It's been a rough week for Bollywood. Irrfan Khan, one of India's best actors, a man who effortlessly slipped between boundaries, from character roles to lead roles, from arthouse cinema to popular blockbusters, and even from Bollywood to Hollywood, died suddenly. The very next day, beloved Bollywood fixture Rishi Kapoor died as well. Kapoor started is career as a fresh-faced romantic lead, but his acting career really blossomed when he grew older and moved to character roles. It's like the industry lost its favorite quirky uncle and its jolly grandfather the same week.
Khan and Kapoor did one movie together, D-Day (2013.) It's billed as an action thriller, but it's very much an actor's movie, giving both men plenty of scope to display their talents. The usually affable Kapoor plays Goldman, India's most wanted, responsible for several terror attacks on Indian soil. Goldman is quick to point out that this isn't a matter of ideology for him; he's not a terrorist, he's a don. He only kills people because the money's good.
Goldman is currently hiding out in Pakistan under the watchful eye of the ISI, but he's determined to attend his son's wedding, and that gives Indian intelligence an opening. RAW chief Ashwini (Nassar) assembles a team of four deniable agents to bring him back alive. The team includes petty criminal Aslam (Aakash Dahiya), explosives expert Zoya (Huma Qureshi), brutal mercenary Rudra (Arjun Rampal) and Wali Khan (Irrfan Khan), an agent who has spent nine years undercover as a barber in Karachi, and is now married to Nafisa (Shriswara), with a son (Dwij Handa.) Rudra is qhuick to criticize Wali for his family entanglements but that doesn't stop him from drifting into a relationship with a local prostitute (Shruti Haasan).
Plans are made. Wali arranges for his wife and son to fly to London, then burns dowwn his own house to cover his tracks, and then the quartet spring into action. It's a good plan, and almost nothing could go wrong, but it's April 14, 2010, and nobody counted on a volcano erupting in Iceland and completely disrupting air travel to and from Europe. Wali's wife and child are not safe, and everything quickly spirals out of control.
This is probably the most somber spy movie I've ever seen. Nobody's really happy; Wali is racked with guilt over his double life, Zoya is quarreling by phone with her husband (Rajkummar rao), Rudra has stumbled into human emotion for the first time in years . . . even Goldman is bored and anxious. I suppose the wedding singer (Rajpal Yadav in a cameo) is having a good time. The action scenes are brutal and quick rather than flashy, the technology used is completely plausible, and the agency really is willing to disavow all knowledge of their agents.
In the end, though, this is an actor's movie, and the acting is good! I've been a bit hard on some of Arjun Rampal's performances in the past (the phrase "entirely made of wood" may have been involved) but I have to admit that Rampal is very good here. Rudra needs to silently smolder while trying to keep emotion at arms length, and Rampal smolders well. Rishi Kapoor is cast against type here; he's usually cast as the lovable but wise father figure, while Goldman is a monster. he's jolly, but the smile never quite reaches his eyes. And Irrfan Khan is really good as a man torn between his family and his country and constantly on the verge of losing everything. Bollywood tends to default to big: big action, big dance numbers, big displays of emotion. Irrfan Khan was a master of small, able to convey tremendous feeling with a glance or a gesture.
Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor were both prolific actors, and I've seen only a fraction of their respective bodies of work; I'll be enjoying their performances for years to come. Still, the industry is diminished by their passing. They will be missed.
Saturday, May 2, 2020
Saturday, April 25, 2020
Grail quest.
Jackpot (2019) is a caper movie, with a gang of charming but perhaps morally shady misfits stumblimg into crazy situations while chasing after a MacGuffin which can change all of their lives. In Indian movies, the MacGuffin is usually a bag of diamonds, but in Jackpot the object of desire is a magical pot with the power to multiply anything placed within it. So, you know, not really going for gritty realism here.
Our misfits in chief are Akshaya (Jyotika) and Masha (Revathy), small time con artists who steal from the middle class and give to . . . themselves, mostly, but they both have the requisite heart of gold and will help the less fortunate when needed. They are an effective partnership, but Masha is clearly the quick-witted sidekick, while Akshaya is the swaggering hero who can con with the best of them but also beat up a room full of thugs when needed.
The titular jackpot is buried in the estate of Maanasthan (Anandaraj). Maanasthan likes to think of himself as a crime lord, but he's really just a big bully who employs a gang of dim-witted henchmen and lives in fear of his police inspector sister Maanasthi (also played by Anandaraj, and it's exactly as funny as it sounds, i.e. not very). Maanasthan has no idea that the pot even exists, let alone is buried on his estate, so he has no idea why these two crazy women keep messing with him.
And then there's Ragul (Vinu Krithik), a handsome young man who dreams of a career in the movies. One night Ragul insults the wrong soothsayer and is magically transformed intoa giant insectthe decidedly less handsome Yogi Babu. In his new form, Ragul has no identification and even his parents don't believe he is who he says he is, so after his own set of misadventures, he's left hungry and wandering the streets until he manages to stumble on to the main plot.
When discussing South Indian films, you'll sometimes come across the terms "mass" and "class." A class film is a movie with serious artistic intent, a movie which focuses on a specific topic and is often aimed at a specific audience. A mass film, on the other hand, focuses on entertainment, and will usually include over the top action scenes, broad comedy, catchy songs and big dance numbers. Mass heroes tend to be swaggering badasses who can back up their swagger with physics-defying stunts when needed. Jackpot is trying very hard to be a mass film.
The big difference is Jyotika. She's been in mass movies before (including one which is actually called Mass) but as the love interest, not as the hero. Here, she's the hero, and her job is to be awesome. She's awesome. It's not a subtle performance, but it is a very entertaining one.
Our misfits in chief are Akshaya (Jyotika) and Masha (Revathy), small time con artists who steal from the middle class and give to . . . themselves, mostly, but they both have the requisite heart of gold and will help the less fortunate when needed. They are an effective partnership, but Masha is clearly the quick-witted sidekick, while Akshaya is the swaggering hero who can con with the best of them but also beat up a room full of thugs when needed.
The titular jackpot is buried in the estate of Maanasthan (Anandaraj). Maanasthan likes to think of himself as a crime lord, but he's really just a big bully who employs a gang of dim-witted henchmen and lives in fear of his police inspector sister Maanasthi (also played by Anandaraj, and it's exactly as funny as it sounds, i.e. not very). Maanasthan has no idea that the pot even exists, let alone is buried on his estate, so he has no idea why these two crazy women keep messing with him.
And then there's Ragul (Vinu Krithik), a handsome young man who dreams of a career in the movies. One night Ragul insults the wrong soothsayer and is magically transformed into
When discussing South Indian films, you'll sometimes come across the terms "mass" and "class." A class film is a movie with serious artistic intent, a movie which focuses on a specific topic and is often aimed at a specific audience. A mass film, on the other hand, focuses on entertainment, and will usually include over the top action scenes, broad comedy, catchy songs and big dance numbers. Mass heroes tend to be swaggering badasses who can back up their swagger with physics-defying stunts when needed. Jackpot is trying very hard to be a mass film.
The big difference is Jyotika. She's been in mass movies before (including one which is actually called Mass) but as the love interest, not as the hero. Here, she's the hero, and her job is to be awesome. She's awesome. It's not a subtle performance, but it is a very entertaining one.
Saturday, April 18, 2020
Imagine suddenly discovering that Farida Jalal is your grandmother.
Saif Ali Khan is one of Bollywood's most talented and versatile actors . . . now. But before his complex and nuanced performances in movies like Omkara and Being Cyrus, Khan rose to prominence with a string of perfectly adequate performances in movies like Yeh Dillagi and Dil Tera Diwana. Like a lot of Bollywood actors of the era, Khan had a consistent persona; his characters tended to be charming ladies' men who are more than a little self-absorbed, at least until they are transformed by the love of a good woman. All of which brings me to Jawaani Jaaneman (2020), in which Khan plays a charming ladies' man who is more than a little self-absorbed, but this time, he's middle aged!
Khan plays Jaswinder "Jazz" Singh, a London real estate broker who is living his dream life: a few hours a day working with his long suffering brother Dimpy (Kumud Mishra) as they chase the deal of a lifetime, long nights in the night club owned by his friend Rocky (Chunky Pandey), and the occasional Sunday dinner with his parents. When his mother (Faida Jalal) asks him when he's going to settle down and start a family of his own, Jazz always insists that he's happy being free, and he seems to really mean it.
And then she walks into the night club, and into his life. She is Tia (the splendidly named Alaya Furniturewala), a bright, beautiful young woman from Amsterdam who is looking for the man who might be her father. After a bit of cajoling, Jazz agrees to a DNA test, and the pair discover that a) Jazz is indeed Tia's father, and b) Tia is pregnant, meaning that Jazz has gone from zero to grandpa in the space of a day. Before long, Tia has moved in to Jazz's bachelor pad, and a reluctant Jazz has started to discover that adulting isn't so bad after all.
And that's basically the movie. Oh, there are subplots, as Jazz pursues the aforementioned deal of a lifetime and nearly stumbles into a grown-up relationship with his hairdresser and sassy platonic gal pal Rhea (Kubbra Sait), and there are complications, most notably the arrival of Tia's hapless ex-boyfriend Rohan (Dante Alexander) and her aggressively laid-back hippie mother Ananya (Tabu), but at heart it's a very simple story about a charming but self-absorbed ladies' man who is transformed by the love of his long lost daughter. Saif Ali is playing basically the same character he used to play twenty five years ago, but now he's doing it with an extra quarter century's worth of acting skills, and it makes a difference. The entire cast is great, particularly Tabu, who combines New Age enlightenment with self-centered condescension, putting the aggressive in passive aggressiveness. Still, while Ananya is usually terrible in an entertaining fashion, she's also involved in the film's one sour note, propositioning a clearly reluctant Jazz in a scene which promptly cuts to black. It's played for laughs, but if the genders had been flipped I don't think anyone would have found it funny.
Apart from that bit of unpleasantness, Jawaani Jaaneman is a charming and sweet love story about a different kind of love. I recommend almost all of the movie.
Khan plays Jaswinder "Jazz" Singh, a London real estate broker who is living his dream life: a few hours a day working with his long suffering brother Dimpy (Kumud Mishra) as they chase the deal of a lifetime, long nights in the night club owned by his friend Rocky (Chunky Pandey), and the occasional Sunday dinner with his parents. When his mother (Faida Jalal) asks him when he's going to settle down and start a family of his own, Jazz always insists that he's happy being free, and he seems to really mean it.
And then she walks into the night club, and into his life. She is Tia (the splendidly named Alaya Furniturewala), a bright, beautiful young woman from Amsterdam who is looking for the man who might be her father. After a bit of cajoling, Jazz agrees to a DNA test, and the pair discover that a) Jazz is indeed Tia's father, and b) Tia is pregnant, meaning that Jazz has gone from zero to grandpa in the space of a day. Before long, Tia has moved in to Jazz's bachelor pad, and a reluctant Jazz has started to discover that adulting isn't so bad after all.
And that's basically the movie. Oh, there are subplots, as Jazz pursues the aforementioned deal of a lifetime and nearly stumbles into a grown-up relationship with his hairdresser and sassy platonic gal pal Rhea (Kubbra Sait), and there are complications, most notably the arrival of Tia's hapless ex-boyfriend Rohan (Dante Alexander) and her aggressively laid-back hippie mother Ananya (Tabu), but at heart it's a very simple story about a charming but self-absorbed ladies' man who is transformed by the love of his long lost daughter. Saif Ali is playing basically the same character he used to play twenty five years ago, but now he's doing it with an extra quarter century's worth of acting skills, and it makes a difference. The entire cast is great, particularly Tabu, who combines New Age enlightenment with self-centered condescension, putting the aggressive in passive aggressiveness. Still, while Ananya is usually terrible in an entertaining fashion, she's also involved in the film's one sour note, propositioning a clearly reluctant Jazz in a scene which promptly cuts to black. It's played for laughs, but if the genders had been flipped I don't think anyone would have found it funny.
Apart from that bit of unpleasantness, Jawaani Jaaneman is a charming and sweet love story about a different kind of love. I recommend almost all of the movie.
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Blame it on the wind
I have to give Pokkiri Raja (2016) credit for daring, if nothing else. Making a movie about yawning is risky, because yawns are famously contagious, and you really don't want the audience yawning their way through your action comedy.
Mild-mannered computer programmer Sanjeev (Jiiva) has a powerful and powerfully infectious yawn, capable of putting an entire office to sleep. Because of his terrible yawn, he loses his job and his girlfriend on the same day. Fortunately he gets a new job, thanks to his friend Mojo (Yogi Babu), and meets a new girl, Sunitha (Hansaki Motwani). Because of a series of ridiculous coincidences, Sanjeev is convinced that Sunitha is an alcoholic, but she's actually an enthusiastic social activist dedicated to literally cleaning up the streets, most notably by riding around the city on a water truck and spraying men who are urinating in public.
Ranjeev is eventually convinced to take a turn atop the water truck. Unfortunately, the first person he sprays is "Cooling Glass" Guna (Sibiraj), a vicious gangster who just finished murdering a woman. Guna is publicly humiliated and arrested, and he vows to track down the guy on the water truck and make him pay. Fortunately(?) by the time he gets out of jail, Sanjeev's yawn has evolved; it now produces a tremendous wind which shatters Guna's trademark sunglasses, blinding him. With Guna temporarily out of the way, Sanjeev has time to pursue a romance with Sunitha and explore the nature of his powers.
And once again I am making the movie sound more coherent than it actually is. There is a plot, and it more or less hangs together, but the plot is only there as a delivery vehicle for goofy fight scenes, dodgy special effects, and incredibly broad physical comedy. The film fully commits to its goofy premise, but that doesn't make it any less goofy, so the end result is a goofy movie.
Mild-mannered computer programmer Sanjeev (Jiiva) has a powerful and powerfully infectious yawn, capable of putting an entire office to sleep. Because of his terrible yawn, he loses his job and his girlfriend on the same day. Fortunately he gets a new job, thanks to his friend Mojo (Yogi Babu), and meets a new girl, Sunitha (Hansaki Motwani). Because of a series of ridiculous coincidences, Sanjeev is convinced that Sunitha is an alcoholic, but she's actually an enthusiastic social activist dedicated to literally cleaning up the streets, most notably by riding around the city on a water truck and spraying men who are urinating in public.
Ranjeev is eventually convinced to take a turn atop the water truck. Unfortunately, the first person he sprays is "Cooling Glass" Guna (Sibiraj), a vicious gangster who just finished murdering a woman. Guna is publicly humiliated and arrested, and he vows to track down the guy on the water truck and make him pay. Fortunately(?) by the time he gets out of jail, Sanjeev's yawn has evolved; it now produces a tremendous wind which shatters Guna's trademark sunglasses, blinding him. With Guna temporarily out of the way, Sanjeev has time to pursue a romance with Sunitha and explore the nature of his powers.
And once again I am making the movie sound more coherent than it actually is. There is a plot, and it more or less hangs together, but the plot is only there as a delivery vehicle for goofy fight scenes, dodgy special effects, and incredibly broad physical comedy. The film fully commits to its goofy premise, but that doesn't make it any less goofy, so the end result is a goofy movie.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
Villiputs & Vedhalam
Like the Baahubali films, Puli (2015) is a mytho-historical epic set in a fantastic version of India's past, in which a young man who was found in a river as a baby goes on a quest and discovers his true heritage. Puli is definitely not a Baahubali ripoff, though; leaving aside the fact that the movie came out only a few months after Baahubali: The Beginning, human culture is full of mystery babies pulled from rivers. The important thing is what happens next, and Puli definitely goes in its own direction.
Before we get to the baby, though, let's talk about the world. In this particular mythic age, much of India has been conquered by the vedhalam, a race of blue-eyed demons from far to the west. Rather than hang out in trees and ask kings questions about morality, though, these particular vedhalam do evil overlord stuff, terrifying villagers, demanding exorbitant taxes, and dragging the occasional unfortunate off to be sacrificed. The vedhalam are beautiful and terrible and too powerful for mortal men to fight, like a cross between rakshasa and Tolkien's elves, with superpowers lifted pretty directly from wuxia movies.
And then Vembunathan (Prqadhu) finds a baby in the river. Well, a baby and an egg. The baby grows up to be Marudheeran (Jospeh Vijay), who is naturally charming, fearless, and a skilled martial artist, while the egg hatches into Sooran (Karunas), a magical talking bird who isn't nearly as annoying as I feared. Marudheeran is determined to keep his village safe from the unstoppable demon-tyrants, even if that means he has to grovel to do it. He's also determined to win the heart of Pavazhamalli (Shruti Haasan), a childhood friend who has just returned to the village.
Marudheeran does manage to woo Pavazhamalli, and they are secretly married, but while he is away from the village attending to some family rituals, the vedhelam attack, murder Vembunathan, and kidnap Pavazhamalli. Because she was born under a full moon, she's a perfect human sacrifice, so Marudheen must rescue her from the fortress of the vedhalam queen Yavanna (Sridevi!) and her general Jalatharangan (Sudeep.) It's true that no human can stand up to the vedhalam, but the village priest happens to have been working on a magical potion which can give a human the strength and wire-fu powers of a vedhalam, but only for eight minutes.
Just as Baahubali draws heavily from the Mahabharata, Puli pulls from the Ramayana, with Asterix as Ram and a bird as Laxman. That's just the basic plot, though; Puli's influences are . . . eclectic. Rather than monkeys, Marudheeran befriends the villiputs, who are, as the name implies basically Lilliputians, and possibly also the brownies from Willow. The villiput princess Einstein (Vidyullekha Raman) joins him on the quest and they seek the counsel of the turtle from The Neverending Story. Marudheeran gets in a fight with a panther. He meets a cyclops. And it only gets stranger from there.
But while the worldbuilding is a glorious mess, the actual plot is a fairly straightforward quest narrative. The real fun comes from the performances. Sridevi in particular is delightful. She creates an evil queen who is one part Galadriel, one part Wicked Witch of the West, chewing the scenery with style and elegance, whether she's presiding over a sinister dinner party or running up the wall during a swordfight.
I suspect that Puli is actually a bad movie, but if so it's a bad movie that I really enjoyed.
Before we get to the baby, though, let's talk about the world. In this particular mythic age, much of India has been conquered by the vedhalam, a race of blue-eyed demons from far to the west. Rather than hang out in trees and ask kings questions about morality, though, these particular vedhalam do evil overlord stuff, terrifying villagers, demanding exorbitant taxes, and dragging the occasional unfortunate off to be sacrificed. The vedhalam are beautiful and terrible and too powerful for mortal men to fight, like a cross between rakshasa and Tolkien's elves, with superpowers lifted pretty directly from wuxia movies.
And then Vembunathan (Prqadhu) finds a baby in the river. Well, a baby and an egg. The baby grows up to be Marudheeran (Jospeh Vijay), who is naturally charming, fearless, and a skilled martial artist, while the egg hatches into Sooran (Karunas), a magical talking bird who isn't nearly as annoying as I feared. Marudheeran is determined to keep his village safe from the unstoppable demon-tyrants, even if that means he has to grovel to do it. He's also determined to win the heart of Pavazhamalli (Shruti Haasan), a childhood friend who has just returned to the village.
Marudheeran does manage to woo Pavazhamalli, and they are secretly married, but while he is away from the village attending to some family rituals, the vedhelam attack, murder Vembunathan, and kidnap Pavazhamalli. Because she was born under a full moon, she's a perfect human sacrifice, so Marudheen must rescue her from the fortress of the vedhalam queen Yavanna (Sridevi!) and her general Jalatharangan (Sudeep.) It's true that no human can stand up to the vedhalam, but the village priest happens to have been working on a magical potion which can give a human the strength and wire-fu powers of a vedhalam, but only for eight minutes.
Just as Baahubali draws heavily from the Mahabharata, Puli pulls from the Ramayana, with Asterix as Ram and a bird as Laxman. That's just the basic plot, though; Puli's influences are . . . eclectic. Rather than monkeys, Marudheeran befriends the villiputs, who are, as the name implies basically Lilliputians, and possibly also the brownies from Willow. The villiput princess Einstein (Vidyullekha Raman) joins him on the quest and they seek the counsel of the turtle from The Neverending Story. Marudheeran gets in a fight with a panther. He meets a cyclops. And it only gets stranger from there.
But while the worldbuilding is a glorious mess, the actual plot is a fairly straightforward quest narrative. The real fun comes from the performances. Sridevi in particular is delightful. She creates an evil queen who is one part Galadriel, one part Wicked Witch of the West, chewing the scenery with style and elegance, whether she's presiding over a sinister dinner party or running up the wall during a swordfight.
I suspect that Puli is actually a bad movie, but if so it's a bad movie that I really enjoyed.
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Family Bonds
I've seen a lot of Bollywood Bond pastiches over the years, but The Great Gambler (1979) is one of the more interesting ones, because it takes advantage of the shift in cultural context, mixing Bond-style international intrigue, cool gadgets, secret lairs and a sultry femmes fatale with Bollywood's focus on family, fidelity, and the heroism of the common man.
The common man in question is Jai (Amitabh Bachchan), a streetwise gambler. Jai may seem rough, but he comes equipped with the requisite heart of gold, and is devoted to his sister Madhu (Madhu Malhotra.) Jai's amazing gambling skills attract the attention of wealthy casino owner Ratan Das (Madan Puri), who hires him to fleece wealthy patrons in exchange for a share of the winnings.
Ratan Das presents the scheme as practically a joke, but what he doesn't tell Jai is that he's actually seeking to blackmail the losers and sell the material to an international spy ring, a spy ring which communicates through coded messages hidden in dance routines performed by Monica (Helen.) Though sometimes they just communicate by calling each other on the phone; these guys are dangerous but not especially competent at spying.
After a botched handover, the police get their hands on one of the film canisters, and Inspector Vijay (also Amitabh Bachchan) quickly tracks down Monica, but she's murdered by Sethi (Roopesh Kumar) before she can say anything. And then the plot kicks into high gear.
Saxena (Utpal Dutt), the spy ring's ringleader, sends Sethi to Rome, along with the secret atomic death ray plans Ratan Das managed to extract from a hapless debtor. The plan is for offensive Italian stereotype Marconi (Sujit Kumar) to kill Sethi, but Marconi is perhaps the biggest idiot in the gang and fails miserably. An angry Sethi contacts Indian intelligence and offers to sell the plans back to them, so Vijay is sent to Venice to make the deal. However, Saxena's gang find out and they send Monica's replacement, Shabnam (Zeenat Aman) to waylay Vijay.
Meanwhile, Ratan Das has a new scheme; his old and very wealthy friend Deepchand (Iftekhar) has a daughter, Mala (Neetu Singh), and wants her to marry Ratan Das's son. Ratan Das has no son, however, so he sends Jai to marry the girl in order to get his hands on Deepchand's considerable fortune. Deepchand and Mala live in Lisbon, so both Vijay and Jai have flights to Europe, and that means that Shabnam actually waylays Jai, while Mala meets Vijay at the airport.
There is a lot of plot in this movie, but there's no time to get confused, because something is happening all the time. Sometimes it's a car chase through the streets of Rome, sometimes it's a romantic evening in Cairo, but there is always something, and it's always dripping with Seventies cool.
The Great Gambler's biggest departure from the Hollywood spy films that inspired it is in the character of the protagonists. Jai cleans up well, but he's always a street kid at heart, a lovable scamp who follows his own code rather than a cool and collected agent. Vijay is a cool and collected agent, but he is also a model of proper behavior; he doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and absolutely refuses to take advantage of Mala when given the opportunity.
I don't think I've ever seen a Bollywood Bond homage put so much effort in balancing spy action with personal drama, but The Great Gambler does it with style. It still needs more Helen, though.
The common man in question is Jai (Amitabh Bachchan), a streetwise gambler. Jai may seem rough, but he comes equipped with the requisite heart of gold, and is devoted to his sister Madhu (Madhu Malhotra.) Jai's amazing gambling skills attract the attention of wealthy casino owner Ratan Das (Madan Puri), who hires him to fleece wealthy patrons in exchange for a share of the winnings.
Ratan Das presents the scheme as practically a joke, but what he doesn't tell Jai is that he's actually seeking to blackmail the losers and sell the material to an international spy ring, a spy ring which communicates through coded messages hidden in dance routines performed by Monica (Helen.) Though sometimes they just communicate by calling each other on the phone; these guys are dangerous but not especially competent at spying.
After a botched handover, the police get their hands on one of the film canisters, and Inspector Vijay (also Amitabh Bachchan) quickly tracks down Monica, but she's murdered by Sethi (Roopesh Kumar) before she can say anything. And then the plot kicks into high gear.
Saxena (Utpal Dutt), the spy ring's ringleader, sends Sethi to Rome, along with the secret atomic death ray plans Ratan Das managed to extract from a hapless debtor. The plan is for offensive Italian stereotype Marconi (Sujit Kumar) to kill Sethi, but Marconi is perhaps the biggest idiot in the gang and fails miserably. An angry Sethi contacts Indian intelligence and offers to sell the plans back to them, so Vijay is sent to Venice to make the deal. However, Saxena's gang find out and they send Monica's replacement, Shabnam (Zeenat Aman) to waylay Vijay.
Meanwhile, Ratan Das has a new scheme; his old and very wealthy friend Deepchand (Iftekhar) has a daughter, Mala (Neetu Singh), and wants her to marry Ratan Das's son. Ratan Das has no son, however, so he sends Jai to marry the girl in order to get his hands on Deepchand's considerable fortune. Deepchand and Mala live in Lisbon, so both Vijay and Jai have flights to Europe, and that means that Shabnam actually waylays Jai, while Mala meets Vijay at the airport.
There is a lot of plot in this movie, but there's no time to get confused, because something is happening all the time. Sometimes it's a car chase through the streets of Rome, sometimes it's a romantic evening in Cairo, but there is always something, and it's always dripping with Seventies cool.
The Great Gambler's biggest departure from the Hollywood spy films that inspired it is in the character of the protagonists. Jai cleans up well, but he's always a street kid at heart, a lovable scamp who follows his own code rather than a cool and collected agent. Vijay is a cool and collected agent, but he is also a model of proper behavior; he doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and absolutely refuses to take advantage of Mala when given the opportunity.
I don't think I've ever seen a Bollywood Bond homage put so much effort in balancing spy action with personal drama, but The Great Gambler does it with style. It still needs more Helen, though.
Saturday, March 21, 2020
He's just not that into you, Princess.
Suryavanshi (1992) isn't just a completely ridiculous action-horror movie. There's plenty of ridiculous action and a fair amount of ridiculous horror, but this is also a movie with a very clear message. Naturally, that message is also completely ridiculous.
Archeologist DD (Ajit Vachani) is eager to explore the ruined kingdom of Sangramgadh. Before that can happen, though, he's looking forward to a visit from his dear friend JB (Saeed Jaffrey), a wealthy businessman now living in America. The reunion goes so well that JB suggests marrying his son Vicky (Salman Khan) to DD's daughter Sonia (Sheeba.) Sonia is thrilled, but Vicky is a cool modern dude and aspiring daredevil who doesn't want to be tied down. Sonia offers to refuse the match, but Vicky believes that it's his problem and he should solve it. Sonia warns him that he needs to refuse the match before their fathers announce it, because once it's public they couldn't possibly subject the family to the shame of a broken union. Thanks to some early spookiness, though, he bungles the refusal, the relationship is announced, and the wedding takes place. Sonia assures Vicky that it's a marriage for their parents' sake, she doesn't expect anything from Vicky, and they can secretly remain just good friends.
Now that the loveless marriage has been performed, there's archeology to be done! DD sends for a local baba (Kader Khan), who delivers the first half of the exposition: Sangamgadh was once a happy and prosperous kingdom, until it fell under the rule of the wicked princess Suryalekha (Amrita Singh.) The people rose up to overthrow her, but her ghost still haunts the palace, and the land has been cursed ever since. The baba explains that he has come face to face with the ghost herself, and she will not rest until someone brings her a Suryavanshi (a member of a mythical royal dynasty; the Suryavanshis are an important part of the superhero TV serial Shaktimaan.) And having delivered the appropriate exposition, the baba dies under mysterious circumstances.
Dire warnings and mysterious deaths are not enough to stop archeology, though, so the entire cast packs up and heads to the ruins, despite the fact that most of them have no qualifications whatsoever. After more spookiness, they discover a book written by the kingdom's vizier (Shakti Kapoor) which reveals the other half of the exposition. Princess Suryalekha owned a secret gladiatorial arena, complete with leopards and a terrifying cannibal in half a gorilla suit, which she used to dispatch the suitors her mother (Sushma Seth) arranged for her. And then one day the Suyavanshi Vikram Singh (Salman Khan again, this time wearing a ridiculous blond wig and an outfit that makes him look like a knock-off He-Man working in a seedy strip club) arrived and killed all the gladiators and cannibals (but not the leopards), thereby winning her heart. After the wedding night, though, Vikram leaves, telling the princess that it was all a trick to punish her for the murder of his friend, one of her former suitors. Then comes murder, suicide, curses, and the angry ghost.
While the angry princess is very clearly a ghost, this is really a mummy movie, with hapless archeologists accidentally releasing the undead monarch of a fallen kingdom, freeing her to seek out the reincarnation of her lost love. The only thing standing in her way is Sonia, and that's where the film's message comes in. Over the course of the movie, Sonia is repeatedly described as the ideal Indian wife because she is willing to sacrifice everything for her husband, and doesn't expect anything in return, not even his affection. The final confrontation makes it clear that Suryalekha's great sin is trying to make Vikram love her back, rather than all the people she's killed over the years. And no. I have very sturdy disbelief suspenders, and I can happily accept the goofy action scenes and dodgy special effects and the oil painting that has survived for thousands of years and even Salman's terrible wig, but I cannot accept a relationship in which one partner gives up everything and the other gives up nothing as healthy, let alone as the ideal. It is the silliest thing about a very silly movie.
Archeologist DD (Ajit Vachani) is eager to explore the ruined kingdom of Sangramgadh. Before that can happen, though, he's looking forward to a visit from his dear friend JB (Saeed Jaffrey), a wealthy businessman now living in America. The reunion goes so well that JB suggests marrying his son Vicky (Salman Khan) to DD's daughter Sonia (Sheeba.) Sonia is thrilled, but Vicky is a cool modern dude and aspiring daredevil who doesn't want to be tied down. Sonia offers to refuse the match, but Vicky believes that it's his problem and he should solve it. Sonia warns him that he needs to refuse the match before their fathers announce it, because once it's public they couldn't possibly subject the family to the shame of a broken union. Thanks to some early spookiness, though, he bungles the refusal, the relationship is announced, and the wedding takes place. Sonia assures Vicky that it's a marriage for their parents' sake, she doesn't expect anything from Vicky, and they can secretly remain just good friends.
Now that the loveless marriage has been performed, there's archeology to be done! DD sends for a local baba (Kader Khan), who delivers the first half of the exposition: Sangamgadh was once a happy and prosperous kingdom, until it fell under the rule of the wicked princess Suryalekha (Amrita Singh.) The people rose up to overthrow her, but her ghost still haunts the palace, and the land has been cursed ever since. The baba explains that he has come face to face with the ghost herself, and she will not rest until someone brings her a Suryavanshi (a member of a mythical royal dynasty; the Suryavanshis are an important part of the superhero TV serial Shaktimaan.) And having delivered the appropriate exposition, the baba dies under mysterious circumstances.
Dire warnings and mysterious deaths are not enough to stop archeology, though, so the entire cast packs up and heads to the ruins, despite the fact that most of them have no qualifications whatsoever. After more spookiness, they discover a book written by the kingdom's vizier (Shakti Kapoor) which reveals the other half of the exposition. Princess Suryalekha owned a secret gladiatorial arena, complete with leopards and a terrifying cannibal in half a gorilla suit, which she used to dispatch the suitors her mother (Sushma Seth) arranged for her. And then one day the Suyavanshi Vikram Singh (Salman Khan again, this time wearing a ridiculous blond wig and an outfit that makes him look like a knock-off He-Man working in a seedy strip club) arrived and killed all the gladiators and cannibals (but not the leopards), thereby winning her heart. After the wedding night, though, Vikram leaves, telling the princess that it was all a trick to punish her for the murder of his friend, one of her former suitors. Then comes murder, suicide, curses, and the angry ghost.
While the angry princess is very clearly a ghost, this is really a mummy movie, with hapless archeologists accidentally releasing the undead monarch of a fallen kingdom, freeing her to seek out the reincarnation of her lost love. The only thing standing in her way is Sonia, and that's where the film's message comes in. Over the course of the movie, Sonia is repeatedly described as the ideal Indian wife because she is willing to sacrifice everything for her husband, and doesn't expect anything in return, not even his affection. The final confrontation makes it clear that Suryalekha's great sin is trying to make Vikram love her back, rather than all the people she's killed over the years. And no. I have very sturdy disbelief suspenders, and I can happily accept the goofy action scenes and dodgy special effects and the oil painting that has survived for thousands of years and even Salman's terrible wig, but I cannot accept a relationship in which one partner gives up everything and the other gives up nothing as healthy, let alone as the ideal. It is the silliest thing about a very silly movie.
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