No love story, in recent times, has been as attuned to its heroine as Ishaqzaade – though when we first meet Zoya Qureishi (Parineeti Chopra), she seems to want to be this film’s hero. She trades in a pretty pair of jhumkas for a gun, as if surrendering her membership in the “girls” club to become one of the boys. She worships her father, an MLA in a dusty-brown tract of Hindi heartland named Almore, and she’s constantly seen in his waistcoat, which she has had altered to fit her far-tinier frame. (If not my father’s shoes, she seems to say, I’ll step into his clothes.) She campaigns for his election to local office, and she dismisses her mother, who simply does not seem to get politics. We laugh when her father brings home a prospective groom and her brothers issue threats about what will happen if he doesn’t take proper care of her, because Zoya doesn’t seem to need the protection of these burly male members of her family. At least she thinks she doesn’t.
And then she runs into Parma (Arjun Kapoor), a lout from the Chauhan clan, which is to the Qureishis what the Montagues were to the Capulets. He points a gun at her forehead and she stares back unflinchingly, but when he follows her to the bathroom at her college and locks the door behind him, he makes her feel – possibly for the first time – like a girl. At first they bicker like equals, which they are in a way, as both are children of political families, but when a teacher begins to rap at the door, wanting to get in, Parma warns Zoya not to scream – if she’s discovered with a man, her family will be dishonoured. (This scene finds an echo in the second half.) The director Habib Faisal shows us, in no uncertain terms, what it’s like to be a woman in this part of the country, which bears little resemblance to posh multiplex movies like Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, where Kareena Kapoor’s character coolly advertised the loss of her virginity. In Zoya’s India, honour is everything.
Ishaqzaade, at times, feels less a love story than some sort of social screed – so single-mindedly does it cleave to its heroine’s character arc. Her rebelliousness, her subsequent subjugation, her anger at being put in her place (as only a woman can be, in these parts), her falling in love, her learning to forgive, her overestimation of her family’s love for their sole girl-child – these colours of Zoya stain the other women too. When Zoya’s father threatens her with a gun, Parma pulls out his gun and holds it to Zoya’s mother, both men hilariously oblivious to how cheaply they regard the opposite sex. No one seems to care if these women live or die (and after they die, no tears are shed) – they are just pawns in macho games of honour, ready to be sacrificed in the next move. And we see why Zoya, in that earlier scene, bought herself a gun. In a Freudian sense, she’s practically buying herself a penis to go with her father’s waistcoat. After a particularly vile turn of events, Parma’s mother heaps blows on him and screams, “Tu kaisa jaanwar ban gaya hai,” that he’s become such an animal. But a little later, she cannot believe that Zoya wields a gun – the women have become animals too. Only Chand Bibi (the sturdy prostitute with the heart of gold, played beautifully by Gauhar Khan) possesses any semblance of female power, and she doesn’t need a gun –she’s the only woman in these parts with something that the men value and, more importantly, need.
Faisal paints the love story in a few deft and vivid strokes. Zoya begins to fall for Parma when he barges into her home, braying for forgiveness – this appears to be this film’s equivalent of Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene. Much later, in a lovely stretch after she’s snuck out to meet him, she returns home. She walks past her brothers playing cricket outside, past a brother biting into mangoes at the dinner table, past her mother who asks her to is-smile (she advises her mother that it’s “smile”), past a grandmother who plants on her cheek a kiss, and when she enters her room, finally, you think that this cavalcade of reminders of who she is, where she’s from, is going to make her reassess, if only for that instant, the wisdom of her falling for a kaafir from an enemy clan – but Zoya bursts into an is-smile. She’s moony, addicted – her transformation to “girl” is complete. She even slaps on a sticker bindi, which is as close to a “sindoor moment” a modern-day movie can get.
And when, soon after, she faces the prospect of sex, she turns shy for the first time. She tells Parma that this place is too open – “bahut khula khula hai” – but after a shocking pre-interval twist, she picks up a gun again. And even in the second half, it is Zoya’s story we follow – the hero is almost incidental – and now we see fear in her eyes. Any competent actress would have proved memorable with such a dramatically shaded character, but Parineeti Chopra lifts Zoya to an entirely different dimension. Like Anushka Sharma, that other Yash Raj heroine, Chopra has an open face that’s alive to every nuance, and what she feels, she transmits to us. Her energy sparks her co-star, who is weighed down by a lugubrious presence. (His swagger is a little too animated in the early portions, but he settles down eventually.) Towards the end, Chopra pulls off a stunning smiling-through-tears moment that I thought nobody did any more after we bundled off big-hearted melodrama to Bhojpuri cinema. And the supporting cast – Anil Rastogi as Parma’s grandfather, Natasha Rastogi as Parma’s widowed mother, Ratan Rathore as Zoya’s fond father – is one of the strongest in recent times.
Ishaqzaade works so well because it’s a love story where there’s something more at stake than the question of will-they-get-together. There’s her honour, their warring families, the English medium-Hindi medium divide, their religious beliefs, the shockingly casual gun culture – and these matters of great consequence necessitate a romance where the boy and the girl learn to love each other. Ishaqzaade is a slap on the face to all those love-at-first-sight movies because it says that what you see is not what you get, and that love has to be earned through trust, forgiveness and oceans of understanding. (Amit Trivedi’s rebel-rock score is perfect accompaniment to the proceedings.) The only problem comes with the final portions, which don’t peak emotionally the way you’d like them to. The ending is no surprise if you’ve read a classical romance or if you’ve been listening carefully to the dialogues – her assertion, for instance, that “Mujh pe jaan de de, aisa hoga mera shauhar” – but I was disappointingly dry-eyed and, worse, annoyed by the tacked-on coda about this film’s moorings in real life. Since when have timeless love stories needed to be justified with today’s newspaper headlines?
Copyright ©2012 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Gautam
May 16, 2012
I have yet to see the movie. Was hearing mixed reviews, but with your review I really want to see it now 🙂
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Govardhan Giridass
May 16, 2012
BR – “Much later, in a lovely stretch after she’s snuck out to meet him, she returns home. She walks past her brothers playing cricket outside, past a brother biting into mangoes at the dinner table, past her mother who asks her to is-smile (she advises her mother that it’s “smile”), past a grandmother who plants on her cheek a kiss,”
You think Faisal may have watched this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYRclYdKARo
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aandthirtyeights
May 16, 2012
In this Kaliyuga, brangan, people tend to not believe in a guy and a girl killing themselves for love – that’s so Amir Khan in the late-80s. Hence the newspaper headlines.
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Anu Warrier
May 16, 2012
You are making me reassess whether I should watch this film or not, Rangan. Like the poster above, I had seen other reviewers pan the film for its ‘regressive’ attitude towards women. Your perspective makes me want to see the film and judge it for myself. Thank you.
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Utkal Mohanty
May 16, 2012
It was perfect till mid-point. Even the contrived twist was a good idea, after all it is a film and we can take an inventive contrivance. But the behaviour of all the characters after this big twist iis all awry. I would have shown some turmoil in Parma’s mind after the so called ‘revenge’. After all we know he has feelings for her. As you have pointed out, the behaviour of the Qureshis should have been diffeent from those of the Chauhnas. I would have tried a different tack altogether for Zoya, rather than the guntoting one. Maybe she could have tried to trick Parma with the help of Chand Baby, making hi fall hopelessly in love, paying him back in the same coin. ( London, Paris and New York does that to some extent). That would have been poetic justice for me, because women’s weapon is love and femininity and not guns. And it would be nice to give brutish men a dose of that. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it quite, because of Habib Faisal’s wonderful writing and creation of locale , the performance of the lead pair as well as the supporting characters and Amit Trivedi’s appropriately rocking music.
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Siddharth Saxena
May 16, 2012
“I was disappointingly dry-eyed and, worse, annoyed by the tacked-on coda about this film’s moorings in real life…”
agree. that was totally unnecessary.
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Utkal Mohanty
May 16, 2012
I ascribe the ‘dry-eyes’ at the end to the character graph that is followed.
That is why I am suggesting that Param had feelings for her from the start but he did not know it. Even during the revenge, he was the mach animal. But something touched him inside during the process of ‘ revenge’ . And the mother’s admonishment was just the trigger he needed to move away from his animal self.
The same goes for Zoya. She was a wannabe man but the ‘revenge’ put her in touch with her inner femininity and also made her realise the power a woman can have over a man without using a gun.
And take the story from there.
Of course that would be my script. And not Habib’s.
I quite like what he has done as a writer and director . His work is utterly fresh and there are many brilliant touches ( Just take the chemistry lab scene for example) rooted in reality and yet having a whiff of poetry and imagination.
Liked him from Band Baaja Barat and my faith in him is reinforced.
( Just as an aside, how I wish Mani Ratnam’s ‘ Raaavn’ had told its story at this kind of a key , with this degree of rootedness.
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suneel
May 16, 2012
This review is doing more justice to the heroine than the movie did!
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Hari
May 16, 2012
How can you read a review first and see the film later? I am always puzzled by this question. Isn’t it reduce the impact of your film experience if read a review earlier and go and watch a film?
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sankhayan
May 17, 2012
“Since when have *timeless* love stories needed to be justified with *today’s* newspaper headlines?” Beautiful line.
BTW, I think its Chand Baby and not Bibi.
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Rahul
May 17, 2012
Parma ? What a cheesy name.
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rameshram
May 17, 2012
I have often been treated with accusatory eyes by people that burn bras for liking women waaaay younger than me.( also sometimes for them liking me back)…
So here is some comeuppance.
this one’s 74, and I am verrah turned on.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2145521/Cannes-2012-Jane-Fonda-worlds-sexiest-septuagenarian-outshines-stars-half-age-Cannes-Film-Festival.html
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brangan
May 17, 2012
Hari: I too am puzzled by the attitude of reading exhaustively about a movie and then watching it through someone else’s filter, but some of my friends say that it doesn’t bother them. There’s one who doesn’t even mind knowing the end 🙂
Govardhan Giridass: Nice pick from the brain vault 🙂
Anu Warrier: I’m not sure that this film is “regressive” in its attitude towards women. The *people* in the film are, sure. But the film, I thought, was just telling a story. Yes, bad things happen to the women here but does that make the *film* regressive? Something to mull over.
For that matter, I don’t even find films like “Vivah” regressive. (See review here.) There are people like that still in India, and the film is just showing us a story about them.
Utkal Mohanty: I didn’t find the twist contrived at all. It was very organic IMO, and it made me look back at the scene where Parma is at the dinner table, smiling while chewing his food. Earlier, when we think he’s moony over her, we find the moment romantic, but after intermission that scene takes a chilling vibe as we think, “So this is what he was smiling about.”
sankhayan: It was “Baby”? Thanks. Must still be thinking about Amar Chitra Kathas like this one 🙂
rameshram: I was wondering when you’d stop by and lob a grenade into the mix 🙂
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Shreyansh Shukla (@MediaKaDoctor)
May 17, 2012
BR, didnt the post interval movie let you down? For me the entire brilliant build up in the first half, was wasted in the 2nd half. After a point, it was a pointless summation of “run and chase ” scenes. Also, the use of guns and bullets in the movies was very ammature. I mean, atleast about 100-150 bullets are fired , but only 5 people in the movie actually get shot!
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Vasisht Das
May 17, 2012
herr professore rameshram,
why are you distracting us with this piffle when you could be pouring your world-famous-(at-dr.rangan’s-asylum) silly soothing balmy goo over the inflammable invectives being hurled day and night into the forest fires raging in the neighbourhood – the world war 3 at ‘vazhakku enn 18/9’ …?
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rameshram
May 17, 2012
I’m busy vasishta das, you should be happy taking what you get.
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rameshram
May 17, 2012
Brannigan, you dont seem to appreciate that Im not a jobless fucker ALL the time 😀
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Abhirup.
May 17, 2012
As usual, a very good review. And possibly the only one I have read thus far that does justice to this well-made film. All the other reviews read like xerox copies of each other, and each basically boiled down to “The first half was good, the second half was bad.” Your review, on the other hand, takes note of things that seems to have eluded the hacks altogether, and unlike them, you haven’t dismissed the second half as a “letdown”, for the simple reason that it wasn’t a letdown at all. Thanks for this one.
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chhotesaab
May 18, 2012
rameshram: I was wondering when you’d stop by and lob a grenade into the mix
Brannigan, you dont seem to appreciate that Im not a jobless fucker ALL the time
Not only the review itself but posts like these make this a must read !
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sridhar270
May 18, 2012
>> The *people* in the film are, sure. But the film, I thought, was just telling a story. Yes, bad things happen to the women here but does that make the *film* regressive?
Er, I am slightly confused. By that token, almost all the movies that I consider regressive can be given a get-out-of-jail card. Personally, it seems like a very easy escape route – oh no, the movie isn’t regressive, it’s just that the characters are!
And nothing angered me more than Parma’s mother questioning Zoya’a love in not forgiving/forgetting what he did! Guilt-tripping the victim, if not regressive (which it is), is at the least lazy, old-styled film-making. So the question then is, what was the big deal in this movie if all the characters were just representative of “how people in those areas” supposedly behave? A movie set for 50s sensibilities?
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YK Sharma
May 18, 2012
BR – Have not seen the movie yet. However, ‘setting’ of the movie made me remember, somehow, of ‘Antardwand’. Did you watch this movie ?
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rameshram
May 18, 2012
“Not only the review itself but posts like these make this a must read !”
Amam vaa da! velikku onan satchi.
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fattiemama
May 18, 2012
An example of a regressive film then would be?
Btw, agree with Suneel when he says that the review does more justice to the heroine than the film did 🙂
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movielover
May 18, 2012
Long time lurker here, first time commenter.
This is surely no excuse for the movie that the people in it are regressive? Its heroine is not, she wants to fight it out with the boys in a man’s world, and the movie succeeds in dragging her to her ‘level’. It reminds me of the Gone With the Wind, the excuse that they need not discuss slavery’s evils because it was not discussed in the antebellum American south.
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Abhirup.
May 18, 2012
Regarding the “regressive” bit, I think Mr. Rangan is saying that the content and the intent of a film are not the same. The film does show the male characters treating women badly, but I don’t think that the film condones the behaviour of the men. Parma’s trick on Zoya, the men in Zoya’s family treating her with a condescending attitude which they mistake for love, the way her father reacts even as she comes back to him and asks for forgiveness and appeals to his paternal affection, the insulting remarks made by Parma’s grandfather about his mother’s widowhood–none of this is presented in a positive light. And in my opinion, the three strongest characters in the film, who play a role in Parma’s transformation and who can thus be called the moral compasses of the film, are Zoya herself, Chand, and Parma’s mother. So, I wouldn’t accuse the film of being “regressive” in its treatment of women.
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brangan
May 19, 2012
I would think that a regressive movie is one without nuance, which revels in characters whose behaviour we find regressive. Something like the Kalpataru-directed family films of the 1980s, where the director takes a moralistic stance and leaves us with messages like “you have to obey your husband.” By the end of these films, opinionated wives are subjugated, they learn to toe the line etc. But here the “take home” isn’t regressive IMO. It just is. The characters may feel a certain way, but the film doesn’t seek to impose their views on us.
We know Parma’s mother feels a certain way, and we may find her views obnoxious, but she pays for her stance and her son doesn’t endorse those views. Rather he “atones” for them, in a manner of speaking. So it didn’t feel regressive to me.
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chhote saab
May 19, 2012
rameshram : ‘Amam vaa da! velikku onan satchi.’
I have a feeling I’ll regret asking, but what does that mean ?
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fattiemama
May 19, 2012
Yeah, got that. Guess, the problem lies in the emotional disconnect and hence the town’s gone mad calling it regressive. I didn’t find it regressive myself as such but was left questioning why a girl like Zoya wouldn’t feel sexually violated as much as we’d expect someone like her to…(Speaking for myself I wanted to walk out of the hall at interval :)) Also, the fact that we are never sure of Parma’s love and change of heart…it almost feels like he is simply fulfilling his mother’s last wishes, not realised he was wrong and trying to repent. It adds upto Zoya’s betrayal and violation as a woman being shoved aside and puts a misogynistic blanket on the outcome where the intent wasn’t really meant to be so. It also kind of makes the rest of her character, so carefully built-up in detail as irrelevant to the film by the second half. In fact, I wasn’t even sure about her own love for Parma, even in the scene where she declares to his mom that she seeks revenge coz she loves him…the love part just didn’t fit in anywhere…
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Abhirup.
May 19, 2012
I would say that for Parma, falling in love with Zoya was a consequence of trying to fulfill his mother’s last wishes. Her dying words were, “Galti sudhar, Parme.” She asked him to atone for his misdeeds, and as he tried to do that, he saw Zoya for who she is, and fell in love with her in the process. This is captured beautifully, in my opinion, in the scene where she is helping him eat, and he remarks that so far he had only seen her as a Muslim girl from the Quereshi family: now, though, he is seeing her as a woman, and is struck by how beautiful she is. True, his mother’s death is a big factor behind his change of heart, but his repentance was genuine and the film made this amply clear in many scenes in the second half. I don’t think the film “shoved aside” Zoya’s ill-treatment: rather, it shows how a man who had abused a woman’s mind and body realizes his mistake, and how the woman learns to forgive him and love him when she understands that he really is contrite for what he had done. This is, without a doubt, one of the most mature romances to have come out of Bollywood.
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Govardhan Giridass
May 20, 2012
Brother Das, rameshram’s absence from the Vazhakku debate is a blessing in disguise. Also, that fire doesn’t need any more fuel. But, let me take you up on this line of yours: “day and night into the forest” – do I detect a closet Ray fan?
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Utkal Mohanty
May 20, 2012
“I would say that for Parma, falling in love with Zoya was a consequence of trying to fulfill his mother’s last wishes. ” This was the weakest link in the film, ifit was so. You don’t ‘ fall in love’ at someone’s behest. You may marry someone be because your mother wishes so. You may take cafe of someone, because your mother wishes so. You may be nice to someone because your mother wishes so. But you cannot fal in love at someone’s behest.
That iswhy my construct: Parma was always in love with Zoya. Only he did not know. The realization dawned on him after the ‘ revenge’. After all he was ‘knowing’ a woman for the first time. And if it is with a woman you love, it can be life changing. I wish the director had brought this out as well as the turmoil in Zoya after being sexually humiliated and realizing is that taking the gun was not going to assuage her hurt. THat would have been a ‘ mature’ love story..rather than this QSQT redux.
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rameshram
May 21, 2012
what YOU jobless fuckers don’t seem to realize is that Im not a scrapper. there are just people here (very prominent ones too) that just hate me and get me into scraps for no fault of mine.
excuse me while I go and polish my halo.
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Rahul
May 21, 2012
I did find this movie regressive -well perhaps not to a bollywood sensibility maybe, but none the less. The mother who is supposed to be the moral compass of the film, assumes that Parma and Zoya belong together – that he can atone for his sins ,Zoya will have to learn to forgive him and everything will be fine – when the only thing that binds them are farcical rites. Zoya also buys into this logic once she sees Parma is repenting.
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Govardhan Giridass
May 21, 2012
Nobody hates you rameshram. We all laaaau you for the utter irrelevance you bring to anything. We also miss having a nice and easy target.
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rameshram
May 22, 2012
I didn’t say you hate me goverdhan giridas but thank you for attempting to compliment me in your own goofy way.
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rameshram
May 22, 2012
Oh I did’t say you or anyone who posts here , in general hates me …just some particular people 😉
and I have reduced volume not because of any allergy to haters, Im merely comparatively less jobless now.
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Abhirup.
May 22, 2012
I never said that Parma fell in love with Zoya at his mother’s behest. He decided to protect her at his mother’s behest. And as he tried to protect her–from her own family as well as his–he gradually came to love her. That’s how it was to me at least. And I don’t think it was a “QSQT redux” at all.
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Mambazha Manidhan
June 5, 2012
I saw the film only yesterday and came here and y’all have made me google the word ‘regressive’.
I don’t see what is there to argue about *this* movie. The filmmaker Habib Faisal has done a pretty decent job that he is totally out of the picture. His intentions do not matter at all. It’s only the characters and their choices. The casting is pitch-perfect (star kids playing actual characters and not versions of themselves), their world is authentic and the characters are so true to life that at no point did it occur to me that I was watching another cliched-retrograde-intercaste-love story or what kids these days call a ‘regressive film’.
I loved Ishaqzaade. The only off-key note in the film I thought was the manic, dubstep anthem Aafaton Ke Parinde playing over the solemn ending. I guess they were going for a circularity, but it didn’t quite gel with the mournful tone of the climax. On the whole, I had an emotional reaction to this film as opposed to a cerebral one. And, that’s a rare thing in movies today.
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yaohfsl
July 10, 2012
All said and done – including the sensible mileu and narrative analysis by Rangan and Qalandar – but remove Ms. Parineeti Chopra and this would have been an average if not unwatchable film.
Astonishing talent and presence, really! Expressions, attitudes etc. I know these environs. I can’t belive a girl like Zoya can thrive here. Parineeti’s performance made me believe it. I was fully taken in. Some suspension of disbelief!
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mathi
July 10, 2012
All through out the movie there is much shooting with the gun but unfortunately no one dies in the movie( i mean by the bullet)
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Tina
January 8, 2013
Wonderful review sir, as always!
Just one thing that I look at differently – “When Zoya’s father threatens her with a gun, Parma pulls out his gun and holds it to Zoya’s mother, both men hilariously oblivious to how cheaply they regard the…”
In my opinion, I think they more than valued the women and the outcome of that, seems to be a bit hilarious. Parma, valuing ‘Joya’, raises a gun to Zoya’s mom’s head, knowing that her dad would attach more than enough value to mom’s life.
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