- The first scene showcases a blue sea, the picture-postcard-touristy-blue sea of Goa. That’s the only time the sea is this blue, this inviting. Elsewhere, we get the grey-green waves of nighttime, the turquoise waters of a decadent swimming pool, a stretch of beach that’s bleached out by yellow, this film’s dominant colour — but never again that picture-postcard-touristy-blue sea of the opening image, which suggests a paradise lost.
- The staging of several sequences – beginning with the psychedelia of the opening credits – is brilliant in the way the effects of drug culture are evoked. Entire sections of the film feel like a trip, especially the ones staged like a graphic novel.
- The other trip-inducing characteristic of the film is how the first half dispenses, very cheerfully, with the screenwriting rule of letting us view the story through a single perspective. We first see things from Prateik’s point of view, then Abhishek Bachchan storms in and starts narrating his story, in his voice, and then Rana Dagubatti begins to narrate his story, in his voice. And then, in the second half, the story is invisibly told, without subjective points of view, which is just another way of saying that we’re finally in the hands of an omniscient narrator.
- The prelude with teenagers in love – and on the brink of breaking up – is absolutely wonderful. We get the feeling we’ve been immersed in a two-page short story about the fragility of relationships, and this sets up the stakes for the rest of the film.
- It is during this prelude that we meet Dagubatti, who looks headed for a short stint as a supporting character but ends up the story’s hero. I do not see why this film is being marketed as a Junior Bachchan vehicle. Yes, he’s there, but he’s part of an ensemble, and even if you consider him the hero, he’s merely the action hero, whereas Dagubatti is the moral hero, the man who makes a mistake and spends the rest of the film trying to redeem himself.
- Abhishek’s character, I felt, needed to be more along the lines of a world-weary noir protagonist, bitter and broken and a step away from complete disintegration. He says things like “mujhe maar nahin sakte, sirf azaad kar sakte hain,” but you never feel that quality of a man perched at the ledge, leaning forward to see just how far he can go without falling.
- I wish the apprehension of Prateik at the airport had been staged better. I cannot put my finger on it, but there’s something missing. I was more tense the first time he walked through the luggage scanner. I knew bad things were about to happen to him – but when they finally did, the moment was anticlimactic. I don’t think I felt what I was supposed to.
- And that goes for quite a few scenes. This is, in general, a superbly staged film, but it doesn’t quite hit its emotional notes consistently. You’re there – yet not there. Part of it could be that the villains are never a tangible threat. Even when they do the most heinous things, they do them from a distance.
- But this could also be a result of how the makers have decided to stage the movie, as far away as possible from melodrama. So the deaths don’t make us cry, the jokes don’t make us double up with laughter – things proceed at an even keel, and it’s some sort of achievement that, despite all this, the film is never really boring. Somewhat dull in parts maybe…
- The finest emotional moments belong, rightfully, to the two characters whose descent into the world of drugs wasn’t due to depravity so much as dreams. Drugs for Prateik and Bipasha weren’t something that they could get high on, but something they thought would get them to a higher station in life. And it’s painful when these dreams crumble, especially Bipasha’s. She’s enjoying a brief rebirth as a good woman, and then…
- Along with that reworking of the prostitute-with-the-heart-of-gold, golden-age masala-movie lovers will find lots to enjoy – the setting up of a lovable character who’s sure to die horribly, the writing in blood at the back of a card, and the dialogues. My top two: “Ek hi sikke ke do pahloo kabhi aankh se aankh nahin milatey.” And, “Jab zameer bikta hai to zindagi bhi soot samet vasooli karti hai.”
- There’s a great bit of technical showboating in a scene that begins with cops storming into a hotel’s entrance and proceeding to take out, one by one, the bad guys, and the scene ends by a drainpipe. I was so engrossed, I didn’t notice any cuts. Were there?
- Want further proof that the gun is a phallic symbol? Abhishek pulls a condom on it and sticks it up someone’s butt. Freudian lecture classes round the country are no doubt delighted by the possibilities for analysis.
- What a terrific, terrific background score, so full of unusual sounds and so marvellously attuned to mood. It’s not wall-to-wall music, and yet, the few stretches we hear are so right that they seem to go on and on and on and on.
- They really have to stop using teddy bears to signify children from happy homes. Enough is enough.
Copyright ©2011 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Posted in: Bullet-point Report
rameshram
April 22, 2011
film nair?
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Bala
April 22, 2011
Baradwaj saar….neenga orey busy-nnu theriyudhu 😀 But once in a while give the bullet points on your laptop a rest no ? 😀 Considering that this movie seems to have given you more pleasure than the other tamil release of the week did, wouldn’t a full fledged piece do it more justice ? All cut piece work saar :p
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Arun
April 22, 2011
So did you like the home stretch? I felt it was a touch botched up, almost as if it was a forced throwback to old school bollywood which was disappointing considering how good the 1st half was.
…and that sudden AB rap song seriously threw me off..
PS: happened to catch Chungking Express only recently and realised the Aamir slo-fast mo shot in DCH(Tanhayee) was inspired/homage.And today I see the airplane toy on the woman’s bare back scene in DMD.i wonder if the whole air-hostess hook was just to fit that scene in 😉 I mean who in their right mind would not offer Bips the job!
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Bunny
April 22, 2011
It seems that devils have convinced you to “dumb down” your reviews. Didn’t expect this from a writer of your calibre.
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Hari
April 22, 2011
No mention of RD Burman?
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complicateur
April 23, 2011
I’m going to stretch this here – did anyone see Lorry as a stand in for India and its ‘corruption’ by opening it to the global market. The film even recognizes that there may not be an alternative (Biscuita gaya thO kOyi aur..) but we can still hold out hope. And dead on about Kamath. He needed to be older and far more weary than the man who played him.
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likesmovingpictures
April 23, 2011
I don’t know if this is your first review for The Hindu – I’m an unobservant NRI, for whatever reason the publication title caught my eye. So happy you’re writing for the paper; their reviews can kindly be described as dreck.
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bran1gan
April 23, 2011
Bala: Yen English teacher kooda ivvalavu bend-u nimithinadhillai 🙂
Arun: I generally enjoyed the film as a whole, though, as I said, there were some dull bits. That rap song, I felt, fit in very well with the whole trippy feel — the point during these graphic-novel portions is not to look at “realistic” and “logical” storytelling, right?
Bunny/likesmovingpictures : This is not a review for the paper. This is just for the blog.
complicateur: I didn’t see that extrapolation (though as you know, I’m not saying it’s not there), but I think a film like Guru sets up these conflicts more cleanly — as in Abhishek stands for an India that’s becoming self-serving, and so forth. This worked for me more as a trippy action movie.
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Bala
April 23, 2011
@Baradwaj : I will shut up now,just realized that my last few comments over here have mostly been the same negative types 😀 How is life at Mount Road Mahavishnu nowadays ?
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Raj Balakrishnan
April 23, 2011
I haven’t seen the movie yet. No comment on Her Hotness’ item number?
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bran1gan
April 23, 2011
I’m sorry for inflicting you with this NSFW bit, but it made me laugh till my sides hurt and I just had to share. For fellow fans of sophomoric humour. The Dilip Kumar one was howlarious!
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Sid
April 23, 2011
BR: I initially thought the same about the cops bust in sequence, but I’m pretty sure there must’ve been a cut when they focus on the mirror.
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Abhirup
April 23, 2011
What did you think of the performances, espeically Prateik’s and Abhishek’s?
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Hari
April 23, 2011
@BR: This one was my college favorite, thanks for sharing 🙂
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Hari
April 23, 2011
Hope you have come across this-much more ‘fodu’
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Gradwolf
April 23, 2011
OMG even I thought it was weird that I saw only yellow and no sea in a film about Goa!
And they really ought to replace teddy bears with iPads and smartphones.
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Gradwolf
April 23, 2011
And in the hotel raid scene, I think there was a freeze or two here n there but no conventional cuts.
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moifightclub
April 24, 2011
What do you think about the pop up music video thayn thayn that appears all of a sudden? Plus, Abhishek Bachchan is looking into the camera and doing the rap. would love to know your thoughts.
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Vishal
April 24, 2011
I am quite surprised that you liked this movie. I disliked so many things that I don’t know where to start!
* Overall, my biggest gripe is that I felt that the movie “pretended” to be a smart movie when it really was not.
* When Bipasha graduates from the air-hostess training school, she holds the certificate in such a weird angle just to make sure the camera catches the heading — the same is repeated with other interview and scholarship letters, hotel menu boards and shop-banners.
* Those speedy-shots (is there a technical term for this?) always make me roll my eyes; bed-ridden Abhishek detaches the medicine needle from his arm, rises from the bed heroically, and walks with gusto as if he was walking out of a casino (after winning a million dollars) rather than a hospital — all in just three cut-and-zoom-and-bam shots. Hate it!
All scenes that were shot inside cars were studio scenes — that accident scene (where Abhishek’s family dies) was such lousy animation that it made me laugh out loud, embarrassingly of course due to the aftermath of the accident.
Oh, and how many dialogues started with “Hamaare Goa mein […]”? Cliched!
Dipika’s song was not very well choreographed. At the end of the song, Dipika looks towards the approaching police and walks away as if she is up to something (or knows something). Was there a point? No.
Aditya Pancholi’s character was so ineffectual. The director did try to create an evil persona but failed miserably.
Anyways, I can go on and on with my rant, but I’ll stop here. 🙂
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Apu
April 25, 2011
About the hotel raid scene: I am not sure if they cut away anything at your theatre, but they show one of the characters flushing down drugs into the commode and then telling Abhishek that he is ‘clean’. The shot from the mirror then moves down to the commode where the drugs are still churning and then they show the police standing at the drain pipe to ‘collect’ those drugs.
I was fine with the film as I went in with low expectations. What would have made me say that it is a really enjoyable and good film would have been a stronger or more intense Rana Daggubati’s character, given that he sort of takes up the baton at the end. His despair bid to save Lorry and his passiveness towards Bipasha was not as strong as the despair portrayed by Bipasha (given that I do not consider Bipasha much of an actress, it must be sequences and the director which made me feel invested emotionally in her). The story is tight, though it loses pace in the second half, but really, what could have got it all back on track and not just anohter meh ending would have been “something” – maybe just some more intensity, to make me invested enough to cheer Rana’s (joki’s) actions towards the end. Whether it was due to the direction, screenplay, wrong character development or just Rana’s misinterpretation of the role, I am not sure.
Oh yes, it is not a masterpiece. But it does not have too many wrong beats.
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rameshram
April 25, 2011
for balance.
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tejas
April 25, 2011
@Vishal –
Regarding your point about Deepika –
If you are doing something illegal and see a famous cop coming your way, you would erm…turn around and run away, right?
Remember Kamath shows a politician a picture of his daughter being caught up in the cobweb of drugs? That is one dot I can connect regarding Deepika acting the way she did after seeing the inspector.
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bran1gan
April 26, 2011
Raj Balakrishnan: The item number was very blah IMO.
Abhirup: Prateik, I thought, hammed a bit. AB was AB — don’t know if he was giving a “performance” so much as being his natural no-muss-no-fuss self on screen. It worked for me.
moifightclub: The hyper-stylised self-consciousness, to me, was part of the design. There was a deliberate move from “reality” (even to the extent that you can call cinema reality) with all those graphic-novel like panels and stuff, and I wasn’t jarred at all by the video. I mean, the song itself didn’t do anything for me (first time I was hearing it), but I enjoyed the bizarreness of the conceit. I would have been more disoriented had they had a conventional duet for AB — now that would have been odd in this stylised film.
tejas: I think what Vishal is saying that Deepika seemed to give an especially “meaningful” look as she turned away, as if she was particularly guilty of something, as opposed to being generally wary of a cop. I too found her look a little odd.
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tejas
April 26, 2011
Rangan – hence my 2nd paragraph. Kamath tells Neta-daddy about his daughter being involved in drug related stuff, Daddy-ji chillao’ing on the beti, beti dancing in the rave party spots the cop who spilled beans about her extra-curricular activities and wants to slide away before she in particular is caught to further ‘parivaar ka naam mitti mein milana’.
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Shruti
April 26, 2011
Nice post 🙂 Makes me want to watch it now despite the terrible item number by Deepika Padukone. Would’ve liked to see you on Koffee With Karan by the way, for that critics’ episode.
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Aditya
April 27, 2011
Does anyone else think Rohan Sippy is heavily influenced by Tarantino? I found traces of QT in the whole “hyper-stylised self-consciousness” of the movie, from Vincent Vega to the no-cuts raid scene (ala Kill Bill) to the trippy background score. And going by this movie, which is no masterpiece but it surely comes pretty close to delivering that Tarantinoesque alternate world where the basic point of the movie is just story-telling, I think Sippy does a decent job. I found hints of it in Bluffmaster, but DMD is much more complete. And like QT, it’s definitely not for everyone.
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tejas
April 27, 2011
@Aditya – I second that. For our attempts of aping Tarantino in last couple of years, this one scores over others. It even has the balls to go to the places (gun up the butt, BDSM love games, sexual overtones, heck, Kamath recognizes the Brazilian carrier from her disco bra) that mainstream stuff like Kaminey wouldn’t go, but a less attention-grabber 1:40 Ki Last Local did have the audacity to portray.
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Karthik
April 27, 2011
Ok, may be this is so obvious that it was not mentioned, but
1. I think the whole “gun toting loner walks into a bad land and changes it” was turned on its head.. Kamath comes and does his bit but eventually it is not the outsider who clears the mess. Was the maker making a point that no savior can succeed unless the common people decide to stand up?
2. Its not the people who take drugs for pleasure but the people who try to use drugs as a means to get what they want who suffer. I kinda felt this a take on people who ignore or condone other ills like corruption etc as long as it suits them.
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bran1gan
April 27, 2011
Karthik: I think I kinda-sorta touched on your second point.
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vikram
May 3, 2011
I thought this film was a sign that film noir (or nair :)) is here in hindi cinema in its std form- a morally compromised ‘hero’, all characters having to pay for their deeds-some redeeming themselves, characters making choices in the belief that the ends justify the means…no easy solutions etc etc…I agree with you on the choice of Abhishek…maybe someone like Nana Patekar would have worked?
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rameshram
May 5, 2011
Dum maro Dum is not film nair.
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rameshram
May 6, 2011
Did anybody else think that dum maro dum was really about trinidad & tobago(a place like POS ) in the guise of being about Goa?
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silau
May 13, 2011
regarding the single take hotel raid scene, I think Rohan Sippy must have gotten inspired by this scene from a Thai martial arts movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE7WijeShQM
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