Random DVD Round-Up 4 - TASHAN / STYLE

TASHAN means "style" in Hindi, and that's a perfect description of this slick, flashy, wannabe Tarantino movie from director Vijay Krishna Acharya - the guy who wrote the similarly slick but vacuous DHOOM flicks. As in the DHOOM movies, his prime concerns are hot chicks, cool criminals and convoluted heists. But where DHOOM had careful plotting and fitted firmly in the action genre, TASHAN is balls-out ridiculous. The lurid colours, absurd characters, anarchic and absurd plot all make for a movie that is more an experience than a convincing narrative. Acharya may be aiming for Tarantino but he lands firmly in kitsch.

The plot, such as it is, focuses on a narcissistic ladies man called Jimmy Cliff, played by a smarmy Saif Ali Khan sporting the campest handle bar moustache seen in cinema. He's lured by a hot chick called Pooja (Kareena Kapoor) to teach English to her social aspirant mob boss Bhaiyyaji (Anil Kapoor in superb scene-chewing form.) Pooja and Jimmy get it on, and decide to rob Bhaiyyaji, after which the movie basically descends into a road movie as Bhaiyyaji sends Bachchan Pandey (Akshay Kumar) to retrieve his phat cash. The rest of the movie unfolds in a series of lurid song and dance numbers, declarations of love, betrayal and general chaos. Akshay Kumar comes off best - playing his typical louder than life, working class miscreant with a heart of gold character. The other actors all seem to be having a good time. My mind started to wander after the first hour.

TASHAN was released in April 2008.

RACE - the superficial

RACE is a fantastically superficial, depressing and boring Bollywood action thriller. The film is characterised by hyper-glossy women; self-conscious slo-mo action shots; an ear-threateningly loud score; and a penchant to shoot all the stars as if they were in rap videos.

The brothers Burmwalla are best loved for their hit movie CHORI CHORI CHUPKE CHUPKE but have significantly amped up the stunts and the sex scenes since then. In this film they concoct a ludicrous tale about two feuding brothers who are both the subject of $100m life insurance policies. The brothers and their accomplicies scheme and plot to kill, defraud, bribe and triumph. They are aided by two hot chicks, and held up by a comedy double-act of coppers. The plot has so many implausible plot twists that the audience is long past caring well before the end. Still, giving credit where it's due, unlike some convoluted thrillers, the Burmwalla brothers do manage to tie up every loose end.

As we go from plot twist to plot twist we're kept busy by fast-paced, western-influenced dance numbers; some action scenes and a bit of light relief. The dance numbers are universally poor, both in terms of the songs and the choreography. Fans of Bipasha Basu will find no hit song to match "Beedi" here. And Katrina Kaif as the second hot chick is, as always, wooden and lacking in true dance ability. The action scenes are ambitious by Bollywood standards but car chases have been done better in movies like DHOOM. And overall, KRRISH had a more high-quality tech-package than RACE. Which brings us to the light relief. Johnny Lever - veteran comic actor of Indian cinema - is outstanding in his five-minute cameo. And Anil Kapoor is decent as the Columbo style cop. I even liked Sameera Reddy as his idiot side-kick.

Still, I can't help but thinking that RACE is a step back for Hindi cinema. All style but no substance and the abasement of actors better known for art-house work. In particular it's a shame to see Saif Ali Khan, who was so outstanding as the Iago character in the brilliant OMKARA, posing like a rapper. It's a shame to see Bipasha Basu, who also made a breakthrough as a serious actress in CORPORATE, take a step back to steamy love-scenes and being just a "body".

RACE is on release in India and the UAE.

TA RA RUM PUM - a movie as vacuous as its title

TA RA RUM PUM is an absurd title for this slick, polished Bollywood movie that is as vacuous as the MTV videos it emulates. Saif Ali Khan descends from OMKARA and BEING CYRUS to reprise his role as Bollywood romantic hero opposite Rani Mukherji. The first hour of the film sees Saif's character - a racing driver - woo and win Rani's music student against her rich father's wishes. Flash forward and they are a happily married couple with two jarringly cute kids. He's the best racer in the US until an accident puts him out of commission for a year and the debt collectors move in. Will the perfect family triumph over poverty? Will he over-come his traumatic memories and beat his comedically named teutonic rival, Rusty Finkelstein? Given the genre, there's no doubt!

As one would expect from a Yash Raj production, TA RA RUM PUM cannot be faulted on its production quality. Director Siddharth Anand (SALAAM NAMASTE) and DP Binod Pradhan (DEVDAS) handle the racing scenes well. For superficial, slick entertainment, Bollywood almost trumps Hollywood now. But it lacks the obvious hit songs of, say, BUNTY AUR BABLI; the humour of MUNNABHAI; or the touch of reality that graced HUM TUM. Definitely one to avoid.

TA RA RUM PUM is on release in the US, UK and India.

OMKARA - stunning Indian Othello

OMKARA is a stunning new version of Othello. It is set in a rural outpost of contemporary India where elections are determined by political hooligans - bribes, assassinations and threats. In this world of inverted morality, Omi (Othello) is a powerful man, second only to Bhaisaab (Brabanzio). These men wield so much power that Bhaisaab can have a public train stopped and run back to the station it has long since left because Omi needs to get off and perform a task. However, in a move as improbable as the Shakespeare play, Omi - the low-born, half-caste, thug, habitually dressed in black - attracts a young, innocent, well-born girl called Dolly (Desdemona). She leaves her family to live with Omi even before they are married much to eveyone's shock, not least Omi. Even his sister Indu (Emilia) laughs at his good fortune. Indu is married to Omi's second-in-command, the scheming bastard, Langda Tyagi. At least, Tyagi thinks he's second-in-comand until Omi complacently hands this role to the dashing womaniser Kesu (Cassio.) Kesu will deliver more rigged votes, and Omi foolishly believes that Tyagi will "understand". So begins the Shakespearian tragedy. The morally bankrupt Tyagi sets out to put Omi in a murderous, jealous rage - using his unwitting wife Indu to frame Dolly for sleeping with Kesu.

The movie is co-adapted, scored and directed by Vishal Bharadwaj and he deserves much praise. He has created a movie of rare intelligence and beauty. The camerawork is fluid without calling attention to itself. The production design is stunning - India is all rugged hills, dust, dirt and cell-phones. The music makes good use of Sukhvinder Singh's unique voice. Admittedly, I do not think the two "item numbers" featuring Bipasha Basu as the lewd dancer in a road-side inn can compare to last year's hit from BUNTY AUR BABLI, Kajra Re. However, the love song O Saathi Re is absolutely beautiful. I loved the script with its fiercely crude language and occasional flashes of dark humour. And most of all, I loved the acting performances. All these actors have form - appearing in small budget art movies alongside the bigger budget Bollywood hits. Ajay Devgan (Omi) was remarkable in RAINCOAT. Kareena Kapoor (Dolly) showed her range in CHAMELI. Saif Ali Khan (Tyagi) and Naseerudin Shah were hysterical in BEING CYRUS. Finally, Konkona Sen Sharma showed her class in last year's PAGE THREE.

I have a couple of quibbles with the precise details of the adaptation of the ending, for which read on underneath the release date stuff. Other than that, if you have two and a half hours to spare and fancy a thorough work-out of heart and mind, you should check OMKARA out.

OMKARA is currently on cinematic release in the UK, US and India.

Spoiler alert.....

Okay, so there are two major departures from the source material. The first is that the Othello figure doesn't start off as a great and noble general with stories of the wars with which to dazzle Desdemona. He's a crook. This makes the already improbable love even more improbable. It also means the tragedy is not your classical fall from grace kind. I mean, Omi is no scumbag. He always intended to marry Dolly not just to have his way with her. But he is no Great Man fallen. I suppose his tragedy is that he only becomes noble after murdering his love: in leaving Tyagi alive. My other niggle is that while I loved that the female characters are a lot more feisty in Omkara than in Othello, why does Indu have to kill Tyagi? It makes the ending of the movie rather neater than the play, which to my mind contradicts the gray-scale morality of the piece. This should not be about apportioning blame neatly. In the Shakespeare, Iago stabs Emilia and then absconds, to be caught and brought back in by the Law. Othello has a swipe at him, but Iago is left to face the courts, vowing never to speak again. I rather liked that. The innocent is dead, the murdering husband a suicide, but evil exists still.

BEING CYRUS - truly funny, very bizarre, Bollywood thriller

So, this movie came out of left-field. BEING CYRUS is a fantastic new movie made largely by members of the Hindi film industry. It combines hysterically, typically Indian humour with Western production values and has a style all of its own. There are no dancing girls, "item numbers", or hackeneyed star-crossed lovers storylines. We also do not have that particularly sickening aspirational unreal depiction of ex-pat life that so many Bollywood multiplex films contain. (I am thinking here of HUM TUM, KAL HO NAA HO etc.) Instead we have an odd-ball thriller. Yes, yes, here we have that rare thing: a Hindi movie that has us crying with laughter, but also requires some intelligence to figure out the plot, and is all wrapped up within 90 minutes!

Cyrus Mistry is a young man who, together with his sister, had a miserable childhood as an abused orphan. In adult life he becomes an apprentice to a sometime celebrated, but now pothead recluse sculptor, named Dinshaw Sethna. This crumpled romantic is married to a fading and frustrated beauty called Katy, who dreams of quitting their "bhoot bangla" ramshackle country villa in Panchgani and returning to life in Bombay. Katy sends Cyrus on a mission to Bombay to sweet-talk Dinshaw's rich but ill-treated father, Fardounji Sethna, at which point he also comes into contact with Dinshaw's fat, capitalist brother Farouk and his young bride, Tina, not to mention, through twists and turns of the plot equally absurd and hillarious, Police Inspector Lovely.

The film has an outrageously funny script penned by first time writer-director Homi Adajania. I usually hate voice-overs but Cyrus' narrative is sharp, witty and memorable, and much praise must be given to Saif Ali Khan, up till now a conventional Bollywood heart-throb, for pulling off such a role. In addition, the supporting cast is superb. We have Naseerudin Shah - a class act - playing Dinshaw with such subtlety. With a flick of his eyes in an interrogation room he can reduce us to hysterics. Dimple Kapadia sends herself up as Katy, Honey Chayya is wonderful as Papa Fardounji, and best of all, we have the Peter Sellers of Indian cinema, Boman Irani, as the explosively bad-tempered Farouk.

But this is not just a funny, well-plotted movie. The depiction of Indian life is also spot on - from the people sleeping on park benches or on the road side in practically every frame; the road-side arguments between residents in the apartment building; to the way in which as you sit down in the cafe you immediately get served a cup of warm chai. Small details, but rarely seen in the glammed up dream-world of Bollywood movies. The director also uses the camera with imagination and fluidity to great comedic and dramatic effect - everything from bizarre Lynch -like dream sequences to dog POV shots. Finally, the film is greatly enhanced by Brit, Jon Harris, and has a faint air of the comedy freeze-frame stuff we saw in SNATCH.

What it all boils down to is that you should not dismiss BEING CYRUS because it is a Bollywood movie. The best way to think of it is as an English-language black comedy/thriller that is set in India. TRANSAMERICA may be more worthy, but I'd be hard pushed to recommend anything funnier on UK screens this weekend.

BEING CYRUS opened in India, Dubai and the UK on March 24th 2006.