Bhooty Call: Bhoothnath

 Bhoothnath (2008) is a movie of two parts.  The film opens with the classic Bollywood haunted house scenario.  Aditya (Shah Rukh Khan) and Anjali (Juhi Chawla) are an attractive and modern young couple who have just moved in to a house on the outskirts of Goa with their young son Banku (Aman Siddiqui).  It's only when they move in that they realize that the house is supposed to be haunted, though the audience has already glimpsed the ghost driving people away.

As is typical in these films, Aditya has a job that takes him out of town; he's the chief engineer on a cruise ship, and he promptly sails away, leaving Anjali to deal with Banku, an oversized house with a very dangerous staircase, and Anthony (Rajpal Yadav), the alcoholic homeless man who used to squat there. She's already overwhelmed just getting the place cleaned when nobody is willing to work there, and that's before she realizes that Banku has a new invisible friend.

But this isn't a horror movie, it's a children's movie about a boy and his magical friend, so the ghost isn't a threat.  Banku manages to out-prank Bhoothnath, the spirit of Kailash Nath (Amitabh Bachchan) in short order, and after the requisite fall down the stairs the two become fast friends.  Which is good, because someone has to help Anjali with the house, as well as Banku's mean principal (Satish Shah) and classroom frenemy Jojo (Devandra).

It's all very by the numbers, though during the school sports day Bhoothnath refuses to use his ghostly powers to help Banku beat Jojo, instead encouraging the boy to work harder for what he wants.  Bhoothnath is full of good advice, actually, much of it revolving around forgiveness.  He helps the boy make peace with Jojo, then reconcile with Anjali after the mother and son have a nasty argument.

And that's when Vijay Nath (Priyanshu Chatterjee) returns to Goa.  Vijay is Kailash's son, and he's here to sell the family home; he's not a monster, and is quite happy to find Aditya and Anjali another place to live, but Banku doesn't want to go, and Bhoothnath absolutely refuses to lose his new family.

Normally this kind of problem is resolved through magical pranks, but the movie has already gone to great lengths to set up the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation.  Aditya returns, because it's time for the movie to enter its second part, as the senior actors all earn their keep with an emotional story about death and moving on.  The second part is pretty solid; it's a very filmi and melodramatic story, and well within the respective skill sets of Bachchan, Chawla and Khan, but it's a heck of a tonal shift, and Banku and the more comic actors like Satish Shah and Rajpal Yadav either fade into the background or vanish entirely.

Whether the movie is a children's fantasy or an emotional melodrama, though, one thing remains consistent: it is not scary at any point.  Some of the trappings of horror appear, but it's a story about family dynamics in a large but surprisingly cozy house.  They really need to do something about those stairs, though.

Shah Rukh Week: Pardes

 Pardes (1997) is a movie with a message, and it conveys that message through a combination of dogged determination, arthouse symbolism, and all the subtlety of a Fourth of July Parade, but still winds up delivering a different message than intended.

Kishorilal (Amrish Puri) is a wealthy businessman who now lives in America; he might be the richest man in America if some of the dialogue is to be trusted.  On a visit to India he meets old friend Suraj (Alok Nath) and Suraj's large extended family, including an indeterminate number of nieces and nephews and one adult daughter, Ganga (Mahima Chaudhry).  

While he lives in America, Kishorilal loves India and Indian values, and he decides that Ganga would be the perfect wife for his son Rajiv (Apurva Agnihotri), acting as a living reminder of his spiritual home and passing on proper values to his grandchildren.  Suraj agrees, but before a match can be made the young couple have to meet.  Since Rajiv has lived in America his entire life, Kishorilal decides to send his foster son Arjun (Shah Rukh Khan) to make sure everything goes smoothly and prepare things for Rajiv's arrival.

Arjun is a mechanic and musician, with a studio above his garage so that he and his fellow mechanic/musicians can record their songs after working on cars.  He's kind and utterly loyal to his foster father.  He's also very fussy, and he clashes with Ganga and the children initially, but they quickly become friends.  Soon Rajiv arrives, and after a rocky start it looks like everyone likes each other and the match will soon be made.

Because Ganga and Arjun have become such good friends, she asks him directly if Rajiv is a good match and whether her future husband has any bad habits or vices that she needs to know about, because her future happiness depends on an honest answer.  Arjun assures her that Rajiv is a good Indian boy at heart, so she accepts the proposal, the couple are formally engaged, and Ganga and Ranjiv fly off to America.

America is not at all what Ganga expected.  There's the expected difference in values and culture, but almost all of Rajiv's family are awful people, especially his aunt Neeta (Madhuri Bhatia).  Arjun is there, but she's shocked to find that the rest of the family consider him a servant rather than a relative, someone to fix their cars and feed occasionally but not someone to socialize with.  

And worst of all, it quickly becomes clear that Arjun lied.  Rajiv smokes a lot.  he drinks, too, and he is a mean drunk.  Kishorilal urges her to teach his son proper values, but Rajiv is not interested in changing anything, and the situation gets worse and worse, and while she's still mad about the whole lying thing, Arjun is the only friend Ganga has in America.

The trouble is that the rest of the family notice the friendship as well, and convince Kishorilal to send Arjun to manage the family auto company in LA.  He leaves on a solo road trip, while Rajiv takes ganga to a wedding in Las Vegas.  And that's when things get much, much worse.  they have a fight, and Rajiv decides that he's tired of pretending to like India.  Ganga throws the engagement ring in his face and cancels the wedding, but Rajiv attacks her.  She knocks him out and escapes.  Arjun finds her and takes her back to India, but her father leaps to exactly the wrong conclusion, while Rajiv and Kishorilal arrive to bring Ganga back.

And that leads directly to the intended message of the film.  There's a lot of talk in the movie about traditional Indian values versus modern Western values, and it's clear which side we're expected to take.  The opening song is all about how great India is, and Kishjorilal and most of the nice character sing it at various times in the film.  Rajiv has been corrupted by growing up in America, while Ganga is sweet and pure and named after after the Ganges; much of the time she's more of a symbol of India than a character in her own right.

However, traditional Indian values don't really acquit themselves very well either. The village elders demand a kabaddi match to decide if Ganga can marry Rajiv rather than the distant cousin everyone assumed she was promised to, and when Suraj thinks that his daughter has eloped with Arjun, he threatens her with a sword, then locks her away until Rajiv and Kishorilal can come collect her, because she belongs to them now.

That's not how it ends, obviously.  Arjun wins the day through the classic Shah Rukh combination of persistence, noble speeches, and weaponized filial piety, and  it's left to Ganga's grandmother (Dina Pathak) to deliver the movie's actual message: women are people and they should be allowed to make their own decisions instead of always sacrificing themselves for everyone else's happiness.

Passing the torch.

 Deewana (1992) isn't a romantic comedy, it's a romantic drama, a grand sweeping tale of love and tragedy starring veteran actor and known sweater enthusiast Rishi Kapoor.  It's also the cinematic debut of a plucky young stage and TV actor named Shah Rukh Khan.  Still, Bollywood's a rough business, and it's very hard for someone without any family connections to make it, so we probably won't be seeing him again.

Kapoor plays Ravi, a wealthy and handsome eligible bachelor.  Ravi is pursuing a music career, so he leaves running the family business to his mother Laxmi (Sushma Seth) and his transparently evil uncle Dhirendra (Amrish Puri).  Dhirendra is all smiles and compliments when people are looking, but he is Laxmi's stepbrother, and he's been nursing a grudge about that for decades.

Ravi shares a little banter with his mother about the importance of getting married and providing the family an heir, then he leaves for a show in a mountain town.  While preparing for the show Ravi stays with aspiring poet and musician Devdas Sabrangi (Deven Verma), and that's where he meets Devdas's niece Kajal (Divya Bharti).  

Kajal is . . . well, she's young and carefree and nothing is ever going to change her.  She's spunky, prone to pouting and telling people "I'll kill you" when thwarted, which is a lot more charming than it sounds.  And she's a huge fan of Ravi, with posters covering her walls.  Ravi and Kajal spend more and more time together, and he keeps extending his trip, but eventually he has to go home.  At first Kajal is heartbroken, but Ravi decides to marry her immediately and take her home with him.

So, Ravi is happy, Kajal is happy, Laxmi is thrilled, and Dhirendra is not happy at all.  He's charming when meeting his new niece-in-law, but the moment he's alone with his son Narendra (Mohnish Bahl) they start scheming.  The first plan involves Narendra assaulting Kajal, but Ravi returns home just in time and Narendra is thrown out of the house, with Dhirenra joining in the rebuke in order to preserve his position.

The second plan is much simpler.  When Ravi and Kajal go away to spend some alone time in the family's farmhouse, Narendra and a small army of goons arrive to kill them both.  There's a fight and Ravi is shot, but he manages to kill Narendra with a sword before falling off a cliff to his apparent death; there's no way that anyone could have survived a fall from that height, so that must be the end of him.

Kajal returns to the family home and tells Laxmi what happened, then Dhirendra arrives and reveals his true colors.  He's furious about the death of his son, and practically destroys the house while pursuing the women, but they escape and, with the help of family lawyer Sharma (Alok Nath) they find a new home in the city.

Life in the city is hard for a pair of widowed women, even if they have money.  Kajal has resigned herself to a life of quiet misery when brash and rebellious rich kid Raja (Shah Rukh Khan) literally runs into them, almost knocking Laxmi over.  Kajal immediately berates him, and he watches her in stunned silence as the police arrive to take him away.  

Raja is smitten, and begins stalking Kajal in earnest, buying her flowers, carving her name into his own arm, following her home on Holi to . . . honestly I'm not sure what he was trying to achieve in that scene, but Kajal was having none of it.  He also tells his stern and materialistic father Ramakant (Dalip Tahil) about the woman he wants to marry.  Ramakant is furious; marrying a widow would be a stain on the family's honor, so he sends thugs to Kajal's home, intending toi drive them away.  Raja arrives just in time and beats the goons up, and while that doesn't impress Kajal, it does impress Laxmi; she urges Kajal to marry the young man in order to secure a protector, and after some heavy guilt tripping Kajal agrees.

After the wedding Raja turns out to be a better man than expected.  He tells Kajal that he knows she still loves her late husband, and promises not to touch her until and unless she feels something for him.  Then he gives her space, focusing instead on providing a comfortable life for his new family, opening a garage with the help of his layabout friends.

After Raja is hurt in a car accident, Kajal realizes that she feels something for him after all, and once again everyone is happy.  And that's when Dhirendra returns to ask Sharma to help him access the family's money.  After Sharma refuses, Dhirendra suspects that the women are alive and well and somewhere in the city, so he sends more goons to find them.  meanwhile, Raja saves a mysterious man from muggers, takes him to the hospital, and checks in on him frequently.  The men quickly become close, but Raja doesn't realize that this mysterious bearded and sweaterless man is actually Ravi.

This is pretty standard late eighties/early nineties Bollywood melodrama, with quick courtships and sudden twists of fate and characters turning out to not be dead after all and noble self sacrifices, though directly confronting the taboos around widows remarrying is a bit unusual.  Ultimately, though, the movie is going to succeed or fail based on the performances.

Rishi Kapoor is always solid, and he's clearly in his element here.  Amrish Puri is also doing what he does best, alternating between chewing the scenery and gently nibbling the doorframes; Dhirendra is a Shakespearean villain as written, so that's how he plays him.  And Divya Bharti is beautiful and charming and stuck in a role which is largely just reacting to one tragedy after another.  All too often, the role of a woman in early nineties Bollywood is to suffer nobly, and Bharti sadly died the next year, just as the industry was starting to open up and let women be fun from time to time.

And then there's Shah Rukh Khan.  He's very stagey in this, playing to the people in the back of the theater, but he also gives Raja some of the same menacing intensity that he would later bring to the villainous roles that would make him a star; Raja even has the same giggle as Rahul does in Darr.  After the wedding he settles down a bit into pleasant leading man, and during the final scenes he throws focus to Bharti and Kapoor, since they have the heavier dramatic beats.  The real difference between this and Khan's later roles is that Raja outright wins every fight he's in, rather than making use of Khan's signature "get beaten to a bloody pulp" move.

Deewana is very much a product of its time, but it's a fascinating time, with Khan at the beginning of his film career while Kapoor was about to transition away from romantic roles, and Bharti's promising career would be cut short by tragedy within a year.  It's a snowglobe of Bollywood history, a singular moment in time.  And a decently entertaining melodrama.

One ring to rule them all.

 Despite the title, Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017) has nothing to do with When Harry Met Sally.  If anything, it owes a debt to It Happened One Night, because this is a Bollywood road trip movie.  It's a popular formula; two people are forced by strange circumstances to travel together, usually across India or Europe as represented by one ton in Switzerland.  At first they don't get along, then they do get along, then they're in love and it's time to return home and face whatever obstacles are keeping them apart, whether that means a violent fiance with gang connections or an angry father played by Amrish Puri.  But what if nobody was standing between them?

Harinder Singh Nehra (Shah Rukh Khan) was once a farmer in a small village in Punjab, but now he's Harry, a tour guide making a circuit of the stately capitals of Europe.  It is immediately clear from the opening montage that beneath his practiced patter and massive reserves of personal charm, Harry is absolutely miserable, but he carries on, spending his time between trips with his only friend Mayank (Aru Krishansh Verma), as well as a rotating cast of short term girlfriends.

After sending the latest tour group on their way home, Harry is stopped by Sejal (Anushka Sharma), one of the group members.  She explains that she became engaged to her boyfriend Rupen (Kavi Shastri) on the trip, and she has lost the ring.  It's a treasured heirloom in Rupen's family, they've already fought, and she has to find it soon.

Harry does not want to help; he's supposed to be enjoying some time off, and he's been fired before for romancing the clients so he doesn't want to risk anything.  Sejal is really bossy though, and her parents pulled some strings with the tour company, so Harry is on ringfinding duty for the time being.

So Harry and Sejal retrace the tour, starting in Amsterdam and moving on to Prague and beyond.  And they argue a lot, but they've both got excellent "antagonistic banter which grows progressively more flirtatious as time goes on " skills, and after a run-in with some gangsters in Prague they start to open up to one another.

Sejal can tell that Harry is lonely, and invites him to consider her his girlfriend while they're looking for the ring together.  Harry knows that's a terrible idea, and tells her so, but Sejal assures him that she's not the kind of girl who would leave her fiance for a tourist guide.  Then she dares him to turn on the charm while reenacting the moment she thinks she lost the ring, not reckoning with the fact that Harry is played by Shah Rukh Freaking Khan, with all the prodigious charm reserves that implies.  

The adventures continue.  At this point Harry is in love with Sejal but determined to control his emotions, and Sejal is starting to realize that she loves Harry as well.  They have a run in with a different set of gangsters, led by Gas (Chandan Roy Sanyal), during which Sejal finds the ring.  And decides not to tell Harry about it, instead dragging him to Frankfurt so they can represent the groom's side at Mayank's wedding.  Mayank and his new German wife Irina (Evelyn Sharma) notice the obvious chemistry between the two, but Harry and Sejal explain that they're both happier than they've ever been, but it's not real and every vacation ends.

And that seems to be that.  After one last fight, Sejal reveals the ring, Harry books her a flight, and she goes home to get married, while Harry goes back to work.  Will they see each other again?  Will they get a chance to declare their feelings?  This is a Bollywood romance, so the answer is obviously yes, but probably not in the way you're expecting.

Amrish Puri isn't in this movie.  There's no angry father with a small army of thugs, and no physically imposing boyfriend to stand in the way.  (Rupen is kind of a jerk, but in an ordinary way, and he barely gets any screentime.)  Harry and Sejal can't be together because Harry and Sejal don't want to admit their feelings, because they're afraid. Once again this is a problem that can be solved by five minutes of conversation, so the solution is to have that five minutes of conversation.  Then kiss.  And then an awkward thumbs up.

The plotline here is classic Bollywood, but the presentation isn't.  This is a romance and a moody character piece, and Shah Rukh gives an unusually nuanced and restrained performance.  Harry and Sejal aren't looking for love, they're just looking for a way home.  And eventually they find it.

It's been a long road.

 Dunki (2023) is Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan's third starring role after his recent Zero-driven hiatus.  There's a difference, though; both Jawan and Pathaan featured Action Shah Rukh, but Dunki has to do without beautifully choreographed violence, cool gadgets, or Deepika Padukone in a bikini.  Instead, the movie relies on Shah Rukh's affable charm, a strong supporting cast, and a clearly stated thesis.

The movie opens with Manu (Taapsee Pannu), a woman of a certain age, escaping from a London hospital.  She's determined to return to her home village in Punjab, but she can't get an Indian visa, so her lawyer Puru Patel (Deven Bhojani) puts her in touch with the one man who can help, her old flame Hardayal "Hardy" Singh Dillon (Shash Rukh Khan).  Hardy is thrilled to talk to her again, but when she asks him to meet her in Dubai, he says that he won't.  Manu knows better, and she gathers her friends Buggu (Vikram Kochhar) and Balli (Anil Grover) to join her on the trip.

And the film flashes back twenty five years.  Manu is desperate to get to England, hoping to earn enough money to pay off her father's debt and buy back the family home.  And she's not the only one; Buggu and Balli both want to earn enough money to support their respective mothers and escape the dead end jobs they're trapped in.  They've tried various shady visa brokers and been cheated every time, but there's always hope.  Manu is actually looking for a wrestling coach for the latest immigration scheme when she meets former soldier Hardy, who traveled for miles to return a tape player to her late brother, the soldier who saved his life.

Hardy is moved by her story, and agrees to train her as a way to repay his debt to her brother.  When the latest immigration broker vanishes, Hardy gets them all enrolled in an English class run by Geetu (Boman Irani), hoping to earn a student visa. In class they meet meet Sukhi (Vicky Kaushal) who wants to get a visa as quickly as possible in order to rescue the woman he loves from an abusive marriage.  This means that the core cast includes a group of five friends, but one of them is in a wildly different genre than the others.  This will not be the only example of an uneven tone.

Balli passes the test, but everyone else fails.  Balli promises to look up Sukhi's love Jassi as soon as he reaches England.  He keeps his promise, but it's already too late; Jassi has taken her own life.  Sukhi is heartbroken, and immolates himself.  At the funeral, Hardy vows to get his friends to England, no matter what.  Rather than wait for a visa that may never come, they'll take the "dunki" route, hopping from country to country until they are smuggled onto British soil.

Up until now, the film has veered between charming comedy and Sukhi's tragedy; now it becomes a full-fledged drama.  The trip to England is brutal.  People die, including characters who were introduced earlier as comic relief.  As a former soldier, Hardy has to use violence to protect his friends along the way, but the violence isn't cool, it's brutal and unpleasant and leaves everyone involved shaken.  And yet there are some flickers of hope; Hardy manages to confess his feelings for Manu, and she loves him as well, though they want to stay focused on the journey until they reach their destination.

And then England, which is its own kind of brutal.  Balli hasn't been as successful as he lead the others to believe, and life as an undocumented immigrant is hard.  hardy finally manages to contact Puru Patel, who offers a few possible routes to legal status.  Trying to get Manu married to a British citizen is a disaster, though, so the only option left is to seek asylum, claiming that they will be persecuted by the Indian government if they try to return home. Hardy is a patriot, and he absolutely will not lie about his country, but he can afford to have convictions, since he's only in England for Manu.  The others have families to provide for, and they all claim asylum while Hardy is deported.

And then the flashback is over, we're back in the present, and the movie is a comedy again, with Hardy scheming to smuggle his friends back into an India which doesn't want them because of their asylum claim.  Mostly a comedy, that is, because Manu was in that hospital for a reason, and that's what's driving her to get back to Punjab before it's too late.

This is obviously a deeply political movie; it pretty much has to be, given the topic.   The film is very much on the side of the little people seeking an opportunity to provide for their families, and has a lot to say about a system which is designed to keep poor people out, and the brokers who take advantage of the desperate.  Shah Rukh gets a good speech, angry in the Terry Pratchett sense.

The tone here is wildly uneven, but that is not that uncommon in Bollywood, and writer/director Rajkumar Hirani's earlier films, such as the Munna Bhai franchise and 3 Idiots, also mix moments of joy with unexpected tragedy.  The cast makes it work, especially Khan.  This is an unusually disciplined performance for him, and there are no winking references to Khan's earlier films to remind the viewer that they're watching a big star.  Like Hardy, Shah Rukh stays focused on the moment until he reaches his destination.

Tiger 3: The One Without a Cool Title

 Pathaan established the Spy Universe as a genuine cinematic universe, weaving elements from the Tiger series and War into a more or less cohesive whole.  Tiger 3 (2023) has a different job - it needs to establish a direction for the new cinematic universe and find an easy way to distinguish the series' three renegade agent protagonists, all while telling an entertaining story and staying true to what people liked about the Tiger movies in the first place.

The movie opens . . . well, it opens with an extended and plot-relevant flashback, but I'll get to that later.  Then it cuts to a Bond style cold open action scene, as Tiger (Salman Khan) rescues his former handler and best pal Gopi (Ranvir Shorey) from the Taliban.  Tiger and Gopi have a complicated relationship; Gopi was last seen in the first Tiger move, Ek Tha Tiger, when he shot Tiger in an attempt to keep him from escaping with Pakistani agent Zoya (Katrina Kaif).  But Tiger isn't one to hold a grudge, and he rescues his old friend.  Gopi is wounded in the process, and before dying he warns Tiger that there's a mission being planned in Pakistan and that there's a mole helping the enemy: Zoya.

Tiger returns to his home in Austria and is reunited with Zoya.  Fortunately the "can Zoya be trusted" plotline doesn't last too long.  They've been married for years, and the question has come up in every movie so far.  The answer is always the same - yes, she can be trusted, as established by a quick musical number.

Tiger is satisfied and sets out on his next mission, traveling to St. Petersburg to extract one of Gopi's informants.  Naturally, there's an attempt on the informant's life, and the mysterious assassin removes their motorcycle helmet to reveal - Zoya!  She is the mole after all!  They fight, and it's close, but Tiger gets the upper hand, then is knocked out by a mysterious assailant.

Tiger wakes up bound to a chair, watching a projection of Zoya and Aatish Rehman (Emraan Hashmi), Zoya's former mentor in the ISI as established by the opening flashback.  Rehman has poisoned Tiger and Zoya's son Junior (Sartaaj Kakkar) in order to force Zoya to work for him.  He explains his very personal grudge against Tiger (it's complicated spy stuff, but Tiger had to shoot Rehman's pregnant wife Shaheen (Riddhi Dogra) while protecting a peace conference.)  He offers Tiger the same choice he offered Zoya - perform a mission for him and Junior gets the antidote, but otherwise the boy dies.  And Tiger immediately escapes, because when forced to choose between love and duty, Tiger will pick love every single time.

The couple are assigned to retrieve a briefcase from a locked vault in Istanbul, and suddenly the film switches to a heist movie.  Tiger recruits his old friend and tech expert Rakesh (Kumud Mishra) along with a pair of starstruck RAW agents, Zoya has a martial arts fight with a Chinese general (Michelle Lee) while dressed in a towel, the item is retrieved, and Tiger is captured and sent to Pakistan for trial.  This is bad, because the briefcase contains Pakistan's nuclear launch codes.  Suddenly Tiger and Zoya are the most dangerous terrorists in the world, disavowed by their hoke countries, and Tiger is sentenced to death.

Fortunately for Tiger, he's part of a cinematic universe now.  He's rescued by Pathaan (Shah Rukh Khan) and after a great deal of banter, even more shooting and an exploded bridge Pathaan flies out of the movie and Tiger goes underground in Islamabad, staying with his adopted son Hassan (Vishal Jethwa),  last seen in Tiger Zinda Hai.  

Of course Tiger's not done.  He and Zoya have to get the band back together, gathering supporting characters form the previous movies in order to foil Rehman, save Pakistan and clear their own names, pretty much in that order, and they have to do it by assaulting the Prime Minister's office.

Every installment in the Spy Universe has ramped up the level of action, and this movie finds a new top to go over, especially after Pathaan shows up.  Still, there's no shakey-cam, and the fights are kinetic and move at a good pace.  If you want to see a movie about Salman Khan punching absolutely everybody, Tiger 3 has you covered.

The movie also continues with the Spy Universe's running theme of the importance of human connection.  Rehman has lost his connection and fallen from grace, while Tiger and Zoya succeed because they have each other and genuine friends.  

And then there's the MCU style mid-credits scene, in which Kabir (Hrithik Roshan), the protagonist form War, is assigned to assassinate a mysterious enemy, setting up a Spy Universe Thanos and laying out the differences between the spies, boyband style: Tiger is the cool tough guy, Pathaan is the smart and funny one, and Kabir (who was the antagonist for half of his own movie) is the edgy bad boy loner.  It works.

Though I have to ask - when does Zoya get her name in the title?  She's been the co-protagonist for all of the Tiger movies, and Tiger's single-minded devotion to his wife is the most interesting thing about him.  It's past time Zoya got the credit she's due.