Cheeni kum, conviction zyada

I saw 'Cheeni Kum' last night. It is a brilliantly crafted movie.

The casting is perfect. The acting outstanding. The dialogue witty. Just about everything in the film screams "This has not been attempted before in Bollywood". And the amazing thing is, it works.

Except maybe the last bit, where the precocious kid got irritating and Amitabh went berserk at the Ashoka pillar.It kind of spoils the overall understated effect of the film.

I won't attempt a review because it would just be a repeat of what my friend Apu has already said here.

Cinematic excellence apart, I found the character played by Tabu to be most refreshing.

Witness this scene, when her father goes on a 'satyagraha', hoping his 34 year old daughter will call off her plan to marry the 64 year old Amitabh.

"Papa, kuch kha lijiye.."

"Kya tu us buddhe ko chhod degi?"

"Nahin.."

"To phir main kuch nahin khaoonga".

"Jaisi aapki marzi", she says calmly and walks out of the room.

A hunger strike may be a bit extreme. But these kind of power struggles are commonly enacted in our homes and especially at this time of the year, when students make choices related to careers.

What Neena Varma shows you is that if you know what you want and are determined to have it, no one can 'force' you into a different direction. Yes, marrying a guy 30 years older than you is not common. But agar meri khushi isi main hai and I am prepared to bear the consequences, then so be it.

"I love you, you're my dad, but finally it's my life!"

The trouble is few of us stand up for ourselves because we are unsure. We hesitate. We vacillate. We bow down. And then tell others, "Yaar... mere parents yahi chahte the."

The moral of the story is: if you stand firm for what you believe in, the world will come around to accept it. Let your passion burn bright - be it for a person, profession or philosophy of life. Fuel it with conviction. Only a candle in the wind is snuffed out by the slightest drizzle of disapproval.

If there is fire in your belly, it will burn on!

Shootout at Lokhandwala

I saw 'Shootout at Lokhandwala' last night. Although technically I didn't 'see' a lot of it. There was so much blood and gore, I had to keep covering my eyes.

You might think, gosh, how many films are they going to make on Police vs Bombay Underworld. Yet, each has its own distinct character and style. So while 'Shootout' covers much the same ground you can't call it boring.

The violence in 'Shootout' put me off but I think it is integral to the film. The whole point was to convey the fact that for gangsters like Maya and Buwa killing was a cool sport. They didn't even operate under the 'code of honour' (if you can call it that!) of the D company. So what if Builder X is paying bhai, hamara man kiya to hum usse bhi paise lenge.

Of course 'Shootout' is extremely filmi compared to the docu-reality style of a 'Black Friday'. But Black Friday was based on a book, about an event whose memory is seared in the public consciousness.

'Shootout', on the other hand is based on an incident which caused a sensation in its time but which has been forgotten by all except perhaps the residents of Swati building, where the siege took place. Hence the director and writer have taken liberties with the truth.

The film does higlight a couple of points:
# In the closing credits, there is a line which says during the period the Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) was active, crime in Mumbai went down 70%. Yet the ATS was disbanded shortly before the 1993 serial blasts.

The reason, perhaps, was the recklessness with which the ATS had begun to operate. The shootout in a residential building being a case in point.

While I do agree that the police had no option but 'eent ka jawaab eent, paththar ka paththar' in the long run the encounter route is not sustainable. It makes a jaanwar out of the police and in the hands of those who aren't exactly ethical, it makes the officer a pawn.

Even in this shootout, it is hinted that Dawood tipped off the police about Maya & co's location. The idea being to eliminate a thorn in his side.

# It's not clear why ATS ie anti TERRORIST squad was running after the underworld. Maya and co were causing terror but only to extract money which they could lavish on bargirls. Not to run covert operations against the country!

# The ATS killing off some Sikh militants in the beginning of the film is a chilling reminder of how - just 15 years ago - we had a different kind of terrorist problem. Luckily, that's been tackled but you never can tell from where and how passions will be inflamed . It could be for a homeland, for a quota, or even just 'mere feelings hurt ho gaya hain'.

So, should you watch the film? Probably not. Unless you like 'blood ki Holi' type cinema. The acting has been soundly criticised - especially Tusshar Kapoor in the role of a 'ruthless killer'.