include gangsters, soldiers, scientists (you can tell they’re scientists, because they have lab coats), Amazon priestesses, the sole Indian member of the Nazi party (who seems to be named Captain Zorro), a robot, and Fu Manchu. That’s right. Mogambo is so bad, Fu Manchu works for him. These minions are so loyal that if he picks three men at random and tells them to jump into a pool of acid, they’ll do it with a smile. In addition to his fanatical-yet-diverse minions, Mogambo has a nifty island fortress. The only thing he needs before taking over India is an invisibilty formula.

Twenty years ago, just such a formula was invented by a Professor Verma; Fu Manchu murdered the professor in order to get the formula, but was foiled when Verma’s assisstant, Professor Sinha (Ashok Kumar) . . . locked a door. Verma had one son, Arun (Anil Kapoor). Since he grew up as an orphan, Arun has started his own orphanage, but since his day job as a mild-mannered violin teacher doesn’t pay enough to support an orphanage worth of people, money is tight.

Arun’s money problems grow when Mogambo’s men decide that Arun’s house would be a fine central location for smuggling guns. Arun’s credit is cut off, and the rent is due. In desperation, Arun sublets the room upstairs to Seema (Sridevi), a plucky young reporter who hates children. The orphanage is saved (hooray!) but tensions quickly mount with the new tenant, culminating in what I can only describe as a light operetta about an errant soccer ball - it really has to be seen to be believed.

Since legal trickery didn’t work, Mogambo’s men try violence. They toss a few orphans around, beat Arun, and tell them all they have two days to vacate the premises. Meanwhile, Professor Sinha is spotted on the street by Fu Manchu. (After foiling the nefarious Fu Manchu by locking a door, Sinha evaded capture by teaching at the same university for twenty years under his own name. Since Fu Manchu is a well known criminal genius in his own right, I can only conclude that Fu Manchu is also really, really lazy.) Before leaving town forever, Sinha leaves Arun Dr. Verma’s greatest secret: a wristwatch that can make the wearer invisible!

Before long, Arun is battling injustice as Mr. India, champion of the people. The rationale behind his choice of super-name is surprisingly well done. As Mr. India explains during his first outing, the villains have been so wrapped up in their own schemes that they haven’t seen the common men of India; until they do so, they won’t be able to see him.

Mr. India’s invisibility power is also surprisingly consistent. The explanation given (the formula alters the body so that light passes through it, “like glass") is nonsense, but the power obeys the same rules throughout the film, with only one small exception (and that one’s during a song.) Just as Superman is vulnerable to kryptonite and the Green Lantern can’t affect things that are yellow, Mr. India also has a weakness: his invisibility doesn’t work in red light. There’s no explanation given for this flaw, but again it is applied consistently. Even the red light that lets Mogambo discover Mr. India’s location at the end of the film is set up from the start.

Apart from these high points, the plotting of Mr. India is often nonsensical. Perhaps the worst example of this is when Seema infiltrates a casino disguised as Charlie Chaplin. I wish I knew why she thought that going undercover as a dead white male star from the silent film era was a good idea; I’m even more confused by how well the disguise works. The sequence makes no sense at all, but it does showcase Sridevi’s remarkable gift for physical comedy, so it’s hard not to like it.

Amrish Puri gleefully chews the scenery as Mogambo. Anil Kapoor brings a charming everyman quality to his role as Arun; he doesn’t look like a superhero, and that makes him accessible and likeable. Sridevi is quite charming. She’s a gifted comedienne, willing to put herself in decidedly unglamorous positions for the sake of a joke, which lends her a different kind of attraction. (Also, she does a mean Chaplin impression.) The children are bad but forgiveable in the way that only child actors can be. (I was actually impressed with the actress playing the oldest orphan girl, but the imdb doesn’t list the orphans by name. Still, well done, Nameless Orphan Girl, whoever you are.)

The production values are pretty cheesy; the special effects fail to impress, the sounds are off (every punch results in a huge meaty slapping sound), and the costumes . . . I still can’t get over that thing on Mogambo’s head. I’m a lifetime Doctor Who fan, so I didn’t personally mind the cheesiness, but if you think you might mind, be warned.

By any reasonable standard, this is a bad movie, and yet I couldn’t help but like it despite myself. It never takes itself too seriously, and the whole film is filled with an infectious sense of fun. Just try not to think about the plot. (She infiltrates a casino . . . dressed as Charlie Chaplin . . . my brain hurts. I have to lie down.)

No clever title this time.

I was a little apprehensive about tonight’s movie, Lajja, before it started. I knew that the movie was about the plight of women in India, I knew that the title translated as “Shame”, and I knew the movie was over three hours long; everything about the movie screamed “Big, Important Film!” The kind of thing you watch once because you know you should, and then never even think about watching again. Take Schindler’s List, for instance. It’s a verifiably brilliant film, but it’s not the sort of thing one watches for fun on a Saturday night. Starting the DVD didn’t do much to ease my concerns; usually, the menu for a Bollywood DVD will feature a snatch of one of the film’s songs, but Lajja’s menu featured women screaming. Over and over. I wasn’t looking forward to three hours of watching people suffer.

Turns out I shouldn’t have worried. Not that there isn’t suffering in Lajja; horrible things happen to some very good people, and not all of the protagonists makre it through to the end of the film. But the suffering is thankfully not unrelenting. There are moments of real humor and warmth in the film, as well as some impressive action scenes.

Lajja takes its central metaphor from The Ramayana; Rama, having freed Sita from the wicked Ravana, doubts her chastity. After all, she had been living in another man’s household. To prove her purity, Sita submits to a test by fire, emerging unscathed. The story resonates throughout the film; all four heroines are named after Sita, fire is a recurring element, and one of the heroines is an actress playing Sita in a stage version of the Ramayana.

Our viewpoint character is Vaidehi, played by Manisha Koirala. Vaidehi lives in New York City with her husband, Raghu, played by Jackie Schroff. While Vaideha is a traditional good Indian wife, Raghu considers himself modern, so modern that he’s carrying on a blatant affair with the wife of his business partner, and not bothering to conceal that affair from anyone. When the business partner hints to Vaideha that he wouldn’t mind a bit of wife-swapping either, she’s horrified. She’s even more horrified when Raghu tells her that he wouldn’t really mind either. “It’s the twenty-first century!” After an argument in which Raghu hits her, Vaideha is sent back to her parents in India.

When she reaches home, though, she finds her family doesn’t want her. They believe that once she left for her husband’s household, that became her home. Meanwhile, back in New York, Raghu is in a car wreck. he survives, but when his father consults the family doctor, he learns two thing; Raghu will never again be able to father a child, and Vaideha is already pregnant. Father consults with son, and they quickly hatch a plan: lure Vaideha back to New York, and once the baby is born they can pay her off, or (if she doesn’t co-operate) have her killed. Mwa ha ha.

After a “Come home, all is forgiven” phone call, arrangements are made for Vaideha to travel back to the U.S. accompanied by a hapless employee of her father-in-law (Johnny Lever!) At the airport, Vaideha recieves a call from the family doctor, warning her not to return to New York. She deftly avoids her chaperone, and goes on the run.

From this point on, the film is a picaresque. (That’s my English Lit degree at work, folks!) Vaideha travels through India, and the deeper into the country she goes, the worse the plight of the women she meets. There are three main stories she encounters on her travels: Maithili (Mahima Chaudhry) is a bride whose father is having trouble raising the dowry, Janki (Madhuri Dixit) is a free-spirited actress, and Ramdulaari (the legendary Rekha) is a village midwife. Vaideha also encounters more than one sympathetic man on her travels, and by more than one I mean two: Raju (Anil Kapoor) is a charming thief with the proverbial heart of gold, and Bulwa (Ajay Devgan) is an insanely bad-assed rural bandit and avenger of the downtrodden.

As a non-Indian, I’m not qualified to lecture on the state of women in India. (I’ll let Preity Zinta do it instead.) I can talk about what I’ve noticed about the role of women in Bollywood, however. All too often, Bollywood’s women are passive; bad things happen, and the women suffer in silence until they’re rescued by the hero. This is by no means universal (Preity Zinta’s heroines are often active (and spunky), and Biwi No. 1’s heroine certainly took matters into her own hands) but it’s very common. Additionally, a “good Indian girl” is supposed to be demure, sometimes to the point of incomprehensibility (see Jeans, for instance.) Vaideha starts out the same way, but along the way she learns to fight, and inspires others to fight as well. Raju and Bulwa rescue a few women from physical peril along the way (especially Bulwa, who takes on twenty or so men single-handedly and wins at one point - did I mention that he’s insanely bad-assed?) but the battles that matter are fought with words, and they are fought by women. This is an angry film, and it asks a simple question, “How much of this are you willing to take?”

Before watching Lajja, I was worried that it would prove to be three hours of unrelieved suffering. I was wrong,a nd it’s a stronger film for it. Seeing these women through good times and bad makes them seem real, rather than faceless symbols of the downtrodden. This is indeed a “Big, Important Film!”, but it’s one I would happily watch again.

I think I’ll give Bulwa the last word:

“I know only this much. Humans are those who raise their voice against injustice. They’re among the living. Glory to the Goddess.”