Ant-Man, Review: Up the ANTe

When a comic-book super-hero film engages you on two fronts, exhilarating effects and hearty humour, the audience is in for a good time. It is debatable whether going the whole hog on either front, at the cost of the other, would have served the plot better, but Ant-Man has turned out to be refreshing and innovative viewing.

In 1989, scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) resigns from S.H.I.E.L.D., after discovering that the organisation tried to send him off to Russia in order to attempt replicating his Ant-Man shrinking technology in his absence. (Keep wondering how Michael Douglas is made to look 25 years younger, in this flashback, convincingly). Believing the technology is too dangerous to be marketed, Pym vows to hide it as long as he lives. In the present day, Pym's estranged daughter, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), and former protégé, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), have forced him out of his own company by voting him out of the board. Cross begins perfecting a weapon-laden shrinking suit of his own, the Yellowjacket, which horrifies Pym, and he wonders how to counter this development. (Don’t ask why the megalomaniac Cross lets Pym go his own way, and does not eliminate him, convinced that he is harmless)!

Upon his release from prison, well-meaning thief Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a Masters degree-holder in Electronic Engineering, moves in with his old cell-mate, Luis (Michael Peña). Lang's ex-wife, Maggie (Judy Greer)—who has moved in with her fiancé, policeman Paxton (Bobby Cannavale)—agrees to let Lang see his daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson) if he provides child support. Unable to hold a job due to his criminal record, Lang agrees to join Luis' gang and commit a burglary. Lang breaks into a house and cracks its safe, but only finds what he believes to be an old motorcycle suit, which he takes home. After trying the suit on, Lang accidentally shrinks himself to the size of an insect. Terrified by the experience, he returns the suit to the house, but is arrested on the way out. (Don’t ask why there have to be two buttons, one on each side, to switch on the process)!

Pym, the home-owner, visits Lang in jail, pretending to be his lawyer, and smuggles the suit into his cell, to help him break out as an ant. All this is part of Pym’s plan to abort Cross’s greedy designs and destroy the very facility he set-up himself, which is now being used by Cross to sell the technology to a rogue military outfit, Hydra. Pym and Hope convince Lang to become Ant-Man, and his first assignment is to break into a facility that stores a dangerous chemical. To their utter horror, Pym and Lang find out too late that this facility is guarded by Falcon, aka Sam Wilson, part of The Avengers.

It has taken nine years for the project to crawl on to the screen. Originally, Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) had pitched to direct and co-write, with Joe Cornish. In May 2014, Wright left the project over creative differences, though he still receives screenplay and story credits, with Cornish. Peyton Reed stepped in as director, while Adam McKay was hired to contribute to the script, along with Paul Rudd himself. Add the three comic creators (the ubiquitous Marvel team of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Larry Lieber) and you have a massive nine names in the writing department. Yet, one gets the instinctive feeling that the strong doses of humour might be the handiwork of Reed and Rudd.

Comic books can turn any animal, bird, aquatic being or worm into a lovable, cute huggable toy. Ant-Man stops short of doing that, concentrating instead on the utilitarian qualities of the insect/bug, highlighting team-work and commitment as qualities that are tapped. Thus, you have ants serving and helicopters, forming bridges and generating electricity, among other utilitarian functions. They never made into characters or given dubbed voices, which is what makes them acceptable as they are.

Peyton Reed (Down with Love, Bring It On, Yes Man) takes a few bold steps and ups the ante, eschewing stereo-type taking common to the genre of super-heroes, including insider jokes and situational and self-deprecating humour, as against contrived or slap-stick humour. The sugar cubes scene is a good example. In one scene, where Hope asks her father why does he not allow her to don the ant-suit, Lang quips, “Because I am expendable, you are not.” (Hope’s mother had died in the line of duty, and Pym does want to lose his daughter too). Only a handful of peple die in the film, and there is never any threat of to the existence of the world or the universe. Reed does not, however, step outside the milieu or the ambience, of the premise and the genre, even for a second. Take the stock posture of the lead actor, on his haunches, one hand on the ground, in a landing pose. Do you remember any other way a comic-book super-hero is 'posturised'? And can we blame the suits alone for the similarity to Spiderman? Spiderman oozes glue, but wonder what helps Ant-Man retain balance atop the massive (by his shrunk standard) helicopter ants, in 'high-speed' flights. 

In one extended scene near the climax, Thomas, The Tank Engine is seen shifting his eyes left to right time and again, but it never really gets into the action. Reed says this was because the use of Thomas in the film was allowed by its copyright holders subject to a pre-condition—that Thomas, a child icon, would not be shown harming anybody. It does, however, raise a few genuine smiles.

Clueless, Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Admission star, Paul Rudd lost a lot of weight for the part, as required. While not in the ant-suit, he delivers some dead-pan one-liners, which he probably wrote himself, and makes a loving Dad. Recently seen in Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, Behind the Candelabra, and Last Vegas, 71 year-old Michael Douglas survived an episode of STD-caused stage four oral cancer, which has not affected his trade-mark, sharp, monotone accent. He is unduly poker-faced, considering what Pym is going through in the film. 36 year-old Canadian actress

Evangeline Lilly (who has come a long way since being seen in The Long Weekend as the Dead Body, with recent films like The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug) has to don the most done-to-death wig. Acting-wise, she is unable to express the requisite layers of emotions very convincingly. Never mind! A little Wasp tells me that all is set to bring her in as super-heroine, in the inevitable sequel(s). Judy Greer manages to convince us of her ambivalent attitude, being engaged to a police officer and estranged from a burglar who loves their daughter madly.

Corey Stoll (Midnight in Paris, Glass Chin; cast by Wright in this film) cannot escape comparison to bald, cult villain of a bygone era, Telly Savalas (Ernst Stavro Blofeld, in the Bond caper, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service).  Exhibiting disarming candour, he admits, “I’m big and bald and deep-voiced and all that sh...”), who left the project in May 2014 and was replaced by Peyton Reed, after disputes with Marvel. It was a paradigm shift for the highly talented Bobby Cannavale in following up Danny Collins with Spy. He manages to pull-off the good cop act with some conviction here. Yet, one cannot help feel he is falling into the type-casting trap. David Dastmalchian and Michael Peña play Kurt and Luis, the latter commanding attention with some good lines and smart moves. Abby Ryder Fortson makes as a cute a ‘Dad-missing’ kid as any. Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker, Notorious, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Fifth Estate) as Falcon, what else?, puts up a brave fight against the thieving Ant-Man, and steals the scene in the process.

Please leave the theatre only after the last frame is projected, at the very end of the never-ending credit tiles, even if you have ants in your pants.

Wait a minute! Did I just read the name Adam and the Ants (British band active during 1977-82) in the soundtrack credits? Now, should I be surprised or should I just chuckle? 

Rating: ***1/2

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdKf3MneyI

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#According to National Geographic, “More than 10,000 known ant species occur around the world. Carpenter ants nest in wood and can be destructive to buildings. Army ants defy the norm and do not have permanent homes, instead, seek out food for their enormous colonies during periods of migration. Ant communities are headed by a queen or queens, whose function in life is to lay thousands of eggs that will ensure the survival of the colony. Workers (the ants typically seen by humans) are wingless females that never reproduce, but instead forage for food, care for the queen's offspring, work on the nest, protect the community, and perform many other duties. Ants communicate and co-operate by using chemicals that can alert others to danger or lead them to a promising food source. One Amazon species co-operatively builds extensive traps from plant fibre. These traps have many holes and, when an insect steps on one, hundreds of ants inside use the openings to seize it with their jaws. Another species, the yellow crazy ant (Yellowjacket?), is capable of forming so-called super-colonies that house multiple queens.”

#Descriptions of various ant species are offered in the film too, though it is hardly likely that anybody will remember the rapid-fire profiling. In India, we have been exposed to many of these traits, the worst being the ant-bite, probably the most painful among the three common bites one might experience--mosquitoes and bed-bugs being the other two.

Two popular Urdu/Hindi proverbs related to ants, commonly used in films, are:

‘Choontee key bhee par nikal aaye!’ (This ant has grown wings!, suggesting that a weakling has suddenly decided to take on a stronger adversary)

‘Choontee kee tarah masal doonga!’ (I will crush you like an ant!, used mainly in films, by villains, to intimidate heroes).

Of course, the literary level of the dialogue in current films beng largely colloquial and slang dominated, such metaphors are considered clichés, and passé.

Southpaw, Review: Loses on points

South is to left what north is to right, and paw stands for hand, in boxing parlance. So, a ‘southpaw’ is a boxer who takes a right side on stance, but leverages his left-hand to telling effect. In other sports, southpaw is often used to describe a person who is left-handed, as a left-handed batsman in the game of cricket. Southpaw, the film, derives its title from this terminology. In the film, the protagonist makes very little use of his left, and there is very little in the film that is right. 

In the Hindi, cult, super-hit, crime film Johnny Mera Naam, the hero and his brother, who love sparring with each other, are separated at a very young age, and grow up to serve on opposite sides of the law. Decades later, when they face-off and get into fisticuffs, one roars, “Here comes the left”, while the other launches, “Here comes the right.” These catch phrases jog their memories, and unite them against the bad guy who had killed their father. From Hollywood, Raging Bull and Rocky are acts hard to emulate. Inspired by their success, Indian actor-producer Mithun Chakraborty tried to don boxing gloves with Boxer, a film that got knocked out at the box-office. An earlier Boxer had Freestyle Wrestling legend, the late Dara Singh, in the title role, and did well for a B-grader, especially with some catchy music by Laxmikant-Pyarelal. So what is Antoine Fuqua and Kurt Sutter’s 2015 take on the blood sport? Read on.

Billy ‘The Great’ Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the New York-based reigning World Junior Middleweight Champion, whose unorthodox stance, the so-called Southpaw, consists of a brutal, display of offensive fighting, fuelled by his own feelings of inadequacy and a desperate need for love, money and fame. With a beautiful wife Marianne (Rachel McAdams) and a sensitive and a loving daughter, Leila (Oona Laurence), in her pre-teens, home and financial security, Billy is on top, both in and out of the ring. After a fight that he wins but is badly bruised in, his wife suggests that he should consider the family’s future and retire while he is still at his peak. At a press conference and reception soon afterwards, he is taunted by another boxer, Miguel ‘Magic’ Escobar (Miguel Gomez), and a brawl breaks out, where a gun, belonging to Miguel’s brother, goes off, causing a fatal wound to Marianne. She dies a few minutes later, in his arms, and the event sends Billy into a downward spiral. No witnesses come forth to identify the man who shot her. Out to seek vengeance, he sets out to kill the guilty man, but takes pity on when he sees his wife and child, and spares him.

Addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs, Billy finds his daughter taken away by Child Protective Services, on a court order. His home and car repossessed to pay his bills, bankrupt Billy's fate is all but sealed, when, to his good fortune, a washed-up former boxer named Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker) agrees to take the bereaved pugilist under his wing, so long as he agrees to his strict behavioural code and pays for his training by cleaning the gym every day. Now, as he works to regain custody of his daughter, an opportunity comes his way to make a professional comeback, thanks to his former agent and crooked promoter, Jordan Mains (50 Cent).

The film's screen-writer Kurt Sutter said the project was inspired by the rapper Eminem’s personal struggle--his love of his daughter when he had overcome all the insanity, the death of Proof (Eminem’s childhood friend and fellow rapper, who was shot and killed in 2006) and all the things he had been through. DreamWorks acquired the script from him in 2010, with Eminem eyed to play the lead role. Sutter is a father himself, and boxes five days a week, so was considered to be the right man on the right script. Eminem backed out weeks before beginning boxing training, citing his commitment to making the album, The Marshall Mathers LP. Without Eminem in the cast, DreamWorks left the project--and The Weinstein Company came aboard, in 2013. Harvey Weinstein’s choice for the new Billy was Jake. But the Jake of Nightcrawler had to train very hard to look like Southpaw’s Billy. He sure did. In retrospect, that is the one decision that saves Southpaw from sinking without a trace. Another could be casting a man called Forest Whitaker.

TV writer Kurt Sutter’s debut film script stutters all the way. Every possible cliché in the book is milked dry. Dialogue, that was apparently supposed to sound like profound philosophy, often teeters on the brink of being banal and instruction manual-like. An occasional line like, “When the bubble bursts, they will all run away, like roaches,” is not enough to salvage the largely contrived language employed. His obsession with spilled and vomitted blood, blood soaked cloth, sore, swollen eyes (and even a fake eye), and gore in general is …well, obsessive and excessive. It might have been palatable had there been a method in his madness. There isn’t. And there is no doctors or hospitals aywhere in sight, to ensure unabated flow of the life liquid.

Director Antoine Fuqua (Brooklyn's Finest, Olympus Has Fallen, The Equalizer) shot the film in real time, the boxing scenes comprising three-minute rounds, with a one-minute break. He also used an unbelievable number of cameras. Yet, what does stand out in his lighting and camera technique is the bedroom scene, with its attractive framing and lighting, and the slight jump cuts, mid-long shots to long shots, in narrow passages, the metaphor for the plight of the characters. And if you are wondering how he captured the blurry, odd-angle boxing-ring shots, they came from cameras mounted on the backs of Jake and Miguel. The producers call it “first-person boxing!”  But the audiences might well ask, “So what? Where’s the punch?”

Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain, The Day After Tomorrow, Nightcrawler) struggles hard to save the film, without much luck. Billy’s angst is well conveyed, and the character does have several dimensions, in spite of being a pugilist. But don’t even think about comparing Nightcrawler to Southpaw. Canadian actress Rachel McAdams (The Time Traveler’s Wife, two Sherlock Holmes films, Midnight in Paris) has a brief part, and manages both, the bedroom scene and the dying scene, aptly. Unconventional in looks, with a pair of glasses to boot, Oona Laurence (stage actress, Tony Award winner, 12 going on 13, seen in the film Penny Dreadful) oozes confidence, in a poorly etched, melodramatic role.

It is almost criminal not to tap talent like Forest Whitaker (Platoon, Good Morning Vietnam, The Last King of Scotland), and that is what this film almost does. Whitaker’s deep, breathy, unclear articulation makes matters worse. To be fair, his character does bring some genuine humour into the proceedings, and he uses his honed art to pass off as a former boxer, without looking like one, and without possessing any obvious physical traits of one. It must be made obligatory to have all rappers’ dialogue sub-titled. Curtis James Jackson III, aka 50 Cent, is a good case in point. Victor Ortiz and Miguel Gomez are real life boxers, which makes what little acting they are called upon to deliver easier. Gomez, as the Colombian boxer Escobar, a surname that cannot but have been chosen because the notorious Escobar (died 1993) was one of Colombia’s biggest drug-lords, gets to shower some abuses at Gyllenhaal and looks menacing.

Southpaw reminds me of the old joke, wherein a critic was watching a play, seated right next to the playwright. As the play became increasingly unbearable to sit through, the critic tried to get up and leave. The author persuaded him to stay on, with the promise, "Wait. The punch is yet to come." When this happened for the third time, the critic retorted, "When the punch comes, give it to the director," and bolted towards the exit. Jokes apart, the film is not THAT bad. It's just about saved, from a self-goal, by the bell.

Duck it if you can. Take it on your chin, if you must.

Rating/5: **

Referees' points:

Southpaw: 2

WhatPaw?: 3

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh2ebPxhoLs

Drishyam, Review: Missing Corpse, Hissing Cops and Habeas Corpus

What would drive producers to make and remake a film in five different Indian languages in a span of two years? Box-office success of preceding language versions and a potential remake goldmine at hand, or the merits of a script that tries to turn the killer v/s cops genre on its head, and could have viewers gasping for breath? In the case of Drishyam, whose Sanskritised title can be approximated as Drishya (scene/sight in Hindi), both theories seem half correct. As a result, the film reaches only the halfway mark on most critical counts.

A subject that was made in Malayalam in 2013, got remade in Kannada, Telugu and Tamil (about to release) in the next two years, and has come to the Hindi screens riding on the generally positive response to its South Indian cousins. But hang on! What is this talk of the real ‘original’ being a 2008 Japanese film, Suspect X, which, in turn, was based on a Japanese novel, The Devotion of Suspect X, directed by Hiroshi Nishitani, and that another Hindi film producer had claimed that she had bought rights to its Hindi remake before the Nishikant Kamat helmed Drishyam? You decide.

Suspect X is a 2008 Japanese mystery-thriller based on the novel, The Devotion of Suspect X, written by Keigo Higashino, possibly Japan's biggest bestseller author. It was directed by Hiroshi Nishitani (any similarity of names between the two directors is amazingly co-incidental). The film was a big screen version of the popular Japanese serial drama, Galileo, and featured the same cast. It topped Japan's box-office for four consecutive weeks, and was the third-highest grossing Japanese movie of 2008.

Yasuko Hanaoka is a divorced, single mother, who thought she had finally escaped her abusive ex-husband, Togashi. When he shows up one day, to extort money from her, threatening both her and her teenage daughter Misato, the situation quickly escalates into violence, and Togashi ends up dead, on her apartment floor. Overhearing the commotion, Yasuko's next-door neighbour, middle-aged high school mathematics teacher Ishigami, offers his help, disposing not only of the body, but plotting the cover-up, step-by-step.

Nandini Salgaoncar (Shriya Saran) is a devoted house-wife and mother of two girls, one of them a teenager, Anju (Ishita Dutta, debut), and the other a primary school student, Anu (Mrinal Jadhav). A spoilt brat of a teenage boy, Sam, son of Goa’s Inspector General of Police (Tabu), shows up at their bungalow one night when her husband is not home, and tries to blackmail the mother and daughter into granting sexual favours. Things get out of hand, and the boy ends up dead on the floor. Soon afterwards, her husband, Vijay (Ajay Devgn) arrives home, and learns about the incident. A cable TV operator, whose life is heavily influenced by crime and sex dramas that he keeps watching in his office late into the night, and is aware of legal concepts like habeas corpus, he immediately devises a plan to save his family from going to jail. It involves disposing not only of the body, but plotting a masterly cover-up and fool-proof alibis, step-by-step. This has the police hissing and fuming, but without the corpse, and confronted with four prime suspects who have suddenly been awarded doctorates in lying, they can only try secret torture to extract the truth. Like I said, you decide!

Nishikant Kamat (Mumbai Meri Jaan, Force) shot to fame with a Marathi film, Dombivali Fast, and followed it up with another successful Marathi venture, Lai Bhaari (literally ‘Very Heavy’). Dombivali Fast derives its name from local trains terminating at the eastern Mumbai suburb of Dombivali. A vigilante theme, it won plaudits for its no-holds-barred approach, as well as its performances, especially its protagonist, played by Sandeep Kulkarni. But there too, Kamat was accused of plagiarism. Kulkarni played Madhav Apte, an Indian banker whose firm moral principles are constantly challenged by friends, family and associates. Ultimately, they drive him over the edge, and he suddenly cracks, physically attacking a street-vendor in broad daylight, for refusing to give him small change on a purchase.

Apte then arms himself, wandering the streets and scouring the neighbourhoods for any sign of wrong-doing that he can "correct," but leaving a nasty trail of destruction in his wake. Kamat remade the film in Tamil as Evano Oruvan, with R. Madhavan playing the lead. Dombivali Fast bears resemblance to the 1993 Hollywood film, Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas. Douglas portrayed the role of William Foster, a divorcee who is unemployed and unhappy with the world. Foster goes on a violent rampage across Los Angeles, trying to reach the house of his ex-wife, for their daughter’s birthday party. Dombivali Fast also bore shades of the classic vigilante film, Death Wish, starring Charles Bronson.

You could also attribute the credit or blame for the ‘plagiarisation’ of Drishyam to Jeethu Joseph, who is credited with penning the story. Screenplay and dialogue for the Hindi version is the work of Upendra Sidhaye, a former assistant of Kamat, whose oeuvre includes Mumbai Meri Jaan, Payback, Blood Money and the much-raved Killa (‘Fort’/Marathi). Not having seen any other version, one cannot comment whether the Hindi Drishyam has added or subtracted from the original, but most characters are uni-dimensional. Except for Devgn’s character, which turns, albeit incredulously, from a simpleton living in a narrow universe into almost a totally different person, when confronted with the prospect of his wife and daughter being taken away, most others appear cardboard cut-outs. True, they are all identifiable with the characters they play, but Sidhaye takes ages to delineate their traits, which are often repetitive, and the first-half is highly over-written. Devgn’s exchanges with his boy-Friday about Sunny Leone’s films, and one joke about a paralysed subscriber, are in poor taste, and unnecessary. Most dialogue is functional, and very few lines fall in the clap-trap. On occasion, the dialogue even raises the level of a scene.

Kamat takes a brave decision in casting Ajay Devgn, an action star, in a part that places him at the receiving end of recurring police brutality, without getting any opportunity of inflicting a single blow himself. On the choice of Tabu to play the IG, he has said that he could not conceive the film without her. In retrospect, he gets moderate points on the first count. On Tabu, most critics have proven him right. But it is in the casting of Rajat Kapoor as Meera’s polished, rational, husband, that he hits bulls-eye. Coming to the narrative, he forgets that a murder mystery is not about convenient co-incidences woven together, of the ‘Match problems in Column A with available solutions in Column B’ type. Suspense thrillers are about red herrings and a constantly shifting compass needle, not about a set of platter-served circumstances, a crime, and the utilisation of each of those earlier circumstances to cover up the crime.

The suspects are tortured in a place that is apparently the home of the IG, with a large crowd of sympathisers and media banging the guarded iron-gate. Considering that the torture is illegal, would it not have been wiser to have it done elsewhere, rather than facing irate mobs? A diversionary trick that Devgn uses towards the end, the only real twist in the tale, comes too late, and is not of the nail-biting kind in any case. The denouement, though handled with great dignity, is bound to raise moral and ethical issues. It might even prompt some media-savvy scholars to debate upon the possibility of such crime subjects prompting real-life emulations, and the need or otherwise of statutory warnings. Some of us might have seen Highway 301 (1950), a blood and gore drama about armed robbers called the Tri-State gang. The film begins with a documentary style preamble by three actual American state Governors, talking about the scourge of crime, and the hopes that movies like this, based on actual events, might discourage it. After all, life imitating art is not as rare as many believe.

Devgn has had good success with some dead-pan comic roles in the past, and works hard here too. Vocal histrionics not being his forte, he has limited success in an action-less role. Tabu, being Tabu, brings a quiet dignity to the role, any role. She is named Meera, probably in the context of a real-life hard-nosed Indian cop of the same name. Introduced with a bang, in vampish light, her terror-striking persona thins out with every passing scene, and you do feel a bit cheated along the way. Shriya Saran, good-looking, homely-sexy, well-dressed and well made-up, is too syrupy to believe. Ishita Dutta, and the girl playing her younger sister, go through their tribulations with a perpetually perplexed look, so their complicity in the elaborate cover-up is not so convincing. All three have many over-the-top moments.The boy playing Sam is talented, so is the actor cast as Martin, the mini-restaurant-owner. Why does his voice bear uncanny similarity to old-timer Mohan Agashe? All things considered, it is Rajat Kapoor who delivers the most impressive performance, rising way above the physical dimensions of the role. I haven’t seen him do so well in a long time.

Vishal Bharadwaj and Gulzar turn-in some good work as music director and lyricist. Alas, three of the four songs, two of them really well-tuned and meaningful, don’t blend well with the ambience of the film, and are wasted!

An unconventional film about an anti-hero, Drishyam suffers from raised expectations and treatment that is extremely old-style in the first-half, before it turns into a fairly engaging cat-and-mouse game.

Rating: **1/2

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuuX2j14NBg

Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation, Review: Bond-Bourne amalgamation

You couldn’t escape noticing that the Mumbai press preview of Mission: Impossible-RogueNation was being held at the renovated Fun Republic. Two hours and eleven minutes later, you found out that the film was not about a 'nation', but about international rogues. That stated, for once, the expectations, unconsciously raised by a trivial similarity in the names of the venue and the film, were met.

Inspiration for Mission: Impossible--Rogue Nation comes from James Bond (British international secret service MI6, the American-British collaboration, the gadgetry, the villain), the Bourne series (your own secret service out to get you) and, hold your breath please, Casa Blanca (as the locale, modelling the lead actress the lead actress after Ingrid Bergman). Not an easy récipé to cook, by any means, but writer-director Christopher McQuarrie manages to deliver a thrills and frills laden extension of the blockbuster series, often matching and sometimes trumping the four earlier outings.  

After intercepting nerve gas being sold to terrorists, Impossible Missions Force (IMF, not to be confused with the acronym of the International Monetary fund) agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is convinced he can finally prove the existence of the Syndicate, a top secret international criminal consortium. Reporting to an IMF substation in London to receive his next orders, Hunt is captured by the Syndicate, but escapes a torture chamber with the help of disavowed (translated as ‘disowned’ or ‘discredited’) MI6 agent and Syndicate operative Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). Meanwhile, CIA director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) and IMF agent William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) appear before a Senate committee, where Hunley demands and succeeds in having the IMF disbanded, and absorbed into the CIA, guaranteeing that Hunt, now declared a fugitive, will be captured in a day.

Cut off from the IMF, Hunt starts following his only lead: a blond man in glasses, who had killed his contact in London and arranged for his abduction. This man is later identified as Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). Six months later, Hunt remains on the run, but is unable to trace the Syndicate. He enlists former colleague Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), while Brandt recruits former agent Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) to find Hunt and prevent Hunley's team from killing him. Using a likeness of Faust left by Hunt, Brandt and Stickell are able to track Hunt, Dunn, and Faust to Morocco, where the three are infiltrating a secure underwater server beneath a power station, in search of a ledger, which, they believe, contains the names of all Syndicate agents.

Writer Bruce Geller wrote Mission: Impossible as a television series way back in 1966. Though James Bond had already become a household name by then, he was not inspired by Ian Fleming’s novels, but by a film, called Tokapi. The series ran for seven years in its first run. MI5 (not the British internal secret service acronym but the present film, in sequence), is co-written by Drew Pearce (who co-wrote Iron Man 3 too) and director McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects, The Way of the Gun, Valkyrie, Jack Reacher, Edge of Tomorrow). Tom Cruise, who has produced MI: Rogue Nation, is a recurring credit in McQuarrie’s films. The duo went the whole hog, and, as his wont, Tom did most of the stunts himself. If that is true, Cruise probably rates MI higher than life itself on his list of priorities. Hunt’s abduction and subsequent torture, reprised in the end when he faces his arch enemy as an element of organic unity, is probably the weakest bit of writing. Scenes at the staging of the opera Turandot, and the triple whammy assassination plot targetting the Chancellor of Austria, with an “insurance” as Plan D to boot, are classy, albeit overdone and over-drawn. Another familiar trick of the trade, the face-mask disguise, pays dividends, especially since it is introduced and discarded first, and then used a punch-line in the plot.

Land (breath-taking car and motor-cycle chases and topplings), water (Cruise and Fergusson holding their breaths underwater while battling a rotating motor-blade) and air (the rightly touted aeroplane wing-hanger scene, the incredible jump in mid-flight) are all tapped for all the elemental potential they can offer. The time-shift parallel cutting when his assailants are about to nab Hunt is déjà vu. Works well, nevertheless. Ilsa meeting her handler on a park-bench is straight out of at least two films, one of which had a Mossad (Israeli secret service chief) meeting his agent at an identical location. In the opening scene, Benji, a computer wizard, is stumped when the Russian satellite he hacks into displays its computer’s contents in Russian. Not dissimilar to Bonds’s predicament in Tomorrow Never Dies, when he is confronted with a Chinese keyboard, is it?  Ilsa’s character is inspired by her namesake Ilsa from all-time masterpiece, Casablanca, played by the legendary Ingrid Bergman. And, the makers have actually gone to shoot in Casa Blanca. McQuarrie re-does the Ursula Andress’ ‘bikini-clad, dripping, Venus-emerging-from-the-sea’ intro, in the first Bond caper, Dr. No, though Rebecca cannot match Ursula, physically. As climaxes in such high voltage spy dramas go, MI: RN is a bit of a let-down.

At 53, age does show occasionally on Tom’s face, and it will take some believing that the hair, and the about-to-burst biceps and triceps, are real. Otherwise, it is grand hunting for the producer-actor, who has been playing Ethan Hunt for 19 years now. It is for all to see that he has a James Bond fixation, yet the passion and zeal he puts into playing a ‘nothing is impossible for me’ espionage agent is undeniable. No actor has played Bond for so long, though the series took off theyear Cruise was born. Neither has Matt Damon, aka Jason Bourne, completed such a long stint, having arrived only in 2002. If his height (measured as 5’7” or thereabouts, depending upon which scale is used) has ever come in Tom's way, it proves no impediment here.

Among the acting honours, one goes to Rebecca Ferguson (I was waiting to discover, as I did, that she is Swedish; aged 31, her only previous American movie was Hercules). Ferguson learned from Tom Cruise and did a lot of her own stunts. “I had vertigo and I did a 120-foot free fall,” she reveals. Bravo, Rebecca. Besides the stunts, she has a powerful personality, oozing sensuality, without cheapening herself. The other honour goes to Sean Harris (at 6 feet, he is 5” taller than Cruise; work includes Prometheus and The Goob). McQuarrie had seen Sean in Harry Brown, and he felt the English actor was absolutely fantastic. But he was not interested in being in some franchise movie, or being a franchise actor. McQuarrie was bent upon the choice, and convinced him after great effort. Unconventional features, a raspy voice, a vacuous, megalomaniacal look, Harris, cast in the Bond villain dye, gives Lane a shape of his own.

Ever-reliable Jeremy Renner (The Avengers, MI: The Ghost Protocol, The Town, The Hurt Locker, The Bourne Legacy) and Simon Pegg (real name Simon John Beckingham, English actor; seen in Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, Paul, Mission: Impossible and Star Trek films) provide competent support. Ving Rhames (a rivetting Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction; Con Air, Mission: Impossible series) plays Luther Stickell (name, name!), his imposing personality taking a back-seat to his friendship with Hunt and his IT acumen.

Alec Balwdin  (full name Alexander Rae Baldwin III, appeared in Beetlejuice, The Hunt for Red October, Blue Jasmine, Rock of the Ages--with Tom Cruise). Both McQuarrie and Cruise agreed that he was just the player for this part. In the role of Atlee (remember a British Prime Minister with that surname?), Head of MI6, we have Simon McBurney (American father, English mother; Harry Potter series, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Robin Hood), understated and matter-of-fact. As the British Prime Minister, Tom Hollander (Pirates of the Caribbean series, Valkyrie, The Riot Club) does his bit well.

The musical score for Mission: Impossible--Rogue Nation was composed by Joe Kraemer, who previously collaborated with director McQuarrie on The Way of the Gun and Jack Reacher. It incorporates suspense specialist, Argentinean composer Lalo (Boris Claudio) Schifrin(Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Enter the Dragon, Tango, Rush Hour, 2, 3)'s thematic material from the television series, throughout the score. Schifrin created the GRAMMY winning soundtrack 48 years ago. The piano maestro and jazz devotee, now 83, is always up to the task, and Kraemer adds some exciting bits of his own.

In summation, this Bond-Bourne amalgamation is both palatable and enjoyable.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYLTW64wNVQ

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#Alibaba Pictures, owned by Chinese magnate Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group, is making its first Hollywood movie investment, partnering with Viacom Inc subsidiary Paramount Pictures, to promote the film in China. In January this year, Alibaba announced its first movie project, a romance, to be produced by Wong Kar-Wai.

# It was announced on October 6, 2014, that Chinese actress Jingchu Zhang, (Rush Hour 3, City of War: The John Rabe Story; speaks fluent English) has joined the cast of “Mission: Impossible 5,” in a major role opposite Tom Cruise. Her role was supposedly being kept secret as it was integral to a major plot twist. After the release of the film, the role still remains a secret. Unless, of course, you call appearing for a few seconds on the screen as a ‘major role’.

Bangistan, Review: Citizen Wong Kar-Wai meets Raging Bull at FcDonald’s

If references, allusions and name-dropping could make a film watchable, Bangistan would have arrived with a bang. Sadly for debutant director Karan Anshuman, that récipé fails to tickle the taste-buds, and the film turns out be a dish that is half un-cooked and half over-cooked. Why he chose to use crutches like parodying the title of Orson Welles’ all-time masterpiece, Citizen Kane, poking fun at the name of contemporary Chinese director par excellence, Wong Kar-Wai, doing a hack job of the mirror scene from Raging Bull, taking a swipe at Russian guru Stanislavski’s Method School of Acting, reminding us about Amitabh Bachchan’s voice and height (every tall man with a baritone is not Amitabh; in the vein of ‘Every bearded man cannot be Tagore’), and a four-letter take on the two first letters in McDonald’s, will remain a mystery. Was it to impress audiences with his academic knowledge? 90% of his viewers are not likely to have any clue about these allusions, and the only name they might relate to, Amitabh Bachchan, has had much said about his height and voice that the writers are flogging a dead horse here. Is he, then, trying to wow critics, having been a critic himself? Fellow critics are likely to guffaw, as I did, at these and a few other funny bits, including the Chinese-Japanese bowing mix-up. Two seconds later each lol moment, I began to see that these laugh-points were not plot points at all, thereby sounding patchy.

Bangistan is about a bomb-plot, but most of what it delivers is bombast. It is also about religious fanaticism in the sub-continent, an issue that has killed hundreds of thousands on either side of the India-Pakistan border, since 1947. The film does no service to its own cause, by first fictionalising it, and then trivialising it. On the third level, Bangistan is a black comedy-cum-satire, which is the only plane on which it could have worked, had the script not gone haywire in the second half, which is set in Krakow (also spelt Cracow), Poland, on the wafer thin premise that a World Religions’ Peace Conference is taking place there. And would you believe it? Bangistan is made in association with Film Polski, the national film producing and distributing agency of the country. Incidentally, Krakow is also known for a popular film festival location. A promo was shown before the feature, showcasing tourist attractions in Poland.

Concerned by the unrest in the name of religion, the most revered leaders of Muslims and Hindus, Imam (Tom Alter) and the Shankaracharya (ShivKumar Subramaniam), who are in regular touch on webcam, announce that they're attending the conference in Krakow, and will issue a joint statement there, in an effort to help unite the two religions. Rival rabble-rousing ragtag organisations, the Islamist Al-Kaam Tamam (literally, the ‘Finish Off’ and right-wing Hindu political party Maa Ka Dal (a pun on a North-Indian pulse dish called Maa Ki Daal, literal meaning ‘Mother’s Party’) separately recruit and brainwash Hafeez-bin-Ali (Riteish Deshmukh), a former call centre employee, and Praveen Chaturvedi (Pulkit Samrat), a Raam Leela (stage enactment of the story of Lord Raam) actor, who claims that he is adept at method acting,  to go on a suicide bombing mission. Their target is the group of holy men congregating at the conference.

After a rigorous, and hilarious, 'training' period, the two men change their religious identities to escape detection. Hafeez, the ‘jihadi’, masquerades as a conservative Hindu, Ishwarchand, while Praveen, the Hindu fundamentalist, dons the garb of a practicing Muslim, AllahRakkha (also the name of an Indian film, made by formulaic director Manmohan Desai). Co-incidentally, the two recruits reach Krakow at the same time, and end up staying together, renting cheap rooms in a large, old structure, thanks to BanglaDeshi taxi-driver Tamim Hussain (Chandan Roy Sanyal; Tamim is the name of one of BanglaDesh’s most proficient cricketers), who introduces himself as Citizen Hussain. Now, they need to keep their identities and plans secret, while finding ways of acquiring/making the bombs. Hafeez contacts a Polish farmer, who is actually a bomb-maker and marketer, while Praveen knocks on the door of a Chinese shop-keeper, whose secret profession is selling bombs and bomb making formulas. Meanwhile, a couple of cops snoop on the duo, one of whom has Chinese features and calls himself Wai Kar-Wong), hoping to uncover some sinister terrorist plot and become heroes in the bargain. In a strange turn of events, the would-be-terrorists become friends, until their identities get mutually revealed.

Karan Anshuman is the man, who, along with Prashant Rajkhowa, initiated the Ghanta Awards in India, on the lines of the Razzies in Hollywood, rewarding the worst in Bollywood. Ghanta means a large bell, like those found in churches, but has a dirty connotation in slang, which is the pun it plays on. “Nine out of 10 films made in Bollywood are simply awful,” he opined, in February 2014. Film critics Rajeev Masand and Sudhish Kamath have served on the jury, and the award categories include ‘WTF was That?’ and ‘That’s Anything But Sexy’. One can be ruthless and demand that the same standards be applied to Bangistan. Not fair! Having been a critic should neither be an advantage nor disadvantage to him, when it comes to judging his work. If anything, one can say that he should have known better.

As a name, Bangistan seems to be a composite of BanglaDesh, Hindustan (the old name of India, still in use) and Pakistan. Anshuman creates the imaginary country, populated by feuding north and south halves, with the help of animated maps and a Voice-Over. He then leaves nothing to imagination, by establishing the two nations with every possible detail. There is a BanglaDeshi angle too, in the shape of the taxi-driver. Then there are characters from Poland, China, Russia (named Bobbitsky; read foot-note), Afghanistan --and almost every country on the globe, attending the religious conference. Many non Indians/non Pakistanis speak fluent Hindi/Urdu, while others are given sub-titles.

Casting is suspect, as Pulkit Samrat fails to bring off Praveen, and the double role trick for Kumud Mishra only means twice the hamming. Riteish Deshmukh is a co-producer, and tries hard to bring conviction to his role. The encomiums Anshuman has heaped on his producer-star in recent interviews, on the other hand, sound motivated. Loading the sound-track with non-stop deafening decibels was a practice that went out in the 90s, yet Anshuman relies on it heavily, and misguidedly, to infuse life into the dull scenes. Moreover, the rather well-written songs get drowned in the cacophony. Seeing his penchant for humour, Anshuman could try his hand at pure comedy. Alternately, he could learn from his mistakes, and try anything.

Writing credits are shared by three newcomers: Anshuman, Puneet Krishna and Sumit Purohit. Meerut boy Krishna was an assistant to Rajkumar Hirani and Sumit, from Uttarakhand, is an editor-cum-director, having made a largely unknown film called 12073 some years ago. Could it be that each of them has contributed one of the three criss-crossing tracks—religious fanaticism, bomb plot and black comedy/satire? Most blame for the messy interpolations must go to Anshuman, since he is both co-writer and director.

Sumit has posted on Twitter, “Someday I will hop into a taxi and tell the driver ‘uss car ka peechha karo.’ That will be my tribute to old Bollywood films.” We can find some ‘tributes’ in Bangistan too, namely the Raam Leela, the scene of Praveen’s family watching him on TV and the stereo-types on parade. While on Peechha Karo, it would be worthwhile remembering that in an old Bollywood film, the late comedian I.S. Johar jumped into a taxi and told the driver, “Un smuggleron ka peechha karo (follow those smugglers)”. This ‘hero opportunity’ galvanised the cabbie into stepping hard on the accelerator. Of course, there were no smugglers in the car he was chasing--Johar just called them ‘smugglers’ to egg the driver on, and catch-up with his quarry!

In wanting to continue his attempts at breaking the comic mould, after Ek Villain, and playing safe by still retaining some of his comic persona, the normally deadpan Riteish is caught straddling two boats. He achieves limited success on both counts. Wisely, he leaves a lot of the comic stuff to other actors, as he undergoes a poorly written transformation from a misled terrorist to a martyrdom-bound humanist. Pulkit Samrat (Jai Ho, Fukrey) cannot shake-off the Salman Khan swagger, and is too loud to be convincing. He might have another non-starter like Dolly Ki Doli at hand.

Jacqueline Fernandez (Race 2, Kick, Roy) plays a bartender of unclear nationality, working in Poland, though her name is Muslim. It would seem that the makers took her real-life SriLankan-Canadian-Malaysian-Bahranian roots rather seriously. The role is ill-defined and the performance undistinguished. A hint is dropped about her absent parents, and then left hanging. After a short, chequered career so far (Badlapur, Revolver Rani, Raanjhanaa, Filmistaan, RockStar, That Girl in Yellow Boots), Kumud Mishra gets to hog several scenes, including a double role. Being the corner-stone of the parody, he gets both, the laughs (his favourite FcDonald’s burger with Diet Coke) as well as the smirks, not least on account of his loud delivery and contortions. Arya Babbar, as the stand-by terrorist Zulfi, is made to deliver a large slice of the supposedly fanatical buffoonery. Another confused part is allotted to Chandan Roy Sanyal. Urdu aficionado and American by birth, Tom Alter is wasted in a two-scene appearance, while ShivKumar Subramaniam suffers from poor dialogue delivery.

In lyricist Puneet Krishna, we have a Gulzar in the making. But hey, does anybody remember villain Ishrat Ali’s catch-phrase from a late 80s film, “Saturday night, full tight?” It makes its way into Bangistan, as the opening line of an up-tempo song, written in anything but the Gulzar mould. Ram Sampath’s music rarely rises above the croaking/groaning style that is the sign of the times, and could easily have been scored by any of his famous contemporaries.

Bangistan has already been banned in Pakistan, the U.A.E. and Singapore. More countries could follow suit. The avoidable alcohol drinking scene would have been a strong factor. Taking an irreverent look at a burning issue, and offering simplistic solutions, like trading places with the enemy, would have been another.

If only the producers had roped in Wong Kar-Wai, Bangistan could well have been bang on target.

Rating: **

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLU7hMjcnxY

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‘To bobbit’ and ‘bobbited’ are verb forms that have made their way into dictionaries in the last 22 years, thanks to the infamous Lorena Bobbit and John Wayne Bobbit case of 1993.

In 1993, Ecuador-born Lorena was working as a manicurist in Virginia, while enduring physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband. On June 23, 1993, he returned from a night of drinking and had a row with her. This led to the ‘bobbiting’.

Lorena she sliced off her husband's penis with a kitchen knife as he slept, and threw it in a field. Surgeons successfully reattached John 's penis, and Lorena was found not guilty, due to the abuse she suffered at his hands. John Wayne Bobbit went on to star in porn films!

Jane the Virgin: Romedy Now imports American hit telenovela series to India

Romedy Now, part of the Times Network group that includes Times Now, Movies Now, ET Now, MN+ and Zoom, has brought the CBS-produced and the CW executed popular American TV series, Jane the Virgin, to India, premièring 05 August. It comprises 22 episodes of one-hour each, from the first season. Romedy Now has a further option on the next season, which premières in the USA exactly a year after the first run, on 12 October 2015. Gina Rodriguez plays the title role, a performance that brought her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV series. EWwys, the Entertainment Weekly’s awards for those who were bypassed at the Emmys, are to be announced on 11 August. As of 08 August, with one more day to go before voting closes, a mere 376 votes separate Jane the Virgin’s Gina Rodriguez and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s Ellie Kemper for Best Actress, Comedy.

Romedy (romantic comedy) is an ever popular genre, and Jane is a good example of the rapid fire television programming style of one-liners and gags. Although defined as a comic romance, the series uses all the familiar trappings of long-running TV series across the globe: all characters have a back-story, a voice-over leads to contrasting visual humour, flash-backs, three generations, accents and foreign languages (Spanish, with English sub-titles, the story coming from a Venezuelan telenovela, Juana le Virgen, by Perla Farias Lombardini), people not being what they appear to be, everybody two-timing everybody, cancer, criminals and police. Plenty of laughs, an occasional tear, and an overall feel-good impact that makes you want to see the next episode.

Watchable for many reasons, Jane the Virgin could prove to be break-out vehicle for 29 year-old Rodriguez, seen on the big screen in Our Family Wedding, Go for It and Filly Brown, and on the idiot-box in Law & Order and Army Wives. Having strong views against Latino stereo-types, she turned down most of the offers that came her way after Filly Brown. The 2014 study by Frances Negrón-Muntaner found Latinos did not make up any lead roles in any top ten movies or scripted network TV shows.

The study also finds that almost 72% of all roles given to Latinos fit into three stereotypes: crime/law enforcement, blue-collar workers and “sexy women.” The rest are minor characters who are mostly cast as un-named members of a large Latino family –another stereotype. Add to that the fact that almost half of all Latinos on TV shows are uncredited (45%). The study concludes that Latin people “tend to embody many of the same stereotypes first visualised in cinema over a hundred ago: criminals, cheap labour, and sexual objects. Kudos to Gina for standing up against racial discrimination in the US media! Enter, Jane the Virgin.

Jane Villanueva (Gina Rodriguez) has always lived by the rules. She is studying to become a teacher, working her way through school by waitressing at a hot Miami hotel, and she has never forgotten the lesson her grandmother Alba Gloriana (Ivonne Coll) taught her long ago about the importance of saving her virginity for marriage. But when Jane was accidentally artificially inseminated her life became as dramatic and outrageous as the telenovelas she grew up watching. Adding to the drama, the sperm comes from reformed playboy Rafael Solano (Justin Baldoni, a younger leaner John Abraham?), the owner of the hotel where Jane works, and her teenage crush. Rafael has recovered from cancer and the sperm sample he has stored is the only chance of his becoming a father now.

Although Jane is engaged to her long-time love, Michael (Brett Dier), a detective with the Miami Police Department, and Rafael is married to the scheming Petra (Yael Grobglas), she and Rafael are drawn closer by the pregnancy and begin to fall for each other. The tension proves too much for Jane and Michael, and they call off their engagement. Jane and Rafael, reviving their old crushes, begin seeing each other. But ‘happily ever after’ is interrupted by murder and mayhem, by scheming ‘ex’es and maniacal criminal masterminds. Oh, and then there’s the fact that Jane learns her long lost father is Rogelio De La Vega (Jaime Camill), her favorite telenovela star! And now he’s back in her life… with a vengeance. But amidst all the crazy, there are the three resolute Villaneuva women--Jane, her mother Xiomara Gloriana de la Vega (Andrea Navedo), and her grandmother, Alba, who band together to support each other always, no matter the twists and turns thrown their way.

Performances are uniformly high-grade and appearances tailor-made to fit the parts. Editing adds pace and gags are well-written. Some portions go staccato, break-neck, and the series conforms to the norms seen in such dramas. Gustavo Santaollala’s voice quality and narration is just what you expect from a middle-aged Spanish-speaking male talent. Jennie Snyder Urman, who wrote it and is executive producer of Jane the Virgin, was a consulting producer on the show, Reign. She also created the CW’s other show, Emily Owens MD, which had a short run on the net last season, and co-produced Gilmore Girls.

Romedy Now and their PR agency Adfactors held a special screening of the first episode for the media on 03 August at the Adfactors media room, located in the same complex that is home to the Times Group. Sonal Khanduja, Vice President, Content—English Language Cluster, representing, Romedy Now, held a Q. &A., while the hospitality was provided by Adfactors, represented by Sr. Vice President Devasis Chattopadhyay, Account Manager Jay Desai and my old friend Pavan Chawla, who has joined the company only last year, as Head--Media and Entertainment practice.

With the advent of Jane the Virgin, the current Monday to Friday telecast schedule of the Romedy Now channel reads: Jane The Virgin 07:00 PM | Friends 08:00 PM | Happily Divorced 08:30 PM.

P.S. Ignore the occasionally muted dialogue, which includes even the three-letter word. Occupational hazard, with Prasar Bharati’s Broadcasting Code in place for all channels, public or private.

Extended trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgDz0s7xw8A

Shaun the Sheep Movie, Review: Shaun is on

An animated comedy from a non Pixar/Disney/Dreamworks DNA, Shaun the Sheep could be the mouse that roared. Just above 80 minutes long, this Aardman Animations (Bristol, UK) production provides plenty of laughs in the ‘stop motion’ technique of old-style animation. Humans, animals, birds, fish, cars, buses and an entire city are all ‘cartoonised’ to come across as credible, endearing and detestable, according to the storyline. What’s more, Shaun the Sheep Movie goes one step further, and does away with dialogue, restricting all conversations to gibberish, which sounds like recordings of normal dialogue played in reverse. It does not shy away from using songs and theme music pieces, however, incorporating as many as 26 snatches of them.

Shaun is a mischievous sheep, living with his flock, at Mossy Bottom Farm. Tired of the routine of life on the farm, he hatches a plan for a day off, tricking the sheep farmer into going back to sleep, by counting the sheep jumping over and over and over. However, the trailer, in which they put the farmer to bed, to keep him away from their shindig, accidentally rolls away, taking him all the way into the big city. Bitzer, the farmer's sheep-dog, goes after him on a rescue mission, ordering the sheep to stay on the farm.

In the city, a heavy object falls on the farmer’s head, and he is hospitalised. It is discovered by the doctors that he has become amnesiac. Unaware of who he is, he leaves the hospital, eventually, wandering into a designer salon, where he sees a hair-trimmer/shearer, and it strikes a bell. He proceeds to cuts the hair of a celebrity, who has had a terrible hair-day, as if he was shearing a sheep. The celebrity loves his new look, which leads the farmer to a new career, as the mysterious hair stylist, ‘Mr X’.

Meanwhile, the sheep find life impossible without the farmer, so Shaun sneaks on a bus to the city; the rest of the flock follows him, in the next bus. He manages to disguise them as people, with the help of stolen woolen clothes, and acrobatic balancing. They begin looking for the farmer, but Shaun is captured by Trumper, an over-zealous animal-control worker. Shaun is reunited with Bitzer in the animal lock-up, and with the help of a feral dog, called Slip, who looks like a large rodent, they escape.

Shaun the Sheep Movie, which began as a BBC TV series of seven-minute episodes, in 2007, does credit to the animation studio that made it with great passion, Aardman, creators of Creature Comforts and The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists! Basic inputs come from Nick Park, the first Aardman animator, who also established the style of wordless story-boarding without even indicative dialogue. Richard Starzak, who helmed as many as 33 episodes on TV, has co-written and co-directed the screen adaptation, along with Mark Burton.

Richard ‘Golly’ Starzak (real name Richard Goleszowski, and identified on the Aardman website as such, even now), was working on a feature film with Dreamworks that never happened, before he came on board at Aardman. It took about three years for Golly and the team to complete the Shaun movie, which, considering the speed at which stop-motion animation is normally done, is amazingly fast. He reveals, “It takes a whole day, on average, to complete just two seconds of footage.” Mark Burton worked on Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and on additional material for Chicken Run. These led to Curse of the Were-Rabbit and then Madagascar, culminating in the big break, Shaun.

As writers-directors, the duo exhibit a keen sense of literary humour, bringing in kindergarten school clichés, like ‘counting sheep makes you fall asleep’, and ‘the cow jumped over the moon’. The counting ploy is works so well that they use it twice, and get away with it. A cow jumps over a signpost on which is written, The Moon. If anybody tried to crack jokes of this kind a group of acquaintances, he/she would become the butt of endless ridicule. In this film, however, they are cleverly woven into the plot. Incidents are occasionally stretched to accommodate sequential comedy, and the restaurant scene is an amalgam of the silent comic films of the 1930s and the early comic caper talkies of the 1940s, with a dash the Peter Sellers films of the late 60s and 70s.

Neither the farmer nor the animal gang are made to look heroic, escaping their doom by sheer wits and the skin of their teeth. In an age of comic-book super-heroes, this grounded-to-the-earth approach is a welcome departure. Several engaging pieces of comic suspense come in the facility where the ‘contained’ animals are incarcerated, particularly the chalk-picture on the wall and the repeated stills of a ferocious dog, with a ‘pasted’, perennial growl, who is never seen in motion, but whose ruthless revenge remains a fearful possibility. You might wonder about the need to dump dialogue, yet is must be said that one never really misses it. Writing is used instead of speech, in a few instances, without compromising the concept of a ‘silent movie’. Starzak and Burton’s ode to the cliff-hanger climax is a fresh, new take on the age-old trick-of-the trade.

Omid Djalili gives voice to the villain, the Trumper, John Sparkes plays the farmer as well as Bitzer, and Justin Fletcher speaks for Shaun and Timmy. All are reputed dubbing artistes. Sean Connelly manages to deliver half-a-dozen interpretations. Also in the dubbing team are Burton’s son Henry, and Starzak himself. Couldn’t miss the name of Dhimant Vyas as Hospital Consultant’s voice, when the extremely long end credits rolled past. How does one evaluate grunts and Babelian speech as performances? The team does its job creditably, is all one can say. Ilan Eshkeri (British; Stardust, The Young Victoria, Kick-Ass) composed the easy-on-ear music for the film.

Shaun’s first appearance on screen was in 1995, for just six minutes, in Wallace & Gromit’s third short feature, A Close Shave. The sheep’s ears, arms and legs are made of silicone, while his eyes are beads. Plasticine is used for his eyelids, and that famous woolly coat is from material found in regular textile shops. All this adds up to a lovable, flat-faced brat, who will go to any reasonable length to save his master.

Conceived as seven minute episodes, Shaun’s adventures and misadventures keep you involved in what amount to 12 TV episodes, duration-wise. Kids will have a ball watching it on the big screen, while adults might chuckle self-consciously. For both, nevertheless, a good time is on.

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_4vs0nCCUI

Gour Hari Dastaan/The Freedom File, Review: His-story

Described in the press as a Kafkaesque black comedy when it was launched in 2011, Gour Hari Dastaan is based on a true story, of Gour Hari Das (now 85), with some Kafkaesque undertones, but very little or no black comedy. It cannot afford to be a comedy, let alone a black one, since it deals with the sensitive subject of the neglect and disregard suffered by those who participated in the struggle to rid India of British colonial rule. British rule over India lasted over 150 years, till Independence was attained, in 1947. Naturally, very few of the freedom fighters are alive in the new millennium.

Some heroes, who threw bombs or killed British officials and/ or were martyred, are revered as the pillars of freedom, while the over-whelming majority of the task-force has to be content with a plaque, government grants and some social privileges for them and their families. Fact is that, in a country with extremely high levels of corruption and tons of red-tape at every corner, even getting recognition is an uphill task. Director Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s screen adaptation of one such man’s predicament is laudable in its noblesse, tugs the heart, and yet its execution falls just short of capturing the imagination of a 2015 audience.

Gour Hari Das (Vinay Pathak), a freedom fighter who works in the Indian central government run Khadi (indigenous, hand-woven cloth, that Gandhijee used to weave) and Village Industries Commission, leads, a quiet, uneventful life, along with his wife and son, One day, his son, Anil, is unable to secure college admission due to a low percentage score at the qualifying examination, but is told that if his father had been a freedom fighter, he could have made it through the government quota for such children. His father gives him a jail release receipt, but the college rejects it, on the grounds that mere incarceration cannot be proof of freedom fighting, as even common criminals and murderers serve jail terms.

Das, deeply wounded at the slight, is jolted to learn that he would need a Taamra Patra (engraved copper plaque) to substantiate his claim. Determined to get his due, he launches a struggle against red-tape, bureaucracy, apathy and callous disregard for those who suffered imprisonment, torture and several other kinds of trauma at the hands of the British. In the quest for this certificate to prove his credentials, he begins a journey that sucks up almost his entire life. His wife Lakshmi (Konkona Sen Sharma) stands solidly behind his crusade, while tabloid journalists Rajeev Singhal (Ranvir Shorey) and Anita (Tannishtha Chatterjee) join the cause. It turns out be a long, taxing ordeal, spanning over three decades, but Das carries on relentlessly.

Using the name of the protagonist, who is unknown to even students of Indian history, as the title of the film, was fraught with the danger of alienation. Adding the suffix taan to Gour Hari Das-taan makes the title read, ‘The Tale of Gour Hari’, dastaan being Urdu for tale, and makes it slightly more palatable. Still, there is still no attraction in the name. Maybe that is the point. The film is about an unsung hero, so, the makers felt, it could do with a bland title. Not very clever marketing, to be sure. Even in the film, in one scene, fed-up of having to introduce himself time and again, and still failing to make an impact, Gour Hari Das announces himself as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi!

The real-life Gour was a key member of the 50-strong local Vanar (Banar) Sena (monkey army), and ran across bridges, rail tracks and dangerous terrain, to deliver covert messages, often in pitch darkness. Once, he had to wait for trains to approach the crossing and shed some light (opening sequence in the film), and covered the distance with the help of 6-7 passing trains. He was jailed for 56 days (the term varies alarmingly in various press accounts and even in the film itself, partly due to the inclusion or exclusion of judicial custody while computing the total imprisonment) just for flying the Indian tricolour flag. After independence, Gour left everything to work at Gandhijee’s Wardha Ashram, from 1950 to 1955. He was helped in his Taamra Patra cause by a neighbour, called Rajeev Singhal, and activist Mohan Krishnan, of the NGO National Anti Corruption and Crime Preventive Council (founded 1995). Both are represented in the film, Rajeev as a muddled-up journalist, later Das’s neighbour, and Mohan Krishnan, a principled lawyer. In the script, Gour’s village is Balasore, Odisha, while in a recent interview, he identified it as Jalasore.

Screenplay is credited to Mahadevan and C.P. Surendran, while there is no separate credit for dialogue. Surendran, till recently the Editor-in-Chief at the Mumbai daily newspaper DNA, has worked with The Times of India, Times Sunday Review and Bombay Times. A well known name in poetry circles, he is also known as the ‘misogynist columnist’, on account of his strong views against feminism. These views find ready expression in the character of Rajeev. A merger of two real-life characters from Gour’s life, he is handicapped by a stereo-type image, the women-bashing touch notwithstanding: Career-issues, scraps with his ambitious boss who was once his colleague, unhappy marriage, alcoholism, a sympathetic female colleague…the works. In fact, no character in the film is given any real depth, and the appearances on screen are strictly utilitarian. Gour’s life unfolds as chapters, each of which is episodic, almost like a TV serial. Dialogue is pithy in many places, one flat line conveying many highs and lows in the narrative curve. One does wonder whether Mahadevan and Surendran wrote these lines, in Hindi, themselves.

Scribe-turned-stage actor-turned TV and film actor-turned TV and film director, Ananth Narayan Mahadevan, who added the middle name only much later in his career, had a long stint under actor-director Dinesh Thakur in his theatre group, Ank, an experience that helped this Tamil-speaking actor develop his Hindi-Urdu vocabulary and dialogue delivery. My first look at his directorial skills was in a film called Mee Sindhutai Sapkal, made in the Marathi language. Ananth, along with Sanjay Pawar, received the National Award for Best Screenplay and Dialogue for their efforts. It bagged a total of four National Awards in 2010.

Mahadevan debuted with the film Dil Vil Pyar Vyar (2002) and has made a host of films since. Mee Sindhutai Sapkal was biopic, and its success prompted its producers to put their faith in Ananth’s next, also a biopic, but this time in Hindi. Sindhutai’s screen persona was that of a feisty woman in a contemporary conflict, while Gour’s life is lost in dusty cup-boards from the 1940s, and he comes across as a dull, uninteresting person, which he might presently be, and might have been, even in his younger days, but a film-maker needs to overcome this cinematic hurdle. Mahadevan’s shot-taking fails to address this hurdle, and is reflective of the Gour era. Around the mid-way point, even Alphonse Ray’s shot-on-film visuals cannot prevent a 40-wink interlude. Like in Mee Sindhutai Sapkal, he uses a smart

pre-title beginning, but forgets to get back to the significance of the boy running along the railway tracks. At the Balasore jail, Rajeev asks a 60 looking jailor, “Is your grand-father alive?” The scene in which Gour is asked by a security guard to spin a shirt from cotton seeds that he has brought along needed to be better shaped to be credible, as did the Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi scene. An ensemble cast is assembled only to deliver cameos.

To his credit, he recreates the ambience of the each locale very effectively. Gour’s first realisation of memory loss is a fine piece of cinema. His meeting with Gandhi is well-famed and well-shot. Orissa (now Odisha) missing from the large cut-out map of India, only to be found stuck folded behind, is another take-away. If, after seeing the film, you feel that the story has shades of Saaraansh, and Vinay Pathak reminds you of the Saaraansh lead actor Anupam Kher, whose on-screen plight was not too different from that of Gour’s, and who was about the same age playing an old man as Pathak was when this film was made, you will be readily forgiven. The way the Taamra Patra issue is resolved, you might end up feeling that there was much ado about nothing.

Vinay Pathak (Khosla Ka Ghosla, Johnny Gaddar, My Name is Khan, Bheja Fry) looks and underplays the part. His use of ‘hum’ as a personal collective/royal pronoun ‘we’, is unconvincing, as his is his accent, in general. For the large part, he remains dead-pan. This helps some crisp one-liners create impact. For the rest, it tends to get monotonous. Konkona Sen Sharma (Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Page 3, Omkara, Life in a... Metro) returns to the screen after child-birth, and gets extra-casual. Gifted with an easy-going style, casualness comes to her effortlessly. It is not called for in this film, though. Two scenes are apparently written to bring out the fire in her; both come across as contrived. Her real-life husband Ranvir Shorey (Ek Chhotisi Love Story, Traffic Signal, Bajatey Raho), has metamorphosed into a much better actor than the one we encountered at the Traffic Signal.

Tannishtha Chatterjee (Jal, Gulab Gang, Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain) raises expectations, only to just pass muster. Others who feature in one or two scene roles are Vikram Gokhale (Chief Minister), Vipin Sharma (Ahirkar, the crooked neighbour), Rajit Kapoor (Mohan Joshi, Mohan Krishna of the real world), Saurabh Shukla (Special Secretary - Freedom Cell), Asrani      (Khadi Commission boss), Siddharth Jadhav (pension tout), Mohan Kapoor (doctor)

Viju Khote (grocer Yadav), Neha Pendse (Das's daughter-in-law), Khushboo (Rajiv Singhal's wife), Neena Kulkarni (Mrs. Apte--Freedom Cell), Rahul Vohra (editor of Mid-Day) and Bharat Dabholkar (security guard).

Music by Dr. L. Subramaniam (not commonly associated with Hindi cinema scores), and songs in the voice of his wife and popular crooner Kavitha Krishnamurthy, are serene and dignified. Sound design by Resul Pookutty is of a high calibre, while editor Sreekar Prasad sticks to blank looks as most of his cutting points.          

Rating: **1/2

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqpHsT41CM4

Mumbai Mantra-CineRise Screenwriting Programme 2015: It all begins with a story, and then …

Names, names and more names. And frankly, Anjum Rajabali, should consider an alternate career as a compère. Not many could rattle off name after name of film personalities and their films with such élan and in such fluent English. And even then, had the audience at the J.W. Marriott, Juhu, Mumbai, not already partaken of a sumptuous Sunday-morning breakfast, it would have found it difficult to keep pace. Some 20 others spoke too, some briefly, some not so briefly. All for a very good cause, though.

Mumbai Mantra-CineRise Screenwriting Programme 2015 was inaugurated by actor-producer Anil Kapoor. As many as 550 entries were received, of which 100 were initially short-listed and, after two-day workshops in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, that figure was brought down to 10. These 10 ideas and their ideators were introduced to the press that day, 09 August. After sumptuous food and flowing drinks, this select group of Top 10 was escorted to Lonavla, a hill-resort near Mumbai (when in doubt, head for the hills?), to be mentored at eight defined stages of creative intervention, over a five-day screen-writing Lab. By the time you read this, the group must be back to base. But the S2S (script to screen) Lab will really culminate with a Pitch Event, to be held in Mumbai, a rare opportunity for screen-writers to pitch their stories to potential producers, financiers, distributors, film festival programmers and curators.

Mumbai Mantra has already had a successful three-year association with the Sundance Institute, which gave shape to the Screenwriters Lab in India, and the Sundance Institute-Mahindra Global Film-making Awards, awarded annually at the Sundance Film Festival. As many as 16 filmmakers have been awarded and 25 screen-writing fellows have been through the last 3 Screenwriting Labs.

Among the four films awarded last year was Indian debutant director Neeraj Gheyvan’s extremely well-crafted Masaan (Fly Away Solo), and he was present at the current event, along with his writer Varun Grover. I got an opportunity to share some notes on Urdu poetry with Varun, who hails from the city which has been home to dozens of outstanding Urdu poets, Lucknow. Varun’s father reads and writes Urdu, but he regrets not following his father’s advice. Yet, Varun and Masaan have done yeoman’s service to the art, by including the works of both classic and modern Urdu poets in the film. The event  also gave me a chance to meet my old friend Shahid Akhtar, son of Urdu poet and film lyricist, late Jan Nisar Akhtar, and younger brother of Javed Akhtar, after some 20 years! Shahid works for the organisers.

This year, the screenwriting programme’s banner is Mumbai Mantra-CineRise, but the nature and format of the workshop remains the same. Rohit Khattar, Chairman, Mumbai Mantra, said, “Our mission at Mumbai Mantra is to provide a springboard for writers which will help them take their scripts to the screen. These screenplays (and even those that do not get selected as finalists), shall be part of the CineRise Script Bank, and may still get attention from producers in the future. India is a land of stories and we would like to provide. The programme is also open to non-resident Indians and even those with mixed Indian parentage.”

Anjum Rajabali, Convenor and Mentor, who has been with the programme from the very beginning and who looked at Sundance as the obvious choice to spur the movement on, three years ago, opines, “There is no doubt that the most important need facing the Indian film industry today is fresh, original, cinematic scripts. For that, we need to encourage and nurture young talented screenwriters, by helping them develop their skills, and provide them an interface with filmmakers so that their work can be showcased productively. And that is precisely what Mumbai Mantra has been single-mindedly focussing its voluntary energies on.”

We know it all begins with a story, but then it needs a mantra (magic formula) to turn into good cinema. Given the right inputs, some of these 10 stories might just turn out to be an Umrika or Margarita With a Straw, two other wel-received films that grew out of previous Mantra editions. So, as they say in Umrika (America), and elsewhere, "Cheers" to that!

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Mentors include:

#Akshat Verma (Delhi Belly)

#Anjum Rajabali (Drohkaal, Ghulam, The Legend of Bhagat Singh, Rajneeti)

#Audrey Wells (Shall We Dance, Under the Tuscan Sun, The Truth About Cats & Dogs)

#Michael Radford (Il Postino: The Postman, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Merchant of Venice)

#Navdeep Singh (Manorama Six Feet Under, NH10),

#Ravi Jadhav (Natarang, Balgandharva)

#Pubali Chaudhuri (Rock On!!, Kai Po Che!)

#Sebastian Cordero (Europa Report, Cronicas, Ratas, Ratones, Rateros)

#Sridhar Raghavan (Dum Maaro Dum, Khakee, Bluffmaster!) and

#Sriram Raghavan (Ek Hasina Thi, Johnny Gaddar, Badlapur).

Attendees at the glittering event included Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Abbas–Mustan (brothers, director duo), Nandita Das, Sudhir Mishra, Gul Panag, Onir, Hansal Mehta, Poonam Dhillon, Renuka Shahane, Tisca Chopra, Siddhartha Basu, Kamlesh Pandey, Vasan Bala, Danish Aslam, Jaaved Jaffrey and Nilesh Maniyar.

The ten projects short-listed

1. ANADHIKRUT

An ambitious head of a ‘Coaching-Class’, who’s chasing a dream, is having illicit affairs with the wife of a local municipal corporator, and with one of his female-students, simultaneously.

Writer/Director: Gaurav Patki

2. PAAGI

A ‘Paagi' (The Footmark Detective) would die to keep the honour of his art, but would he choose his integrity above someone’s life?

Writer/Director: Gajendra Shrotiya

3. BOMBAY BLACK

Ved is a teenager who lives in the suburbs in a tiny apartment. He attends a posh school in south Mumbai where he is a star cricket player. Fareed used to work as a foot soldier for the underworld but has spent the last several years drinking relentlessly, and not leaving his tiny room in a tenement where he sees and talks to a girl with a hole in her head.

Writer/Director: Rajiv Rao

4. COLOURS OF FADING MEMORIES

Set in the early 90s Hindi film industry in Bombay, the story is a psychological drama about a

dispirited assistant director whose life changes when she discovers an old film script, presumably written by her clinically depressed ‘Professor’ father, and unlocks the mystery that ruined her family years ago.

5. INDIA VS PAKISTAN

After a hostile invasion leads to a military standoff at the LOC, Americans mediate between the Indian and Pakistan Prime Ministers; as the crisis escalates, the Indian Prime Minister’s son is arrested for murder.

Writer/Director: Pranav G. Mahadevia

6. LIKKAR THEKA

Two charismatic brothers, poles apart in character, are bound by love and a passionate dream.

A future envisioned by their father, a vibrant man who believed in the healing powers of alcohol, is cut short when he dies in a sudden accident, and their life is turned upside down.

Writer/Director: Manav Vigg

7. MITRA

Mitra, an emotional story of a man and the woman he idolises, who happens to be a lesbian, is set in pre-independence India, when the struggle for independence from colonialism was at its peak.

Writer/Director: Ravi Guria

8. RAAT AKELI HAI

In a lawless suburb in Kanpur, tough, conservative cop, Jatil Yadav, attempts to solve the murder of the head of an old feudal family, Raghubeer Singh, who is found lying in a pool of blood, on the night of his wedding to the young, alluring bride, Radha.

Writer/Director: Smita Singh

9. THAKURMAR JHULI

Thakurmar Jhuli is a collection of old Bengali folktales that have travelled down the paths of time as bedtime stories to children, one generation after another. One of the most iconic stories in the mix is the story of two princes, reincarnated to fight the blight of demonic predators that prey on humans in a world full of magic, awe and mystery.

Writers/Directors: Mahee Pal & Mon Pal

10. THE BIRYANI SELLER

An extraordinary tale of an ordinary roadside Biryani seller from the streets of Kolkata, who embarks on a journey to realise his unfulfilled dream of becoming an artist, set in the backdrop of globalisation and the rapidly-changing socio-political demography of urban India.

Writers/Directors: Rajdeep Paul & Sarmistha Maiti

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A $16.5 bn multinational group based in Mumbai, India, Mahindra employs more than 1,80,000 people, in over 100 countries. Among a host of industries, it is also in the film-making and vacation marketing. The group has produced the films Sorry Bhai, Antaheen, Shukno Lanka and Tempest, and the camp at Club Mahindra resort in Lonavla was courtesy Mahindra’s hospitality arm. Mumbai Mantra is a Mahindra group initiative.

Associated with the event as prime sponsor is Tube Investments (TI) India, part of the Murugappa Group. Founded in 1900, the INR 269 bn Murugappa Group is headquartered in Chennai. Major companies of the Group include Carborundum Universal Ltd., Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company Ltd., Cholamandalam MS General Insurance Company Ltd., Coromandel International Ltd., Coromandel Engineering Company Ltd., E.I.D. Parry (India) Ltd., Parry Agro Industries Ltd., Parry Sugar industries Ltd, Shanthi Gears Ltd., Tube Investments of India Ltd., and Wendt (India) Ltd. Renowned brands like BSA, Hercules, Ballmaster, Ajax, Parry’s, Chola, Gromor, Shanthi Gears and Paramfos are from the Murugappa stable. The Group has a workforce of over 32,000 employees.

(TI is not to be confused with Texas Instruments or Toastmasters International, on account of the same acronym).

The Gift, Review: Simon says watch this film

There’s an old-world fluidity about The Gift. Unhurried narrative, under-the-skin performances, music as an essential component, naturally rich visuals, a critical look at morals and scruples, and a nod to several classic films of the stalker/suspense genre, as well as an outstanding war epic, not to mention a tribute to a popular song. It is more British than American in tone and tenor, though the production house (Blue Tongue) and the writer-director-actor (Joel Edgerton) are Australian. The Gift is a cinematic interpretation of the premise that some bygones do not go away, and that mean streaks in human nature can dwell just below the surface for decades, to operate clandestinely at times, and ruthlessly, at others.

A young married couple, Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn Callen (Rebecca Hall), relocate from Chicago to a suburban Los Angeles neighbourhood, after Simon finds a new job, in an industrial cyber-security company. There, they run into Gordon "Gordo" Moseley (Joel Edgerton), who introduces himself as a former high school class-mate of Simon's, who Simon claims to have completely forgotten. They give him their number, but instead of calling, he finds their address and begins dropping in unannounced, usually when Simon is at work, and keeps sending many gifts, including fish for Robyn (a reputed designer)'s pond.

One night, Gordo invites Simon and Robyn to dinner, at his large and elegant home. Minutes after they arrive, he receives a mysterious phone call from "work" and leaves suddenly, for a few minutes, giving the couple time to mock him and explore the house. They find a closet full of women's clothes, and a children's bedroom, despite Gordo telling them he doesn't have a family. When he returns, and Simon confronts him, Gordo tells them it was actually his wife on the phone; she has recently divorced him and taken off with both his children. Simon finds his story misleading and he tells Robyn to wait in the car, while he ends their friendship. The next day, Robyn returns home from her jogging routine to find the fish in the pond are dead, and their dog missing. Simon immediately suspects Gordo and drives to his house to confront him, only to find out that it was not Gordo's home. Working from home, Robyn begins to suspect that she is not alone in the house, after hearing noises and finding the kitchen tap turned on.

It must be said as credit to Edgerton’s writing skills that he manages to keep you engaged, even as he draws obvious inspiration from Psycho (the bathing scene), Cape Fear and Fatal Attraction (terrorising by relentless stalking) and Old Boy (the 2003 Korean cult movie about bygones from school-days causing mayhem in adult years). In the context of the theme film, and to differentiate it from the French ‘loser’ comedy, The Gift (Le Cadeau/Bankers Also Have Souls, remade in Hindi as Bheja Fry), the original title ‘Weirdo’ was more apt. Two passing references each, to religion and war, make subtle points, without too much provocation. Plot points are cleverly created, sometimes a bit too cleverly. 

Debutant director Edgerton, whose production credits include Loaded, Bloodlock, The Square and Apparition, has directed a short film called The List. Edgerton wrote the screenplays for Bloodlock, The List and The Pitch. Arriving on the feature direction locale, Edgerton paints his characters as persons who genuinely want to be seen as they are, but have other layers that they hide sub-consciously. In this milieu, his choice of the female protagonist and her new-born baby as the hopes of a non-judgemental, purer tomorrow, is important. Notwithstanding one false alarm, when he cuts from an innocent shot to an ear-splitting tearing of adhesive tape, for no apparent reason, he keeps those stock-in-trade, misleading, suspense scenes to a minimum. The way he manipulates audience, and his protagonists’, sympathies shifting from one character to another is commendable.

There are some loose ends, however, they can pass as conscious eschewing of spoon-feeding or even deliberate plays to keep the issue open. “Simon says”, the party-game, is well-woven into the screenplay, punning on the lead actor’s first name. A logical grouse is the long list of coincidences that drive the story forward , and all the moves and risks that Gordo takes working out flawlessly in his favour, against very high odds. Scenes of Robyn jogging and performing household chores do not bear so much repetition. The end is jolting, to say the least, yet, one cannot help thinking that unscrupulous Simon would stop at anything to get his nemesis by the throat, and make him blurt out the truth, rather than die wondering.

Edgerton himself pays an on-screen tribute to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, with special mention of  the Ride of the Valkyries music score, which is from the second opera in Wagner’s enormous four-opera Ring Cycle. The Valkyries were goddesses of war and battle in European mythology. Mid-air hordes of military helicopters was the closest one could get to flying horses in screen warfare of 1979, and the music formed Coppola’s overture to an attack on a Vietnamese fishing village.

Another curious reference is to Bojangles, which is the name of the Callens’ dog. Mr. Bojangles was the nick-name first used by Bill Robinson, a black tap dancer. After Robinson's success, many black street-dancers became known as ‘Bojangles’. The song with this title was written and originally released by Jerry Jeff Walker, in the mid-'60s, and was released in 1968. Walker said it was a composite, a little bit of several people he met. Over the last 47 years, many artistes have recorded this song, including Bob Dylan, Harry Nilsson, John Denver, Nina Simone, Neil Diamond and Sammy Davis Jr. In the film, Gordo points out that Sammy Davis Jr. usually gets the credit that should rightfully go to Walker.

A producer father, and actresses for sister and wife, give Jason Bateman (Arrested Development-TV, Juno, Hancock, This Is Where I Leave You) good lineage. To star as the good guy, revealed to be an unscrupulous bully, against the director’s own strong portrayal of a confusing, ambivalent man, was no mean task. Jason Bateman does a splendid job. Even more so, considering his origins were in TV comedy shows. English actress Rebecca Hall

(Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Closed Circuit, Transcendence), has the face, physique and voice to interpret Robyn as an entirely honest and virtuous character, even when she is apparently swayed by the irrational generosity of Gordo. Obvious similarities to Transcendence apart, Hall is a power-house of talent.

As actor, Edgerton (Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones in 2002, Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge of the Sith, Zero Dark Thirty, Warrior) has the most complex role. There are moments when one feels that he’s not even real, just a figment of collective conscience. Benevolence personified, criminal, plotter, sadist, revenge-seeker, and more, Edgerton delineates the overlapping sketch with fine lines. In real-life, Edgerton has often been mistaken for similar-looking fellow Australian actor Sam Worthington, and enjoys giving autographs as such, whenever this happens! Polished support comes from Allison Tolman, Tim Griffin, Busy (not a bad nick-name to have for an actress, if you believe in ‘idle’ worship!) Philipps, Adam Lazarre-White, Beau Knapp, Wendell Pierce and Mirrah Foulkes. A word about Joel’s elder brother, Nash, who has a small role in the film, as Frank Dale: he appeared in Animal Kingdom, as burly Kurt Russell’s stand-in The Thing remake, and as unsung stunt-man in The Matrix, Superman Returns, and Knight and Day. Beating Joel to it, Nash has directed an Australian feature, called The Square, which was produced by good brother Joel.

Music, by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans, stands-out, without being obtrusive. It helps fill the spaces which merely provide links in the tale, without offering any meat. Equally appreciable is the portrait-like cinematography by Eduard Grau. Editing by Luke Doolan paces the film gently, letting the atmosphere grow on you.      

Now, if we were playing the Simon game, and I was Simon, I would say, “Watch the film. And be patient while it unfolds.”

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAMybD0PHv

Also uploaded: Fantastic Four!

Fantastic Four/FANT4STIC, Review:High on Fantasy, Low on Score

Fourth outing for Marvel’s Fantastic 4 has a thinly spread plot and is further handicapped by lack-lustre performances. While a sequel is already in the offing, the 2015 prequel to the sci-fi series that was first adapted to the screen in 1994 seems to offer little raison d’être for it. Ten years ago, the first to be released theatre version, called Fantastic 4, was critically panned, though successful at the box-office. It was directed by Tim Story, and written by Michael France and Mark Frost. Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, 2007, featuring the same 2005 lead actors, got a better critical reception and made fair collections. Again directed by Tim Story, it was written by Don Payne, John Turman and the ‘carried over’ Mark Frost. It took eight long years to witness the arrival of the prequel, which incorporates more differences from, than similarities with, the first three forays. There are new writers, a new director, and all new cast. Rated below par by most critics and scoring low on ticket collections wherever it has been released so far, Fantastic 4 just about fails to make the grade, depending, in the end, on benefit of doubt, as in cricket umpiring.

School friends Reed Richards (Miles Teller) and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) have worked together on a prototype tele-porter since childhood, in Ben’s family junkyard, eventually attracting the attention of black Professor Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey), director of the Baxter Foundation, a government-sponsored research institute for young prodigies. Reed is recruited to join them, and aid Storm's other prodigies, scientist Sue Storm (Kate Mara) and the somewhat reckless technician, Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), both being Franklin’s children, into completing a Quantum Gate, designed by Storm's psychotic and cynical protégé, Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell; Doctor Doom is the Fantastic 4’s principal comic book villain; real name Victor Domashev; in the comics, the character is the leader of a country called Latveria), who grudgingly agrees to help, partly out of his (one-sided) feelings for Sue. Victor had earlier designed a Quantum gate that could transport things to another dimension, but could not bring them back. Moreover, the experiment had caused an explosion that took Sue’s father (Storm’s best friend)’s life, after which he adopted her. Reed’s model succeeds on both counts--sending and bringing back objects like toy planes and cars. Baxter now wants to extend Reed’s model’s functionality by transporting humans to the other dimension, studying it, and coming back with knowledge about energy sources that could save the earth.

The experiment is successful, and the facility's supervisor, Dr. Allen (Tim Blake Nelson), plans to send a group from NASA to venture into the parallel dimension, known as Planet Zero. Disappointed at being denied the chance go for the expedition themselves, Reed, Johnny, and Victor, along with Ben, use the Quantum Gate to embark on an unsanctioned voyage to Planet Zero. There, they discover a world with a bizarre landscape. Victor attempts to touch the green-lava like substance which glides along the ground, causing the surface to collapse, and the ground to erupt. Reed, Johnny, and Ben return to their shuttle just as Sue brings them back to Earth. Victor is left behind after he falls into the collapsing landscape.

The machine explodes on arrival, altering Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben on a molecular-genetic level, suffusing them with super-human powers, and abilities beyond their control: Reed can stretch like rubber, Sue can become invisible and generate force fields of energy, Johnny can engulf his entire body in flames and fly, and Ben becomes bigger and develops a rock-like skin, which gives him the strength of a huge boulder. But they find themselves placed in government custody and confinement, not in an attempt to bring them back to normal, but to be studied and exploited. Blaming himself for the whole episode, Reed escapes from the facility, and plans to rescue the others, most of all, his pal Ben, whom he literally dragged to come on the trip.

Jeremy Slater (Tape 4, My Spy) was commissioned to write the script in 2012, and then Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past) came aboard, the next year. It is quite likely that the two drafts were not well collated by the director, who, to add to the confusion, has reportedly claimed in the media that his version was significantly altered by 20th Century Fox before release. A lot of time is spent on the back-story, which is undeniably a tribute to Tomorrowland, and establishing characters, most of them either uni-dimensional or melodramatic, or both. Doom’s crush on Sue is hardly motivation enough to bring him back on the project, and his later motivation for sliding into decimating villainy is flimsy.

A black man with a heart of gold, his son who is a rebellious car souper-hero and the late colleague’s daughter whom he adopts—all come across as card-board cut-outs. Stereo-types abound, like Ben’s abusive step-father and the ultra-nationalist NASA supervisor. Wannabe super-heroes wanting glory for themselves, as designers of the programme, having learnt from history that credit goes to astronauts, not designers, is too vain a concept to deserve sympathy. The repeated sarcastic remarks about the earlier generation having ruined our planet and the hope that the present lot will save it would have sounded laudable had they not been inserted in such a contrived manner. On the positive side, the absence of life on Planet Zero is a smart idea-- setting a thief to catch a thief, as in Sue tracking down escapee, runaway Reed, using Reed’s inspiration Captain Nemo as a peg; Sue’s own specialisation in using music as a means of studying personalities and predicting behaviour--are parts well-written. The references to Kosovo and East European accents are witty.

Directed Josh Trank debuted with a super-hero film, Chronicle. Before that, he edited Big Fan. Trank had said before its release that Fantastic Four is heavily influenced by David Cronenberg, that 1981's Scanners and 1986's The Fly influenced the look of the film, and that its overall tone would feel like “Steven Spielberg meets Tim Burton”. Looking at it as a stand-alone property, we find a tale of squandered opportunities, and very little of Spielberg, Cronenberg or Burton. Casting is not the best we would expect, and the special effects, though seamless, get repetitive. The back-story is confined to Reed and Ben, by-passing equally, if not more, interesting characters like Sue and Victor. We do sympathise with the later plight of the hapless victim, Ben ‘The Thing’, which itself is surprising because he is such a big hulk. Take a closer look, and you’ll see him as a grouse and a wimp! The only time the four get into battle together is when they are forced to pit their wit against the mechanised, altered, invincible personality of Doom. Sadly, by then it is time for the credit titles to roll. Playing with the audience, Trank does not use the words ‘Fantastic Four’ in the film even once, not even in the last shot. Instead, he brings in the title of the film as….

Miles Teller (Rabbit Hole, Spectacular Now, Divergent, Whiplash), who fitted so well into his Whiplash role, is all at sea here. Speech (sore throaty), eyes (lost, dopey), look (faraway) and interest (disinterest)—all are suspect. Michael Bakari Jordan (Fruitvale Station, Red Tails, Chronicle, worked with Teller in That Awkward Moment) walks into, or rather flies into, a stereo-type, without distinguishing himself. Seen in Brokeback Mountain, Transcendence, House of Cards, Kate Mara underplays and deadpans most moments. It is in the ‘music moments’ that she impresses. You see very little of Jamie Bell (Jane Eyre, Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, Man on a Ledge). As the young Ben, Evan Hannemann does well, as does his partner, Owen Judge (Young Reed). Poorly etched, Doom remains an enigma, so does Tobey Kebbell (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes). Reg E. Cathey (Born on the Fourth of July, Arbitrage, The Mask, Clear and Present Danger, The Machinist) is known for his gravelly voice. Notwithstanding that fact, he could easily be replaced by any black actor in his 50s or 60s without making any difference to the proceedings.

Fantastic Four is high on fantasy, but low on score.

Rating: **1/2

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRoD28-WgU

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A Fantastic Four movie, produced by Roger Corman and directed by Oley Sassone, was made in 1994, at a cost of $1.5 million and shot in three weeks. It was junked and never released, for a host of reasons, including allegations that the quality was really bad.

Here’s the synopsis of the 21 year-old effort:

The film begins with Reed Richards (Alex Hyde-White) and Victor Von Doom (Joseph Culp) as close university colleagues who decide to use the opportunity of a passing comet to try an experiment. However, the experiment goes wrong, leaving Victor horribly scarred. Sue and Johnny Storm are two children living with their mother, who runs a boarding house, where Reed lives. Ben Grimm (Michael Bailey Smith) is a family friend and college buddy of Reed's. The film then fast forwards to the present (early 1990s) where Reed, Sue (Rebecca Staab), Johnny (Jay Underwood), and Ben are planning a mission to space, as once again the same comet would pass by the Earth, as it did before when Reed was in college. Running late to meet the others, Ben crosses paths with the artist Alicia Masters (Kat Green), a blind sculptor who quickly begins to develop feelings for the strong yet kind-hearted Ben. Reed dedicates this mission to his friend Victor, believing he had died years before. The team go up in an experimental space craft, only to be hit by cosmic rays from passing comet, due to their ship having been intentionally sabotaged--the giant diamond Reed planned to use to collect the cosmic rays having been replaced with a replica.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Review: US nephew, Russian nephew, German niece and the sinister Italian family plot

It’s not about a man or the man, and the clever acronym for the secret agent network is a clear reference to Uncle Sam, alias the President of the United States of America, even though United Network Command for Law and Enforcement (UNCLE) is formally created only in the very last shot of the film. Then, again, it is not about Americans only. There’s a Russian KGB man too, and an East German woman, who are given equal footage. That is, until a British intelligence officer reveals the role of the UK secret service, MI6, in the operation, and almost steals the thunder from the two cold war foes-turned-allies. A large part of the action involves former Nazis and takes place in Italy, which, under Fascist dictator Mussolini, joined hands with Hitler’s Germany during World War II. Amidst all this confusion, writer-director Guy Ritchie weaves in some genuine laughs and takes you across a whole half-century of cinematic experiences, the era of James Bond and the short-lived Bond spin-off series (Matt Helm, Flint), the Peter Sellers’ bumbling Jacques Clouseau comedies, the Terence Hill-Bud Spencer funny westerns, and the numerous detective duo films that paired trait opposites to generate comedy in contradiction.

UNCLE began as an NBC TV series and lasted four years, 1964-68. It also spawned eight feature films, some of which I got to see as a teenager at the Metro cinema in Bombay (now Mumbai), distributed and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). They starred Robert Vaughn (see notes below) and David McCallum (Sol Madrid, The Great Escape, blonde mane, black turtlenecks, brooding persona) as Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin respectively. Both are in their 80s now, and while Vaughn has done a lot of significant film work in the last 50 years, McCallum remained a TV figure for the greater part of his career. The Turner company and U.N.C.L.E.’s co-creator, British American Norman Felton, had the film rights for a long time, but after Time Warner bought over Turner, the rights came to them. There was talk of remaking/rebooting the series for many years, till Ritchie and Ingram set to work in earnest, in early 2012, shortly before Felton passed away. Now, cut to 1963. 

Thief, trickster and pick-pocket turned CIA agent Napoleon Solo pulls out Gaby Teller, daughter of an alleged Nazi scientist turned United States collaborator Udo, from East Berlin, out-foxing KGB operative Illya Kuryakin. In a toilet meeting, his superior, Saunders, reveals to Solo that Teller’s uncle Rudi works in a shipping company, owned by Alexander and Victoria Vinciguerra, a wealthy couple (and Nazi sympathisers), who intend to use Udo to build their own private nuclear weapon, and sell it to the highest bidder. Suddenly, Kuryakin emerges from nowhere and grapples with Solo, getting a strangle-hold on him. Saunders then says that Kuryakin is in the USA on official capacity, to be part of a joint American-Russian covert operation. Solo and Kuryakin are ordered to join forces and head for Italy, to stop the Vinciguerras from succeeding, with both men secretly assigned to steal the weapon’s designs for their respective governments.

Two newcomers--Jeff Kleeman and David C. Wilson--worked with Guy Ritchie and Lionel Wigram on the story, based on Sam Rolfe’s work on the original TV series. Screenplay credits are shared between Ritchie and Wigram, who also teamed up on Sherlock Holmes.  Wigram says that the film is inspired by “…our love of Sean Connery (James Bond), Michael Caine (Harry Palmer), The Odessa File, all those classic 60’s and 70’s movies, and John le Carré movies. For us, it was our homage, if you like, to those films.” I get the Bond bit, but the others were in a different mould altogether. Bond had humour, more so after Roger Moore took on the role. The others were very serious takes on the business of international espionage.

UNCLE is a parody masquerading as a serious spy thriller. Digging into the genesis of the organisation was a good idea, and this renovated first chapter forms a prequel to a likely franchise. Comedy, of the irony/one-liner/dead-pan/one-upmanship could have been the cornerstone of the narrative. The contradiction is the fact that most comic punches are contrived, or in questionable taste, while the serious spying is rather well-written. Given the ambience of the film, the reverse was to be expected. Toilet humour involving Saunders and Solo, the pawing of Gaby’s upper thighs by Kuryakin to check the working of a concealed transmitter, and lines like “Napoleon? Only my mother calls me Napoleon!” are cases in point. The scenes about agents getting into their new, assignment cover id get-ups, the sarcastic punches about technological bragging by Solo and Kuryakin’s dead-pan trumping are exceptions.

By having Americans, Russians, Germans and Italians in the film, with sub-titles all over, Ritchie adds to the tedium. Agreed that it is a cold war period film, and the Germans and Italians were common enemies of the Americans and Russians in the World War; that does not mean the span has to include all four. One only thanks the writers for not bringing in the French—they too had a government, under Vichy, that allied itself with the Nazis. UNCLE labours in the first half, with tons of walking and talking, literally, and towards the end, the clever climactic punches are wasted away in a few minutes of screen action. Two sets of actions, once earlier and once just before the climax, are explained with imaginative editing technique, once in excised real-time, and once in immediate recap, including the edited-out bits.

British director Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Sherlock Holmes-2009, 2011, RocknRolla, Snatch) has a cult following. Moreover, he has two comic-book superhero (Superman, Lone Ranger) superstars playing the lead roles here, not to mention Hugh Grant. No wonder the audience at a mixed press-private screening at Mumbai’s Fun Republic on 24 August laughed out loud at even borderline funny jokes or thrust-at-you funny situations. His tongue-in-cheek rehashing of the Christoph Waltz character from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, and having the IB actor Sylvester Groth play the torturer, with an anti-climactic ending, will have you in splits, the directly parodying notwithstanding. Having said that, and seen that, let’s be frank: UNCLE has some shades of it, and yet it is no Sherlock Holmes. Cutting points are often functional rather than by design, Alicia Vikander’s casting is suspect and Jared Harris has little to do. In a clever bit of ‘patriotism’, Ritchie puts the American and Russian, as well as the East German, under the command of British MI6!

Tom Cruise was to play Solo, and the film was earlier to be helmed by a different director. Henry Cavill (Immortals, The Tudors, Cold Light of Day, Man of Steel) is his replacement and Illya Kuryakin is Armie Hammer (Lone Ranger, The Social Network). Both pass muster, scoring in the action and dead-pan parts. When called upon to put across some tame humour, the effort shows. Hugh Grant, reportedly not an easy actor to sign and to work with, is effortless as the MI6 man Waverly, and enjoys himself in his smallish role. Elizabeth Debicki (6’2”, born in Paris, with Polish and Australian roots, seen in The Great Gatsby) is in her element as Victoria, cunning and ruthless. Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina, A Royal Affair, Anna Karenina) speaks with a voice so hoarse that it is way past being seductive and betrays a medical condition. Considering the sexual innuendos she is involved in, a more voluptuous actress would have been more appropriate. Yes, she is active and energetic.

Jared Harris (Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes) as Saunders seems to be taking sadistic pleasure in delivering the toilet puns, but that was the only way they would have made any impact. As Victoria’s husband Alexander, Luca Calvani looks the racing maniac and brawny playboy he is cast as. Christian Berkel as Udo Teller, Gaby’s father, hams in tandem with Vikander. And yes, another word about Sylvester Groth as Uncle Rudi, the torturer. The German actor is also a singer, a tenor, and his film appearances include Generation War. He has the basic facial structure of Jack Nicholson, and I guess Ritchie could not resist modelling him as such.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is likely to charm Guy Ritchie’s ‘nephews and nieces’. Other relatives in the audience might find it relatively less charming than Ritchie’s own Uncle Holmes.

Rating: **1/2

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4E9TyrOFlQ

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*Robert Vaughn was nominated for an Academy Award in 1960 for his supporting role as an alcoholic war veteran in The Young Philadelphians. That same year, he completed his master’s degree in performing arts. He also starred in the hit film The Magnificent Seven. While working on U.N.C.L.E., he attended night school and earned his Ph.D. in communications from the University of Southern California, in 1972. His films include The Towering Inferno, The Delta Force, The Ten Commandments and Bullitt. In an interesting twist, Robert Vaughn played the villainous Ross Webster, in 1983’s Superman III, the same year Henry Cavill was born. Henry Cavill is now 32. Robert Vaughn was 32 when he first played Solo.

*Sam Rolfe died in 1993, aged 69. He was a writer, creator, and producer. Rolfe developed the U.N.C.L.E. series from ideas suggested by Norman Felton (died 2012, aged 99) and Ian Fleming. He also wrote episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. His own favourite from the TV series was the pilot, called The Vulcan Affair, a 70-minute version which never went on air. It was re-edited and released as the first UNCLE film, and titled To Trap a Spy.

*Due to serious issues of transport in getting to the venue, I missed the first few minutes of the film. This can happen on some occasions, in spite of every effort to reach on time, considering Mumbai’s population and roadways system. My apologies, nevertheless.

*At the show, the images were often slightly blurred. I am not commenting on this fact, giving the projection due leeway for a possible, temporary, technical glitch.

Phantom, Review: RAW-hide Rambo

Saif Ali Khan comes in for Salman, Katrina stays put, so do the London locales and the secret agent assassin theme, as director Kabir Khan tries to go one up on his last outing in the genre, Ek Tha Tiger (2012). He has claimed that Tiger was unrealistic, whereas Phantom is close to reality. That claim is highly debatable. Phantom is indeed inspired by real and devastating, events that wreaked terror in Mumbai, in November 2008, killing 167 persons. That does make it realistic, but only in its references. In the film, the villains are made to pay for their misdeeds with their lives, which is mere wishful thinking, a prop to fan nationalistic fervor, in an attempt to deliver populist patriotism. In reality, only one terrorist was apprehended in Mumbai, and hanged.

Phantom is slicker, and more adrenaline tapping, than Tiger, but divested of Indian-Pakistan flash-points, it might not have the impact it does. That, again, is wishful thinking, for what we see is what we have: the tale of an Indian assassin, who traces and kills all the Pakistanis he has been told are terrorists, their ‘handlers’, and terror plotters, across three continents. On the macro scale, it is pulsating and punch-packed. On the micro scale, it is riddled with loopholes and a lot of taken-for-granted action pegs that the writers and the director might have felt cine-goers will either not have time to notice, or willfully overlook.

India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), which is the name of its espionage and counter-espionage agency, has a new recruit, Sumit (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), who sarcastically comments to his boss, Roy (Sabyasachi Chakrabarty) that all India ever does after Pakistani terror attacks is to stop playing cricket with the neighbour. Roy reminds him that the government will not sanction any official offensive action, which is when Sumit suggests they recruit a ‘non-entity’ by the name of Daniyal Khan to carry out a mission of find and kill, even venturing into Pakistan itself.

Daniyal is a (wrongfully) disgraced army officer, who lives in seclusion in a remote snow-clad mountain, without any identity papers or records, a ‘phantom’ (not enough in it to make it the film’s title, with obvious connotations about other, earlier, comic-book and film uses of the same name; but then, ‘Daniyal Khan’, the working title, wasn’t any better). Initially, Daniyal is highly reluctant to go on this suicide mission, where all he is promised is, if he ever returns alive, a reinstatement in the army, for no real reward can be given to a ‘phantom’. Moreover, the operation will be officially unsanctioned. So, if he is caught, he will be disowned.

After Roy himself persuades him, Daniyal agrees, and his first move is to head for Chicago, where American-Pakistani terrorist David Headley is serving a long prison sentence. Daniyal fakes an accident and the culpable homicide lands him in the same jail as Headley. After weeks of meticulous planning, he kills Headley, and then arranges for the ‘presumed dead accident’ victim to emerge unharmed, leading to his immediate release. He then heads for London, looking for Sajid Meer (Mir Sarwar). Meer, another marked terrorist, has undergone plastic surgery, but is vaguely known to RAW agent Nawaz Mistry (Katrina Kaif), who helps Daniyal identify him, based on his personality traits. This marks the beginning of an ‘eliminating partnership’ between the two, in the course of which they develop feelings for each other. Nawaz plays a key role in taking him to the Middle East as well as Pakistan, where his most coveted target, Haaris Saeed, has fanatical following. But Daniyal will stop at nothing to settle scores.

Why should an ex army officer and his wrongfully discredited son (so, so predictable) have no contact with each other for a decade or more defies all logic. Pakistani agents can enter Daniyal’s parental home with amazing ease, but it takes them ages to learn of his identity and designs. Both Daniyal and Nawaz have a short back-story that emerges only late in the film, as another example of lazy, predictable screen-writing. How is it possible that the only record of Daniyal’s 30-35 year life-span is a teenage picture, found with his mother (Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal), and a newspaper clipping about his discharge? How does a total stranger sit in at a meeting of the RAW top brass without the Chief being aware of his identity? What makes Sumit confident that Daniyal’s military discharge is qualification enough for the mission? Daniyal is not shown undergoing any serious training, except some flashbacks about how to use weapons and poisons, and how to trace his victims. Is that enough to take-on an international ring of terrorists, the army background notwithstanding?

Why does Daniyal go to ridiculous lengths to fake an accident, tearing through 50 miles of Chicago traffic and spreading destruction, if all he wanted was a jail rap? Again, the professional stunt-man, a heavy pro, is picked-up by Pak agents like a helpless fly! Neither Roy, nor his Pakistani counter-part, Haider (Denzil Smith), seem to be doing anything, except talking to their staff or their Ministers. Every planned act of Daniyal depends on sheer luck and co-incidence, and it always works out, never mind the preceding cliff-hangers. Sajid Meer is followed for miles and even accosted by the duo, but fails to see anything suspicious in them—some dreaded terrorist this! But one must stop before the147 minutes the film lasts, and give credit where it is due: the 147 minutes (one source gives it 135 min.) do not weigh too heavily on Phantom’s shoulders.

Director Kabir Khan (Kabul Express, New York, Ek Tha Tiger, Bajrangi Bhaijaan) is a name to reckon with. Salman Khan starrer Bajrangi Bhaijaan is being touted as the biggest money-spinner in decades, while his earlier films had their share of appreciation too. Here, he is out to out-do Hollywood, and, as one character says in the film, “If the Americans can do it (strike at the enemy in his den), why can’t we (India)?” So, if Hollywood cannot have enough of rogue nations, hostile dictators and hidden cachés of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMD) being eliminated inside enemy lines, with bullets being pumped by the thousands and explosions/car-wrecks vying to be counted with them, why should India wait for the likes of Headley and Haafiz (renamed Haaris, as a flimsy cover-up) Saeed to be brought to real justice, which, according to him, means death? Why can’t India’s RAW hand over the job to its own Rambo and get on with it?

In a passing comment, it is mentioned that Pakistan is itself a much bigger victim of terrorism than India, with more than 50,000 people having been victims of internal attacks. Though an undeniable fact, the serious irony and gigantic paradox was lost in the din. Killing an adversary using a poison spray that leaves no trace is something RAW admits it learnt from Mossad. We are also reminded that America is funding the rebellion in Syria, again a blunt jab that got lost in transition. Kabir made a documentary in 2001, called The Titanic Sinks in Kabul. Carrying the ship into the Arabian Sea (Mumbai’s Orca Dive Club standing in for the real thing), and re-tracing the route taken by the terrorists who came by sea from Karachi to Mumbai (organic unity in motion?), he works out a ‘tribute to Titanic’ like ending in Phantom. Soon afterwards, he cuts to a poorly written but well-acted last scene, outside the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, the heritage edifice that bore the brunt of the arson and killings in 2008.

After his home production, Agent Vinod, Saif Ali Khan dons the spy mantle again, with some finesse. Long gone are the awkward speech, the chocolate features and the on-the-lean-side physique. He is intense, macho and mature. Katrina Kaif, in a first-pairing with Saif, looks serious, and her speech has improved, though the makers have played safe on her accent, casting her as a Parsee, who grew up in Mumbai, with family in Africa, running an international consultancy/NGO, out of London, speaking Kurdish with the natives. There is no skin show, nor is there any dancing for the body fatale. After New York and Ek Tha Tiger, Katrina Kaif has teamed-up with Kabir Khan for the third time in Phantom. Do their initials have anything to do with it? Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub (Raanjhana, Dolly Ki Doli, Tanu Weds Manu Returns, All Is Well) has great potential. Sabyasachi Chakrabarty (Dil Se, Khakee, The Namesake, Parineeta) has either undergone a crash course in Hindi/Urdu, or his voice is ably-dubbed.

Shahnawaz Pradhan as Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief ‘Haaris’ Saeed has a lot of shouting to do, and a similarity in looks and physique to thank for the ‘notoriety’ that has led to his going underground, though even the persona might largely be the handiwork of creative make-up and costume designers. As Ameenabee, Sohaila Kapur (actor-turned acclaimed director Shekhar Kapur’s real sister) is a treat to watch. Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal is wasted in a brief, inconsequential role and Denzil Smith (an unusual piece of casting) makes good use of his theatre training, though he hits a falsetto occasionally. A brilliant performance comes from the actor who plays the snack-bar owner in Pakistan. If anybody knows his name, do let me know too. I’ll add it in an update.

Music should have been restricted to the background score. The songs, with a lot of Punjabi words and sufi expressions, are irritating distractions. Good work by Aseem Mishra (cinematography) and very good work by editors Aarif Sheikh, Aditya Banerjee.

Right through the film, for every clever twist, there are two co-incidences and two loop-holes. Likewise, for every piece of pithy dialogue, there are two clichés. So, if you have decided to watch the film, don’t think too much while the game is on. There’s enough bang for your buck. If you still get ahead of the break-neck pace and start reflecting, that’s your (bad) luck!

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su0gJWOd00M

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*S. Hussain Zaidi is an authority on the Mumbai underworld, from the 80s to present day! Phantom is loosely based on his latest novel, Mumbai Avengers, while Black Friday, about the 1993 Mumbai blasts, was made into a film by Anurag Kashyap a decade ago. Retired Lt. Gen. Sayed Ali Waris is the hero of the novel, not one Daniyal Khan. And he is not on a solo mission, but leads a team of daredevil agents: a sharp policeman, a suave tech expert, a cerebral scientist and two battle-hardened army officers. “They strike like lightning even as they are pursued by the Pakistani army and the ISI, combing through Sweden, Istanbul, Dubai, Pakistan and Singapore.” So, considerable liberty has been taken with the story and locales, credited to Kabir, Parveez Shaikh and lyricist-dialogue writer Kausar Munir, who was part of the Tiger team too.

*Phantom being banned in Pakistan and the imperative need to change the name of its principal bad guy from Haafiz Saeed to Haaris Saeed are hardly surprising developments. But was anybody expecting this, found on the MSF’s Facebook page yesterday? Excerpts:

New Delhi, August 27, 2015: “Doctors without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, in French) has become aware that its name is being used in promotional interviews for the new film “Phantom”. Additionally, one of the film’s main characters is portrayed as working for MSF. We would like to clarify that MSF has never been consulted or even contacted over the content of this film and is not associated with it in any way.

MSF is also very concerned that in the trailer for the film, a character portrayed as working for MSF is seen holding a gun. MSF also has a strict no guns policy in all our clinics and we do not employ armed guards. None of our staff would ever carry a gun. Any portrayal that suggests otherwise is dangerous, misleading and wrong. We have contacted the film’s production team and are taking legal action in order to correct this dangerous misrepresentation of our organisation and its work.”

Chehere: A Modern Day Classic, Review: What’s in a name?

Even seven years after it was shot, Chehere: A Modern Day Classic, was unlikely to see the even the light of modern day. That it has managed to reach the screen is a miracle, as is the survival of its lead actress, Manisha Koirala, who was battling cancer when the film was almost complete. First screened at the Pravasi Film Festival, New Delhi, in 2010, probably short of a few Manisha scenes, the film was initially titled Badalte Chehere. Described in many media vehicles as the directorial debut of Rohit Kaushik, it is, in fact, his second feature, the first being Mera Dil Leke Dekho (2006), produced by actor Shatrughan and his former actress wife Poonam Sinha, under their Shotgun Films banner, with their daughter and present-day star Sonakshi Sinha as the Costumer. Few critics reviewed the film, and those who did were rather unkind. Kaushik is listed on the website of Monalysa Productions as the maker of over 250 ad films. Mera Dil Leke Dekho did not add to his credentials. Chehere might be a marginal improvement, at best.

Set in England, circa 1952, the story is largely about an old-time Indian actress of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Tarana (Manisha Koirala) and her wheel-chair bound sister (a recent car accident), Amaanat (Divya Dutta), who have moved to British countryside home, after Tarana’s career took a nose-dive. Unable to sing or dance well, Tarana, a good actress when it came to emoting, could not cope with the advent of talkies and singing stars. Even her benefactor, playboy producer RaiSaahab (Jackie Shroff) agreed to a replacement, in tune with the times. She now lives a life caught in a time warp, singing and dancing to her sister’s songs, preening, melancholic, nostalgic and resigned to her fate.

Some 20 years after quitting films, Tarana throws a birthday party at her mansion, with a select group of invitees attending. They include RaiSaahab and his wife (Hrishita Bhatt), an actress who used to be a chorus dancer while Tarana was the star, Dr. Nigam (Gulshan Grover), a man madly in love with Tarana, who migrated to England just so that he could be around his beloved, Tarana’s ‘adopted daughter’ (Geeta Vig) and her boy-friend (Aarya Babbar), a forensic expert specialising in poisons. There are four Indian servants in the house and a British butler. The retinue includes one who is like a family-member (Bob Brahmabhatt) and another who is a garrulous bumpkin (Rakesh Bedi), and they all keep squabbling. So, when Amaanat is found dead in her bed, there are at least ten suspects. What makes it really murky is the real-life case of the Sheena Bora murder that surfaced only last week but has uncanny similarities to the Kaushik script, written at least seven years ago! Anyway, so there is a murder, a body and suspects with motives. Whodunit?

Taking credit for the story and screenplay too, Rohit Kaushik (not to be confused with writer-composer or stage artiste Rohit Kaushik) is the prime suspect himself, and he must take almost all the blame for concocting a confused and convoluted murder mystery. During the intermission at the press preview, he told this writer that he was a great fan of Agatha Christie and P.D. James, had spent some quality time with Glenda Jackson, Katharine Hepburn and John Malkovich, and that the second half of the film we were watching would reach dizzy heights of emotions and suspense. Agatha Christie’s influence is all over, only there is no Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot around, and neither is plot a patch on Dame Christie’s narrative technique. What’s more, in a first of sorts, the guilty do not need much prodding to confess. Like in all murder mysteries, more than one suspect had motives and opportunities to perform the dastardly act—it could be one or more of them. What Kaushik imbibed from the three veteran actors he named remains to be established. And the second half of the film turned out to be a steep climb-down, not an ascending graph.

Kaushik gives his narrative a good start, and brisk pace. After that, the film gets lost amidst jerky entries of the cast, shouting and bickering matches and over-acting. Well-conceived black and white flash-backs, some sensual poses, painting-like imagery, delicate lighting, carefully chosen Urdu couplets, and mood-based tuneful music cannot throw the drowning film a straw to cling on to. Dialogue by Mahendra Pratap Singh shows good command over Hindi and Urdu, the latter being essential in creating the ambience of the era, except when some classic lines are fractured in delivery. Having sold the one-pager as a story idea, Kaushik is unable to develop it into a cohesive screenplay.

Time-lines are muddled; the source of Tarana’s immense wealth lasting decades after her bidding adieu to the profession never explained; the pretentious redundancy of the forensic expert at the scene of the crime sticks out like sore thumb; Dr. Nigam’s nervousness is unconvincingly explained as his need for drink; no logic is put forward for the detaining all the guests in the mansion till the investigation is complete; Tarana says that their mother used to sing a lullaby to her and to Amaanat, but the song she hums is from a film released in 1952, when their mother would have been dead for many years—there are discordant notes galore.

Reposing faith in the director of their failed first pairing (Kaushik said Shroff has stood strongly by him), Jackie Shroff acts above his wont, and even mouths some shairi (Urdu poetry) without sounding funny. Manisha Koirala shares screen space with Jackie for the umpteenth time and acts her part well. Gulshan Grover is always dependable. Divya Dutta has said that her character was modelled after tragedienne actress, late Meena Kumari, of whom she is a great fan. Incidentally, many scenes of the film were shot at Kamalistan, the studio owned by Meena’s producer-director husband, late Kamaal Amrohi. Dutta is full of joie de vivre and self-pity, as a deadly mix.

Hrishita Bhatt (Asoka, Dil Vil Pyar Vyar, Miss Tanakpur Haazir Ho) shows she is capable of much more than those item song appearances. Aarya Babbar (Guru, Tees Maar Khan, Bangistan), son of actors Raj and Nadira Babbar, is made to ape Dev Anand and speak softly, with his face upturned, in a wasted outing. Seen earlier in Marigold, Geeta Vig fails to impress, while comedian Rakesh Bedi is made to speak pointless lines and perform meaningless acts. Bob Brahmbhatt (Janasheen, Gumnaam: The Mystery, Kites), Executive Producer of the film and brother of singer Bali Brahmbhatt, gets a meaty, low-profile role, which he delivers fairly. Almost all actors suffer from ill-defined parts, hiding their true faces, broadly personified, but devoid of micro delineation.

Inspired songs are written by Sayeed Quadri and composed by Jaideep Chowdhury, while the background score composer, Sanjoy Chowdhury, is the son of the legendary music director, late Salil Chowdhury. Due credit to Thomas Xavier (cinematography), Bijon Dasgupta (art), Rekha Chinni Prakash (choreography), Soniya Dhingra and Umang Mehta (costumes)  and Jitendra Chaudhary (sound design). For the close-cut introductory sequences, kudos to the unbilled editor. Pity all these contributions are towards a lost cause.

Chehere (oddly spelt, meaning 'faces'): A Modern Day Classic is an overly ambitious and self-congratulatory title for a film. But then, you can call your film what you like! What’s in a name?

Rating: *1/2

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kleasVyyfrM

She’s Funny That Way, Review: Screwball sex comedy, the Bogdanovich way

In Ernst Lubitsch’s Cluny Brown (1946), Charles Boyer, playing Adam Belinski, says to Jennifer Jones, “In Hyde Park, some people like to feed nuts to the squirrels. But if it makes you happy to feed squirrels to the nuts, who am I to say nuts to the squirrels?” Writer-director Peter Bogdanovich liked this phrase so much, that he made it the title for his latest film, included an acknowledged clip of the famous scene, and wrote entire sequences woven around this apparently profound piece of philosophy. Only, he substituted London’s Hyde Park with New York’s Central Park. Then, his American well-wishers felt the adult film might be taken for a children’s fairy-tale, while his European contacts told him that the strange title would be tough to translate. So, he remembered Frank Sinatra’s 1943 rendition of a 1928 song, and found a replacement for the nutty title. The song goes:

'Not much to look at, nothing to see / Just glad I'm living and lucky to be /

I've got a woman crazy for me / She's funny that way.'

Written in 1999-2000, with a 1970s feel to it, inspired by the Neil Simon plays of the 50s-70s most of which were turned into films, with a dash of Woody Allen, She’s Funny That Way is warm and satirical at the same time, but falling just short of the class that early Bogdanovich films belonged to. It is a sex comedy with almost no sex, and is enacted in a stage production style, perhaps because it is about a series of events, mainly fixations, mix-ups and coincidences, during a Broadway theatre production. At just over 90 minutes, the film keeps you amused all along, and occasionally makes you laugh-out-loud, but, sadly, it’s all over before you really begin to savour the pastiche.

A Broadway director, Arnold Albertson (Owen Wilson), married, and a father of two, arrives in New York, to conduct rehearsals and stage a play, starring a British screen star, Seth Gilbert (Rhys Ifans). His family is expected to join him the next day. Delta, his wife (Kathryn Hahn), is playing a major role in the play. He calls for a young escort (read prostitute) Izzy (Imogen Poots), who dreams of becoming an actress, and whose parents (Richard Lewis and Cybill Shepherd) are blissfully unaware that their daughter is a call-girl. After Arnold pays her a huge amount, asking her to quit her profession, she passes an audition lands a part in his own play, the very next day. The playwright Josh (Will Forte) falls in love with her, even though he's actually dating her therapist, Jane (Jennifer Aniston), with whom he has just had a massive quarrel. Confused? The merry-go-round has just begun! 

Bogdanovich wrote the script with his then wife, Louise Stratten, at the turn of the century. Eight years after the death of his first wife, Dorothy Stratten, he had married her little sister, Louise. He and Louise Stratten divorced in 2000. While writing the script, Bogdanovich was inspired by an incident in Singapore during the time he was filming Saint Jack in 1978, where he interacted with many prostitutes, after hiring them as extras for his film. He would give them more money than their ‘salary’, for them to leave the prostitution business. The original cast had Bogdanovich discoveries John Ritter and Cybill Shepherd (also his muse) as the married couple, with Stratten playing the prostitute. Ritter died in 2003, and Bogdanovich put the project on hold. In 2010, protégés of Bogdanovich, directors Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, came aboard as executive producers. It took these two, and 24 others, to produce the film. Director, producer, writer, actor, film critic, and author Bogdanovich, who is 76 now, writes a blog called, guess…Blogdanovich! And one must remember that he is more than an itinerant actor. In his own words, “I was 16 when I started to work with Stella Adler, but I had to lie about my age and say I was 18, because you had to be 18 to get into her class. I studied with her for four years, until I was about 20.”

Script-wise, it is a thin premise. One client obsessed with a prostitute, another gifting her $30,000 to quit the trade, a third preferring her over his high-strung psychiatrist girl-friend, and a medley of man-woman relationship tracks, criss-crossing at the drop of a hat (there’s a scene about a hat too!) make for a whacky, screwball comedy, as evident in the “Quick! Hide in the bathroom,” scenes. Problem is Bogdanovich and Stratten want to keep it realistic too, and bring in a lot of language-humour of the pseudo-intellectual kind, perhaps in an attempt to strike a balance. Identities and relations of the characters are cleverly introduced and intertwined, while the now famous Izzy being interviewed by a sour, hard-nosed film journalist called Judy, is a well-designed ploy to move the story along in flashbacks, peppering it with sarcasm. It works for the first few times, and then loses impact, though.  

Coming from the man who made The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?, and Paper Moon, this film is more of a dual take-off on both Hollywood and Broadway (imagine a call girl, who wants to get away from the sordid profession and start a career as an actress, landing her first role as that of a prostitute!), with the critic in Peter Bogdanovich holding his tongue firmly in cheek. Locales, entries and exits are designed in a very much drama style (Noises Off hangover?), while cinematic language is well-employed in scenes like the off-screen hot embraces and kisses between Delta and Seth during a rehearsal, with only Arnold’s face, in rapid jump cuts, to suggest his outrage, and the taxi-ride scene. Casting and performances are uniformly above par, with the judge and the detective standing out. Colourful and youthful cartoon fonts are used in the titles, even though there is only one character in the film who is really young, and the theme is clearly adult.

As Arnold, Owen Wilson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Shanghai Noon, Wedding Crashers) is an innovative bit of casting, and came in courtesy Wes Anderson. Known as a funny man, he showed how over-sensitive he was in real life when he attempted suicide shortly after his split from his You, Me and Dupree co-star Kate Hudson. First thing you notice about him is his broken, bumpy nose. He broke it twice, once in a high school scuffle and the second time playing football. Oddly, there is no reference to his nose in the long conversations he has with the hooker. Earning sympathy is spite of his ‘imperfections’, the role is nothing for Wilson to really write home about. Imogen Poots (28 Weeks, Cracks, Waking Madison, Solitary Man), lisp and British-Brooklyn amalgam accents included, is a bold actress with a completely, and quite credibly, ambivalent part.

Rhys Ifans (the surname is the Welsh spelling of Evans) was first noticed in Twin Town, now a cult black comedy. This was followed by Notting Hill and Hannibal Rising. Not a conventional good-looker, and a miscast at first sight, Rhys has a great sense of timing. Kathryn Hahn is the character you empathise most with, and applaud, when she does things

that make her husband squirm. Cybill Shepherd (now 65, debut-The Last Picture Show by Bogdanovich, Do You Believe?, Taxi Driver) has a smallish role, as does Richard Lewis.

Jennifer Aniston (The Break-Up, Horrible Bosses 1 and 2, Cake, Marley & Me—with Owen Wilson, He's Just Not That into You) gets into her character, and even pulls off the hackneyed, predictable, “I shouldn’t be telling you this…” scene. Will Forte has the requisite blank face to fit into various modes, while George Morfogen as his detective father gets a few laughs too. Judy is played by Illeana Douglas (GoodFellas, Cape Fear, To Die For), who is the grand-daughter of legendary director Melvyn Douglas. Perfectly made-up for the part, she seems to revel in acerbic poking. Austin Pendleton (What’s Up Doc?) as Judge Pendergast is a delight. Watch out for Quentin Tarantino, another Bogdanovich acolyte, play himself, and Tatum O’Neal as a waitress.

She’s Funny That Way does not deliver that extra something that you keep expecting. But it’s fun, nevertheless, an existentialist reworking of classic sex comedies, the Peter Bogdanovich way.

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eJs7ScPl2M

Transporter Refueled, Review: Fuel efficient and fired up

Originally titled The Transporter Legacy, the film’s French title remains Le Transporteur: Héritage, while in American English, it is Transporter Refueled. It is the fourth film in the Transporter franchise, with Ed Skrein replacing three-timer Jason Statham in the title role of Frank Martin, a move that a lot of Statham fans have found hard to digest. The first Transporter movie (2002) was a moderate success. It spawned two sequels and a television series (with Chris Vance portraying Martin). Part 4 is a prequel of sorts.

Having a getaway car driver as its central character, glorified with the moniker of Transporter (imagine being called Chauffer or Driver!), the Fuel in the title adds fire to the project! The film has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA, for sequences of violence and action, sexual material (mostly seen as mere blurs in the Indian release), some language, a drug reference, and thematic elements. But two things that Transporter Refueled does not lack are exciting action and breakneck pace, two elements that characterise most Statham films.

Frank Martin (Skrein) is known as The Transporter, because he is the best driver, and mercenary, money can buy. A former special-ops mercenary, Frank is now living a less perilous life--or so he thinks—on the French Riviera, transporting classified packages for questionable people. Frank is engaged by a cunning femme-fatale, Anna (Loan Chabanol), a former street hooker, and her three seductive sidekicks, Gina, Maria and Qiao (Gabriella Wright, Tatiana Pajkovoc and Weng Xia-Yu), all former prostitutes. They initially want him to play his part in an orchestrated bank fraud, and eventually, to help them get even with their prostitution racketeer boss, Arkady Karasov (Radivoje Bukvic) and his former gang-members (all Russians) Yuri (Yuri Kolokolnikov), Leo Imasova (Lenn Kudrjawizki) and Stanislas Turgin (Anatole Taubman). When he turns down the second offer, his father, Frank Senior, a retired British covert operative, is kidnapped and used as bait to convince Frank Jr.

Transporter Refueled is written by Adam Cooper (Accepted, Tower Heist), Bill Collage (Accepted, Tower Heist) and Luc Besson (Taxi, 2-3-4, Taken), based upon characters created by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (a California wine-maker who also writes films, like Karate Kid, Taken, Fifth Element and Lethal Weapon III). It is set in picturesque Southern France locales, in sharp contrast with the mass destruction of cars and property that dot the narrative. Prostitutes avenging being forced into the trade and accompanying loss of innocence is not a novel theme, but by giving that entire exercise some unusual twists, the writers add some novelty.

Not all of it is smooth going, though! A greedy motive for the female protagonist that demeans the concept of noble revenge, a ex-covert operative father who gets kidnapped twice at the drop of a …wine bottle, and a hard-nosed French Police Inspector who sound like he means business but ends-up without getting even ‘venture capital’, are pot-holes that needed much better writing to avoid. Such smart writing is found in some other scenes in this very film, like the methods used to obtain fingerprints and the climactic surprises. Most of the profound one-liners are of the lofty kind, trying to give the professions, of special operations and amoral mercenary activity, some kind of moral validation.

Assisted by some striking camera angles and a competent stunt team, editor-turned-director Camille Delamarre (Brick Mansion, editor on Taken 2, Transporter 3, Colombiana) manages to keep the audiences engaged. He is the fourth person to wield the megaphone for the series. Action is superfast, which makes it difficult to follow who is doing what to whom. Besides, it is almost always one-sided, and when it is not, it only prolongs or repeats the same moves, before declaring the favourite as winner. Cars are sent crashing by the dozen, mostly police cars at that. Crash-starting the roadside hydrants, the car moving slowly on auto-pilot while Frank Jr. attends to the ‘obstructers’, and a getaway car getting of the tarmac and leaping through an aerobridge, landing inside the airport, are thrills to applaud. The Frank Sr. and Frank Jr. father-son track, replete with a young woman and the old man getting intimate, remind you of Sean Connery and Harrison Ford of Indiana Jones fame, though not quite in the same league.

Ed Skrein (Ill Manors, Goldfish, Tiger House, villain in upcoming Deadpool) is no Jason Statham. He has some similarities in his ruggedness, but none in the facials features of the voice. His voice, in fact, is so full of bass that it could pass off as a hiss (take the ‘rap’, rapper Skrein). As a man interested in just doing his job and refusing to get into anything except the money he would make, he is aptly deadpan. Emotions do register in some scenes with his father. On the other hand, he goes through the start-stop-start-stop mayhem of clobbering man after man, with supreme assurance from the script he’s read, to the effect that he is indestructible.

Loan Chabanol (born in France; of Vietnamese, German, and Italian descent; debut-Fading Gigolo, Third Person) is mechanical, with her age not clearly established. She gets one scene, when she narrates the story of her past, to deliver limited histrionics. Ray Stevenson (G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Thor: The Dark World, Divergent) gets to deliver many of the one-liners, both flippant and meaningful, and the conversations between him and his son come across as fairly realistic; if only they had more relevance to the story. He looks unconvincing when getting romantic with one of his captors.

Gabriella Wright, Tatiana Pajkovic and Wen Xia-Yu get almost equal footage, and at least one scene each to perform, with Tatiana as the Basque-born girl, who falls for Frank Sr., striking an emotion-charged chord. Samir Guesmi plays Inspector Bectaoui, a role and an actor that deserved much better than the perfunctory way it/he is treated. The bad guys are played by Radivoje Bukvic, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Lenn Kudrjawizki and Anatole Taubman, with a range of looks that span similarity to Jason Statham (Bukvic) and one baby-face. Noémie Lenoir is cast as Bukvic’s moll.

Swanky and souped-up cars, an aeroplane, a yatch, a speed-boat, a ski-jet, and a dozen motor-cycles …you name it, Transporter’s got it. If you cannot imagine a Transporter film without Jason Statham, don’t bother wasting your time and money. If tales of thrilling sweet vendetta and ‘outta my way’ violent justice give you adrenaline rushes, get into your transport and head for the fuelling…oops…filling station!

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weqzAM5LCIY

The Path of Zarathustra, Review: The temperature of departure

To say that Parsees are a minority community in India, or, for that matter, anywhere in the world, might be an understatement. Official figures put their entire population as 80,000, most of them being Indians. Followers of the prophet Zarathustra (Zoraster) and natives of Iran, they fled an oppressive regime in their parent country to seek refuge in India, and were granted asylum in what is present day Gujarat, along the western coast. This film is a fictional tale addressing the burning issues that have been rocking the community for last few decades, and endorses the controversial views that Parsees should not ex-communicate any of their brethren if they marry outside the faith, and children born out of wedlock and/or adopted by Parsees, should be welcomed into the fold, if they choose to embrace Zorastrianism. It is a bold attempt, not likely to attract wide audiences but quite likely to create ripples in the closely-knit Parsees of India.

Though I went to two schools run by Parsees and had many Parsee friends, who took me to be a Parsee myself, on account of my name, Siraj (real close to Shiraz, a Parsee fore-name), my maternal ancestry being Iranian, and my father being a Persian (Farsi) scholar, I shall let the authoritative Encyclopædia Britannica define the religion (excerpts): Parsis, also spelled Parsees, means Persians, live chiefly in Bombay (now Mumbai) and in a few towns and villages, mostly to the north of Bombay (in South Gujarat, like Surat, Bharuch, Billimora, Udwada and Sanjan, the last one named after their ancestral city in Turkmenistan). The exact date of the Parsi migration is unknown. According to tradition, the Parsis initially settled at Hormuz on the Persian Gulf, but finding themselves still persecuted, they set sail for India, in the 8th century. The migration may, in fact, have taken place as late as the 10th century, or in both. They settled first at Diu, in Kathiawar (in Gujarat, later part of the centrally administered Indian territories of Goa, Daman and Diu), but soon moved to south Gujarāt (in areas listed above), where they remained for about 800 years, as a small agricultural community.

Anthropologists have estimated that by 2020, the world Parsee population will come down to 23,000, making them a species as endangered as the vultures, who the Parsees leave their dead to feed upon. Highlighting this fact, the film also reminds the community that the eternal flame, the Atash Behram, that was brought with them as the symbol of illumination and belief, is kept aflame with sandalwood, might die off, for there is no belief without believers. Incidentally, the claim made in the film, that Zorastrianism is the oldest monotheistic religion, may be debated, for, though Christianity and Islam came after Zoraster, the Jewish faith is much older.

A young woman, Oorvazi (Oorvazi Irani), born into Zoroastrianism, the religion of her forefathers, leaves the isolation of her remote abode, when her grandfather (Tom Alter), with whom she lives alone outside Mumbai, as his caretaker, dies. He leaves her a mysterious message and an even more mysterious book. Oorvazi journeys to Mumbai, and heads for her aunt’s home, the place where she spent her childhood, and where her childhood sweetheart Perseus (Rushad Rana), an out-of-wedlock child born to a Christian mother and a Parsee father, adopted by her aunt, live. She is welcomed there, and Perseus confesses that he still loves her.

Over the next few days, Oorvazi comes across ‘imagined’ figures from the historical past of the Zoroastrians—Kardir, Zurvan and Mazdak--who appear to her as real-life persons, in the shape of a beggar, a professional mourner who is also an antique clock repairer, and an intellectual. She also encounters a reformist making revolutionary suggestions before hostile, orthodox community leaders and disdainful neighbours who still cannot accept Perseus as one of their own. As images begin to appear and disappear on the magic book, and the historical figures engage her in debate, Oorvazi realises that she has the same feelings for Perseus as he does for her.

Written by Pune-born/London-based Farrukh Dhondy, the film could not have been more different from any of his previous forays into Indian cinema: Bandit Queen (Executive writer), Split Wide Open, Kisna and The Rising--Mangal Pandey. It is heavy going, and makes no attempt to make the subject accessible to non-Parsees. Ancient Parsee scriptures are not easy to translate, because the languages they were written in, like Avesta and Pahelwi, are too old and archaic. My father, late Syed Hashim Husain Rizvi, earned tremendous gratitude from a devout Parsee for translating some of these writings into modern Persian and English. Perhaps Dhondy has stuck to the original texts, and that is why they sound so abstract, even in modern English. His screenplay has a dream-like quality, seen in the works of some East European masters directors, during the 1960s and 70s, and the dialogue is an unequal blend of realistic and bookish, tilted in favour of the latter. Humour, though sparse, is welcome. Language-used is mainly English, with a smattering of Parsee Gujarati, just for flavour.

Director-actress Oorvazi Irani, who names her character after herself, is not entirely new to cinema, having made films like The K File (online release, screenplay Farrukh Dhondy) and Mamaiji (Grandmother). She also Researched, Directed, Produced and Presented The Michael Chekhov Acting Technique DVD (2011). She has been the CEO of Kishore Namit Kapoor Acting Lab (which has trained many a superstar of the Hindi film industry), South Mumbai Chapter, and taught Film Appreciation there. Her father is Sorab Irani, who worked as General Manager with the famous Anand brothers: Chetan-Dev-Vijay, on three films, Kudrat, Saheb Bahadur and Hum Rahe Na Hum, and incorporated his production company, SBI Impresario, in 1975. Oorvazi is a director of the company, which acts as literary agent for Farrukh Dhondy’s publications.

With such credentials, one would have hardly expected Oorvazi to make a film like The Path of Zarathustra. Shot on 4K using a Canon 1DC camera, with a 2K DCP projection format, it has some arresting visuals and very good sound quality. Acting hovers between pause-filled theatrics, done with a flourish, and fluent, almost casual, realism. While going along with the ‘stream of consciousness’ flow, there is a distinct possibility of viewers being lulled into a trance that won’t take long to turn into 40 winks, which is bad for an 80-minute film.

India-based American actor Tom Alter, often cast as an Englishman, has the unenviable task of delivering a long piece of nebulous dialogue, right in the beginning, in an emotion-charged dying scene. When Oorvazi gets terribly concerned about his body temperature shooting-up, he responds with, “This is the temperature of departure.”  This stilted prose is in sharp contrast with some highly convincing optical and vocal reactions by Oorvazi. She seems to be oozing oceans of love for her dear grandfather, and her speech is full of pauses that seem to go with the scene. It later emerges that this kind of speech and diction is Oorvazi’s persona, at least as evidenced in the film, which gets irritating with repetition. Rushad Rana (Veer Zaara, Dor, Mod, Tasveer) reminds you a lot of Sharman Joshi, and under-acts, though constrained by space and mechanical blocking of scenes. Shishir Sharma (Satya, Talvar) as the clock-repairer as well as Zurvan, impresses, especially with his naughty smile. Darius Shroff, as the Intellectual and Mazdak, delivers his lines with flair, as does theatre veteran Firdausi Jussawalla (Percy-produced by SBI, Such a Long Journey), playing the two roles of Mani and the Beggar. Vivek Tandon is good as Kardir. Special mention must be made of singer, songwriter Vasuda Sharma (Percy, Shahrukh Bola Khoobsurat Hai Tu), who has composed really appropriate music for the film.

A must for every Parsee, the film succeeds only partially in universalising the theme.

Rating: **

Trailer: http://www.thepathofzarathustra.com/trailer.html

We Are Your Friends, Review: A DJ’s success recipe--EDM, BPM and PCP

Instagram founder Kevin Systrom sold his company for a billion dollars, so what are these four coming-of-age ‘bro’s doing wasting their time? In between luring young music lovers to ‘socials’ and gigs, for a fee, they are doing drugs, while nursing hopes of hitting big time. Since they live on the other side of the Hollywood valley, in San Fernando, one of them, not surprisingly, wants to become an actor; another hopes to make it as a Disc Jockey (DJ), with at least one of his own killer tracks to tout. Electronic Dance Music (EDM) rules the music scene, so all you really need is a laptop and some music sampling sense. And while Phencyclidine (PCP) may be the drug of the day, the aspiring DJ has cracked the code to make a hundred thousand-strong audience swoon. It involves getting Beats Per Minute (BPM) to match the heart-beat rate.

Cole Carter (no, not Cole Porter) is an aspiring DJ who spends his days scheming with his three childhood friends, and his nights working on the one track that he hopes will set the world on fire. In dire need of money, the gang of four take-up well-paying jobs a dubious estate agent’s call centre, and Cole, in particular, earns hefty commissions for his role in the con operation. All of this changes when he meets a charismatic but drugs and alcohol addicted older DJ named James Reed, who takes him under his wing after listening to his showcase track. Reed impresses upon him the need to eschew too much technology and use natural sounds in his music, like a hand-clap or a real drum, to reach out to human emotions. Things get complicated, however, when Cole starts falling for James' much younger, live-in girlfriend, Sophie. Sophie, a Stanford student who dropped out because she could not afford the cost of education, responds. Cole drifts away from his friends, and towards Sophie. Soon, James finds out about the affair, and confronts Cole. Cole admits, and prepares to see his dream of becoming an ace DJ fade away.

Director Max Joseph (MTVs Catfish: The TV Show, about twisted online relationships) wrote the screenplay, along with Meaghan Oppenheimer, from a story by Richard Silverman. None of these three are familiar to film audiences. Joseph also makes his feature directorial debut. Not a great one, if box-office is anything to go by. WAYF opened to $1.8 million in 2,333 theaters--the worst opening, for a 2,000+ theatres, live-action release, since 1982, according to Box Office Mojo. We Are Your Friends does not deserve to be assessed in such dim light. Although it has some big names in the cast, look at it as a first film, if you want to be objective.

Let’s work with facts. The film is full of clichés, and stock situations. One out of four friends makes it big, the most sensitive of them dies, the hero falls for his mentor’s girl-friend, and, a great co-incidence makes him create a hit track:  Jogging with de rigueur headphones on, Cole finds that his mobile phone battery has died. Suddenly, he is able to hear ambient sounds that he could not hear on account of his head-phones, like bells and a helicopter, and he incorporates them in his dubstep ‘composition’, adding voice mail and studio recordings of random phrases by Sophie. Guess what happens when he plays this ‘nature inspired’ music to an ocean of EDM crazed youth! To his credit, Joseph has no pretensions about the story of his film. He told Time magazine, “The story is very archetypal. We didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel when it came to the archetypal nature of a young person coming of age. Electronic music uses a lot of sampling and uses remixes. We’re remixing an old story.”

An obvious reference to the call centre guys who lure vulnerable, indebted, house-owners to sell of their property for a pittance, the film’s title is derived from the Justice vs. Simian song of the same name. Another song that forms part of the narrative is Drunk in Love, recorded by American singer Beyoncé, and featuring her husband, rapper Jay-Z. The track has won two Grammy awards this year, for Best R&B Performance and Best R&B song. On two occasions when he is DJing, Cole is asked to play this number, and both times he refuses, implying that it is a bad choice. There are several colourful graphics and voice-overs interspersed, like self-help revelations: one of these consists of the art of being a successful DJ, and appreciating the nuances between 125 BPMs and 127 BPMs, and how a mere two notches can work wonders.

Attractive and smooth animation is employed, using Rotoscoping, to capture Cole's PCP hallucinations at an art gallery. (PCP was developed in the 1950s as an intravenous anesthetic but, due to the side effects of hallucinations, delirium, and mania, its development for human medical use was discontinued in the 1960s. A 2010 study shows that use of PCP by high school seniors in the US has increased 0.1% since 2001, from 1.7 to 1.8%. In 2010, however, 1.0% of seniors used PCP at least once in the past year, which held steady from 2009).

Zac Efron (The Lucky One, Neighbours, That Awkward Moment) as Cole is charming, disarming, and capable of more than he has delivered here. Wes Bentley (American Beauty, Interstellar, The Hunger Games) as James seems too confident for his character, but is in his element when he breaks into a grin. Model-actress Emily Ratajkowski (Entourage, Gone Girl), playing Sophie, pouts like, and has some similarity in looks to, Indian actress Priyanka Chopra, though Emily has a longish face. She needs to mature, stop posing and think beyond her gait. Though it had all the shapings of a part with some depth, Shiloh Fernandez (Evil Dead) as the wannabe actor Ollie has limited opportunity to display his art. Jonny Weston (Insurgent, Taken 3) is the bald, short-tempered member of the group, a stereo-type that offers no scope for real acting. Alex Shaffer (Win Win) draws sympathy in a small role as the Jewish boy driven to an undeserving end. Jon Bernthal, the preying estate agent Paige is slick, suave and ruthless, as required. Alicia Coppola (not related to Francis Ford Coppola but the sister of producer Matthew Coppola; known for her TV work so far) makes a convincing Mrs. Romero, Paige’s hapless victim.

Music by Matthew Simpson is spirited and will gel with the target audience, and make them attempt various body waves.

We Are Your Friends plays on the ambitions, weaknesses and vulnerabilities of it characters. It also ends up displaying some inherent weaknesses in its own script and direction, and undistinguished ambition. Chances are that more viewers will unfriend it than friend it.

Rating: **

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZzAeYWXFpk

Directors’ Diaries, by Rakesh Anand Bakshi, Book Review: A dozen journeys, a dozen destinations

Aspiring director and son of India’s renowned film-lyricist, late Anand Bakhshi, Rakesh Bakshi has been aspiring to make his first film for a real long time. In the meanwhile, he has been writing, cycling and doing his bit for the under-privileged of local society. So far, the trail to his big break has proven to be elusive. How elusive? How frustrating? As frustrating as that some of his contemporaries found it to be? Or as elusive as it was to some the modern greats, before they got their breaks? The question marinated in his psyche, and he decided to find the answers first hand: by talking to a dozen acclaimed Hindi film directors about their trials and tribulations, and also their filming style and artistic substance.

Directors’ Diaries: The Road to Their First Film is not a compilation of excerpts from the diaries kept by directors about their first ventures; rather, it is an anthology of biographical interviews, recorded and transcribed in first person, with introductions and filmographies, and, in most cases, a tribute by a member of the technical team of the director. Featured alphabetically, the list comprises Mahesh Bhatt, Govind Nihalani and Subhash Ghai from the 1970s, Prakash Jha from the 80s, Ashutosh Gowariker and Santosh Sivan from the 90s, Anurag Basu, Farah Khan, Imtiaz Ali, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Vishal Bharadwaj and Zoya Akhtar from the 2000s. As many as half of them began their careers in the 2000s, and the reason for the tilt is obvious: Rakesh is in the same age-bracket. All of them are still active in their fields, but for Bhatt, who has stopped directing, and nowadays, only produces films. Rakesh has also included, as the epilogue, an interview with art director/production designer Nitin Desai.

When you pose the same questions to different directors, the answers run the risk of sounding similar, especially when the questions are dual-choice queries, like, “Where do you like to direct from: next to camera or next to the video assist? Do you shoot coverage? How do you decide where to place the camera? Is film-making a journey or a destination?” Others are multiple choice questions, where the answers are, naturally more varied. And finally, there are the very personal memories, which might be the most precious part of the contents. For example, not many would know that Subhash Ghai grew up with parents at logger-heads, that Vishal Bharadwaj played the harmonium and sang at a food fair on Delhi’s most famous exhibition ground, that Ashutosh Gowariker argued with Nitin Desai for three months about the choice of colour for the heroine’s bedroom in Lagaan, that Prakash Jha decided that he wants to make films when he saw the shooting of a B-grade crime drama called Dharma (1973, directed by Chand), that Farah Khan started as an assistant on a TV series in 1986 while her debut film was released in 2004—eighteen years later, and that it took about eight years, after writing the script, for Zoya Akhtar to make Luck By Chance.

Rakesh sent me the book in July, with his autograph and Ramzan Eid Greetings. It has taken me much longer than expected to read it from cover to cover, but there were other previous commitments to meet. Reading the chapter on Imtiaz Ali, I was pleasantly surprised to know that he was a student of the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai, at a time when I was lecturing there, though I cannot recall having lectured to his class. I have met Rakesh only once, over six years ago, when I went to present him a 5-CD compilation of his father’s songs, by the music company Saregama, called Legends-Anand Bakhshi. I had written the text of the booklet inside the pack, and since the Bakhshi home is a mere 500 metres away from mine, instead of sending it by courier, I thought it would be a good idea to hand it over myself. Bakhshi Saahab had passed away in 2002, aged 72, when I was abroad, and I felt I owed the family a visit. I had interviewed Bakhshi (he preferred this spelling, which is more accurately transliterated from the original Urdu) Saahab twice, once in the late 70s, and again in the early 80s, and it was a real pleasure talking to him. Meeting Rakesh for the first time, I found him warm and courteous, and even complimentary and encouraging, “This write-up is really good. Why have they not given you a by-line?” Interestingly, the by-line started appearing soon afterwards, when I profiled other greats of Indian music/cinema for Saregama’s future releases. We haven’t met since then, and have to thank Facebook for reviving our association.

In his introduction, Rakesh mentions that he was fascinated to learn that legendary British director David Lean (Great Expectations, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago) was a tea-boy (later clapper-boy, at Gaumont Studios), and he puts his faith in writer-actor Salim Khan (co-writer, Zanjeer, Deewar, Sholay)’s definition of a director as one who has “something to say”. Frank Capra (It Happened One Night, Meet John Doe, Pocketful of Miracles) did not make any film for five years, 1951-56, at the height of his career, because he had “nothing to say”, Khan told him. Closer home, another director Saeed Mirza gives the same answer when asked why he has not made a film for 20 years, after the lauded Naseem (1995).

Category-wise, the book is hard to slot. It is not a biography, or even biographies, nor is it a self-help/motivational book. Formatted like a documentary film, the 276-page book is not even a bunch of diaries, as the title would suggest. But it does make interesting reading, particularly for Indian cinema-buffs and insiders. Language is simple and footnotes or glossary are neither required nor missed. There is a constant recurrence of the ‘I’ word, but you cannot rally blame the author for that, this being a compendium of very personal experiences and memories. Editing has overlooked some repetitious constructions, or, perhaps, deliberately retained them for that informal effect.

Trained in acting, writing and film-making abroad, Rakesh has worked with a large production house in Mumbai, and assisted Subhash Ghai. One of the book’s two forewords has been written by Mehgna Ghai-Puri, Subhash’s daughter and President of his film school, Whistling Woods. The other comes from the pen of Prof. Karl Bardosh, Associate Arts Professor, New York University (Tisch). It has a cover price of Rs. 350, $5.30 at current exchange rates.

Black Mass, Review: Whitey’s black deeds and the FBI’s blind eye

Black Mass is a term used to indicate a reverse Christian mass, the inversion of the traditional Latin Mass celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church, one that celebrates the occult. People who know this would think that a film with such a name was another supernatural horror drama. It is nothing of the kind. So, the makers toyed with the idea of changing the title, but for reasons best known to them, stuck with the original. It comes from the title of the New York Times best-seller, ‘Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob’, later changed to ‘Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal’. The life and crimes of James/Jimmy ‘Whitey’ Bulger had also inspired an 8-hour documentary series, Whitey, and the character of Jack Nicholson in The Departed too was modelled on the mobster.

John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) and James "Whitey" Bulger (Johnny Depp) grew up together on the streets of South Boston. Decades later, they would meet again. By then, Connolly was a major figure in the FBI's Boston office, and Whitey had become godfather of the Irish Mob. What happened between them--a dirty deal to trade secrets and take down Boston's Italian Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, in the process--would spiral out of control, leading to murders, drug dealing, racketeering indictments, and, ultimately, to Bulger featuring on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. Whitey already had a "secret trading" deal with his brother, William ‘Billy’ Bulger (Benedict Cumberbatch), a state senator and President of the state Senate, but when a new prosecutor took over and checked the FBI records, he discovered the huge cover-up, and took it upon himself to bring Bulger to book.

Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill were reporters with the Boston Globe newspaper, and are depicted in the film taking notes while FBI agent Morris spills the beans. O'Neill has won the Pulitzer, Hancock and Loeb Prizes. Lehr, a Pulitzer finalist, has also won the Hancock and Loeb awards. He is currently a professor of journalism at Boston University, where he is a co-director of an investigative reporting clinic. After reading several excerpts from the book, it is clear that it has been largely adapted, taking a lot of cinematic liberties, and not only with the time line, as the director has admitted. Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth are credited with the screenplay. Mark Mallouk (Executive Producer on A Walk Among the Tombstones and Everest, Co-Executive Producer on Rush) wrote a completely new screenplay adaptation of the book, following the June 2011 capture of Bulger. Jez Butterworth is an acclaimed British playwright and film writer-director (Mojo, Birthday Girl), who has said that he was inspired by the works of Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond.

With a whole book to go by, and some of the key figures in the case still alive, getting a ‘story’ would have been the least of the team’s problems. What was essential was to have a coherent, objective narrative. They could end-up glorifying Bulger, or showing the FBI as an organisation riddled with corruption, or raking up highly sensitive issues like crime syndicates being run on racist lines, or a manipulative Senator and his gangster brother working in cahoots, or the two protagonists showing signs of childhood angst translating into turf wars when they grew up. (Boston was one of the states that was subjected to ‘busing’ in the mid 20th century, a term used to describe the transfer of black students—black mass?--from other states to Boston, in busloads, to ensure racial balance through boosting black student counts in states where they were very small in number). Perhaps they did try to eschew the trappings, not with much success, though. It is hard to avoid these conclusions, howsoever much the film tries to leave things vague and unstated. Bulger’s cold brutality and obsession with elimination of anybody he perceives to be disloyal or even a future threat makes him a kind of devil-hero, and the film does seem like a Black Mass. Scenes showing Bulger with his wife and son are especially well-written, as are the scenes with the prostitute.

The project had been in development since 2008, originating as a Ben Affleck and Matt Damon starrer, with Oscar-winner Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, Dream House) directing. Sheridan was replaced with Barry Levinson, who made way for Scott Cooper. Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) said in a recent interview, “I’m not sure that moviegoers come to narrative features for facts, I think they come for psychological truth, humanity and deep emotion.” He claimed that “the truth was extremely elusive” during the making of the film. It is elusive in the film too. Cooper does score with some eerie suspense, by making Bulger do things that are unexpected, and also not do things that are expected. His style of shooting all the testimonies is repetitive and monotonous. The ease with which every opponent of Bulger is killed, either by his ‘official’ murderer or by himself, many in their cars and in parking lots, makes the confrontation too one-sided to relish. A hand-picked cast surely makes things easier, and nobody strikes a false note.

Johnny Depp has stated that he picked up his Boston accent for the film from hanging out with Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry. Thankfully, it is largely intelligible. With Depp, as with Jim Carrey, you never know how much you will understand. Bulger is a pulsating performance and a welcome departure from the funny good guy he has played so often. He reportedly walked out of the deal before shooting commenced, but reposed (well-placed) faith in Cooper, and returned. Good decision, Johnny! You could watch Back Mass only for Johnny Depp, but then there is Joel Edgerton, the ‘keeps you guessing’ kind of unconventional looking guy, who did a commendable job, acting in and directing The Gift. He’s not outstanding or anything, but then there’s Benedict Cumberbatch, who, in a relatively small role, can make every scene count, and one punchy scene stand right out.

Veteran Tippi Hedren’s grand-daughter and a promising actress in her own right, Dakota Johnson plays Lindsey Cyr, Bulger’s wife. It needed some confidence to stand-up to Depp, and Johnson has it ample measure. As the no-nonsense FBI boss Charles McGuire, Kevin Bacon is in command. Peter Saarsgard as the hoodlum Brian Halloran does a fine job, while Rory Cochrane makes a brooding Steve Flemmi, Bulger’s lieutenant. Corey Stoll revives memories of Telly Savalas, as the determined and goal-driven prosecutor, Wyshak.  As John Morris, the square-jawed David Harbour is a red herring, but convincingly so. Watch him in the dinner table ‘recipé’ scene. Mention must be made of two other female actors: Julianne Nicholson as Marianne Connolly and British actress Juno Temple as Deborah Hussey. Hussey, who makes a two-scene role count, is going places. Music Junkie XL (Tom Holkenborg), of Mad Max fame, has scored the music. This is another feather in his cap.

Black Mass has some classy moments going for it, and a host of laudable performances. It also has a few not so classy moments (including the last shot) and takes too may liberties in the screenplay. Obfuscation can never help any story, least of all a mass murderer/godfather’s based on real-life true story.

Recommended by this critic, but not a film to rave about.

Rating: ***

Excerpt from the book

Connolly actually did think Bulger could prevail. He fully believed Whitey and Flemmi were much tougher than Angiulo and his boys—"stone killers" he called Bulger and Flemmi. But that wasn't the point.

"I have a proposal: why don't you use us to do what they're doing to you? Fight fire with fire."

The deal was that simple: Bulger should use the FBI to eliminate his Mafia rivals. And if that alone wasn't reason enough, the FBI wouldn't be looking to take Bulger himself down if he were cooperating. In fact, at that moment other FBI agents were sniffing around and making inquiries into Bulger's loan-sharking operations. Come aboard, Connolly said. We'll protect you, he promised. Just as Rico had promised Flemmi before him.

Bulger was clearly intrigued. "You can't survive without friends in law enforcement," he admitted at night's end. But he left without committing.

Two weeks later Connolly and Bulger met again in Quincy, this time to cement the deal.

"All right," he informed Connolly, "deal me in. If they want to play checkers, we'll play chess.”