Milan Luthria’s Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara! isn’t so much a sequel as a retread. Like the earlier film, this one centers on the relationship between a mentor and his protégé. There, the name of the zeitgeisty hit on the marquee was Bobby; here it’s Mard. Here, too, the gangsters spend more time attending to (and obsessing over) matters of the heart than the business they’re supposed to be in. (This film is actually a love triangle.) The city of Bombay, there as here, remains a she, a siren who beckons with untold temptations. There’s an actress here reminiscent of the character Kangna Ranaut played in the predecessor. She, too, falls for a gangster, has a shooting session disrupted by an irate and frustrated man, and ends up in a hospital. And then there are the deliberate invocations – strains of Pee loon in a song here, or the scene where that actress, accepting an award, tells the audience, “Bas dua mein yaad rakhna.” This request to be remembered in one’s prayers was a signature of the slain gangster that Ajay Devgn played in the earlier film, his “goodness” represented through his all-white attire. The part of his slayer, Shoaib Khan (always clad in black, befitting the quintessential “bad” gangster), has passed from Emraan Hashmi to Akshay Kumar.
The biggest similarity between the films, however, is that the actors feel out of place in this milieu. Luthria is attempting something ambitious here (as he did in the earlier film) – he wants to conflate the glamour of Bombay cinema with the grit of Bombay’s underworld. (Why these films allude to Mumbai in their titles, instead of Bombay, is a mystery.) And so we have Shoaib Khan gradually (and dramatically) emerging from the shadows, individual aspects of his face and body highlighted until the whole package is revealed in the “hero introduction shot.” The younger Aslam (Imran Khan) actually refers to himself as if he were a hero. We see him first when he jumps onto a running train, and when a passenger remarks he could have died, he says that he’s just made his entry and there’s a while left before “the end.” (“Abhi to meri entry huyi hai. ‘The end’ aane mein bahut time hai mere dost.”) And film references abound. The changes in the city are noted through the passage of heroines, from Kum Kum to Kimi Katkar, and there’s even a gangster’s girlfriend named Mona.
This stylised universe needs actors with heft and swagger. They need to own the purple prose that erupts from their mouths. The problem with today’s heroes is that they cannot do rhetoric. They distance themselves from what they’re saying by playing it cool, as if they’re in on how retro-chic these lines are – the pauses, the inflections are all wrong. We don’t believe for a minute that these words are coming from inside these people, from inside their heads – they seem to come off a teleprompter. (At least Akshay Kumar is old-school enough to give this a game try. Imran Khan is horribly miscast. It’s painful to watch him go through the paces of a song that harks back to a hit from Amar Akbar Anthony, flitting uncomfortably between a Muslim character and a caricatured Muslim. ) And when they both fall for Jasmine (Sonakshi Sinha), the constant posturing, the constant faux-poetry makes the film look like Chaudhvin Ka Chand dragged kicking and screaming into the underworld. It’s not pretty.
Jasmine is the film’s weakest character. For the longest time, it’s never clear if she’s flirting with Shoaib and Aslam or if she’s just being friendly. We never see her becoming the great love that the story demands, the kind of love that will make sworn enemies of friends. At first, Shoaib is shown to be a womaniser, a cad who’ll not just proposition another man’s wife but instruct her about the colour of the undergarments he wants to see her in. And we just don’t see this animal being tamed by someone as colourless as Jasmine. (Sonali Bendre, playing an older love in a handful of scenes, makes a far better impression. You want to see her love story.) This failure is significant because, the romance apart, there’s little else in the film. The business with a rival gangster (Mahesh Manjrekar, who seems to live in front of a projector playing clips from Prem Chopra movies) is so underdeveloped that whenever he makes an appearance we have to remind ourselves that he exists.
Luthria stages a couple of competent action sequences, along with some enjoyable masala moments. (The one in which Shoaib walks into a police station reminded me of a similar scene in Public Enemies, another film that was as much about gangsters as it was about the movies.) But he doesn’t get anywhere close to, say, Gangster, whose tightrope walk between love and a life lived on the edge (each informing the other) remains unmatched in recent cinema. The directors from the Mahesh Bhatt stable know their way around the darker side of desire – the emotions of the drunk, the despairing, the dispossessed – and they know how to shape characters that are real yet just this side of larger-than-life. Other filmmakers venturing into these waters come off as posers, substituting art direction and period clothing for genuine feeling. We hear Kaate nahin katte on the radio and we see a poster of Pataal Bhairavi and we know it’s the 1980s, but had one of the Bhatt boys made this film, it might have felt timeless.
Copyright ©2013 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
UPN EarnesTaster
August 16, 2013
Superb review. Thoroughly enjoyed reading it. For me even the first movie fell flat with its artifice and bluster. It is shameful that our audience is immature enough to make these movies superhit.
LikeLike
sanjay2706
August 16, 2013
With Thalaiva , Once upon a time , and many Indian Gangster movies releasing, I went back to the classics like The Godfather, Goodfellas and Mean streets. I saw them and wondered what made them such great hits. Call me naïve, but I love the smell of Italian food, the rumbling sounds of paper bags in which they keep their food, the crumpled currency notes, the brilliant jokes which work, the fact that gangsters are as scared and as human as possible, the characters of “Paul Hagen” which proves that mind is more important than muscle, and the overall genuine nature of the situations. Indian Gangster movies lack these traits, Nayagan being an exception, but again that was heavily inspired.
LikeLike
Nanda Kishore
August 18, 2013
Simply put, this was an absolute stinker. You are so right about the confusion around whether Sonakshi’s character was actually in love with Shoaib, I definitely thought so and was taken aback when she says she thought they “were just friends”. It was a total WTF moment for me and from thereon, it was a complete downward spiral. This is just a bad, bad film. The songs were atrocious too!
LikeLike
Porto
August 18, 2013
What finished this movie for me:
1. Every thing that akshay kumar uttered was a highly contrived one liner. Once or twice is ok…but if it goes on for 3 hours , you want to throw a rock at the screen
2. Imran khan was supposedly a dangerous tapori. He however managed to look like a metrosexual kawwali artist who spoke his lines in an accent/diction/tone that noone in their right minds would associate with street. He was the wrongest thing in the movie…made the whole gritty movie look like a teenage romcom.
3. So damn many songs!!
LikeLike
Madan
August 18, 2013
It’s interesting that you mentioned Mahesh Bhatt, because just this Friday, I saw Jannat on TV, having watched OUTIMD in theater. The former was also pretty superficial in the sense that there were hardly any details about match fixing. But it was much more tightly written and directed and yes, the old themes of greed and insecurity were played out very well within the context of a film about match fixing. Whereas neither the underworld nor the love triangle were explored well in OUTIMD. I would actually blame the director’s treatment much more for it than the actors, who did what they could with roles that lacked conviction or intensity.
No doubt it helped Jannat’s cause that Emran Hashmi alone was more passionate than Akki, Imran and Sonakshi put together but OUTIMD was just too confused a film to get going anyway. AB could make a flawed film like Deewar come alive because there were some positive aspects to his character that balanced the bad aspects. In OUTIMD, it was as if a deadpan Iago (rather than a dramatic one) was the centerpiece of the film rather than Othello himself..or, in Bolly terms, making Ajmad Khan and not Thakur the protagonist of Sholay. Underworld films either show the don caught in dilemmas (Godfather series) or the police in hot pursuit of the criminals (Untouchables)…or they just make a quick comic book like caper that’s fun while it lasts. OUTIMD fails on all three counts and with that fatal flaw, it never takes off. I could criticise many other aspects of the film but the angle itself is wrong to begin with if the aim is to make a film that entertains.
LikeLike
Dandy
August 18, 2013
Branga, I disagree with your assessment of Ajay devgn’s performance in the first part. Devgan was absolutely first rate in an otherwise disappointing film. Those chessy lines were delivered with such nonchalance by Devgn and this is where Akshay Kumar probably failed. These lines if delivered with an in your face aggression will fall flat and even comparing with Salim Javed’s dialogues of the 70’s is futile. Salim Javed’s prose although over the top were relevant to the context and plot of the film and ouatim’s lines if delivered with any seriousness will make me cringe with embarrassment.
LikeLike
brangan
August 19, 2013
Madan: Mahesh Bhatt — and I’ve written about this earlier — is one of the most underrated Bollywood figures. What he’s done (both in his own career as director, as well as in encouraging other filmmakers from his “stable”) is worth much more than the work of other major and well-reputed directors. I’m not talking about making a series of masterpieces, but how even in films like “Thikaana” — to take the instance of something that doesn’t get discussed all that much — you see so much of a signature sensibility. There’s some very real emotion in the films he made and the films his banner now produces.
BTW, interested in hearing your views on what makes “Deewaar” a flawed film. Care to elaborate?
Dandy: I agree that Devgn was better than these two here, though I thought he did better with certain kinds of lines than with others, as I wrote in my review here.
LikeLike
MANK
August 19, 2013
Branga, I agree with dandy that ajay devgn was great in outim. he actually looks cool rather than acting cool as many actors try to do in today’s movies.As for Dewaar i really believe there are problems in bachchan’s characterization, him being an atheist and all and still believing in the magic power of billa 786.also some of the high funda duologue that actors are made to say in certain situations seems funny, in particular the scene in hospital when nirupa roy gets sick,neetu singh telling shashi kapoor that arjuna asked krishna the same questions he is asking her is laugh out loud funny.I would like to hear Rangan’s view on this.
LikeLike
Dandy
August 19, 2013
Actually I haven’t seen dobaara cause I was disappointed with the first part. I think, comparing Devgan’s performance with Bachchan’s is unfair. Lines like ” Hamari tasveerein kheench ke apni dukaan mein laga lena … kabhi zaroorat pade, toh dono mein se ek bhagwan chun lena” seem needless and incredulous. There are plenty of those in ouatim. Salim Javed’s gems like a ” Mera baap chor hai” or “Mere pass maa hai” gave the actor (AB) the opportunity and space to breath life into them. OUATIM is a film that is hard to take seriously and is handicapped by the director’s ambition.
LikeLike
Rahul
August 19, 2013
FYI sir,Milan Luthria was an assistant to Mahesh Bhatt for a long time in late 80s and 90s ,Mahesh bhatt himself assisted MIlan’s father Raj Khosla early in his career,
LikeLike
Madan
August 19, 2013
BTW, interested in hearing your views on what makes “Deewaar” a flawed film.
– Well it starts out with a gritty premise but dissolves into melodrama at some point. I cannot even imagine that temple scene working without AB’s intense delivery, the one where he says something like “maine aaj tak tumse kuch nahi maanga hoon”. At one level, I can understand the dramatic device being used there because the character stopped believing in God in his childhood.but in the overall context of a movie that otherwise captures the dark side of Mumbai well, it is pretty cheesy and contrived for my tastes. And there are many such aspects of the approach that to me seem to pander to Bollywood cliches which is a bit disappointing considering the way it starts.
As such, without the sheer conviction of AB’s performance, I am not sure if Deewar would have fared much better than some of the other celebrated YRF films.
LikeLike
MANK
August 20, 2013
brangan with regards to mahesh bhatt , i think another film one needs to mention is kabzaa which was inspired from on the waterfront.the film also had his signature touches or even Awaargi. Also i didnt know that Milan luthria is Raj khosla’s son.Raj khosla was very much the pioneer of crime dramas in hindi cinema with CID and mahesh bhatt calls him his guru
LikeLike
brangan
August 22, 2013
MANK: To me, the film (like many other films of the time) exists on a mythical-moral dimension, and the dialogues are essentially modern-day equivalents of, say, “Main samay hoon…” from the television Mahabharata. The grandiosity is intentional, and I don’t have a problem with it.
Madan: IMO, it doesn’t start out as gritty and dissolve into melodrama. It’s a melodrama from start to finish. The gangsterism etc. is incidental — unlike, say, in “Satya” or “Company.” Amitabh’s character could have been anything — the fight, as in all these films, is about the soul, about the path of right and wrong, and other such mythical constructs.
I get the feeling you think “melodrama” is something bad, and it’s certainly come to be used whenever there’s an overdose of histrionics — but it’s actually just a heightened way of filmmaking.
LikeLike
Madan
August 22, 2013
brangan: I basically dislike melodrama if it is used as a device to sweep aside realities, you know, to just conveniently conjure up a climax instead of resolving tough dilemmas in a mature way. I don’t necessarily object to extremely dramatic acting in plausible situations. While I agree that Deewar is not a gangster film, I think the settings are of vital importance to the film and not incidental. I have grown up in Mumbai so maybe my experience there was different from yours. But when Shashi Kapoor says to another candidate that koi kada hoga to hi tujhe seat milega (or something like that), I can instantly relate to it. Another part I like is that when AB becomes a successful smuggler, he gets this huge corner office with a sea view in Nariman Point. It’s as if hard work won’t get you to the promised land but committing crime might. There are some absolutely riveting passages in that film but it’s not put together as well as it could have been, imo, and instead relies a lot on great acting to carry through the weak moments.
LikeLike
Nanda Kishore
August 22, 2013
“…but it’s actually just a heightened way of filmmaking….”
There’s another word for it, innit? Drama will do just fine 🙂
LikeLike
MANK
August 22, 2013
i was fascinated by the comparison with the main samay hoon framing device used in mahabharata..I did not look at it on a mythical level as the film looked and felt very real to me especially amitabh’s performance and the ambiance of the picture which was closer to ON THE WATERFRONT than COOLIE or TOOFAN.I agree with you on the point of melodrama Come to think of it even the greatest of films like coppola’s Godfather films are melodramas
LikeLike
brangan
August 23, 2013
MANK: Another film with great near-mythical dialogues is “Sholay,” even though it’s set in contemporary times. There’s one such passage that I discussed here.
LikeLike
Madan
August 23, 2013
I would consider Sholay a great example of hyper dramatic film making that is effective. But it is also filtered through a smart, knowing tone as if the participants are in on the joke. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s sort of like Fight Club years before that film was made. That is an element that was badly missing in OUTIMD. You need AB’s 1000 watt intensity to pull it off and even then Deewar had much better dialogues than OUTIMD.
Yes, Godfather also has a fair few of those powerful, loaded one liners, starting with the one that need not be named. But it is understated in ways that the typical Bolly commercial film rarely is. Well, we do tend to speak louder and faster a lot of times (which make me recall a heated argument between two women hawkers at Mylapore Kapaly tank that I once watched :D) and I think our theater tradition provides a sound way to translate this in a convincing way on the big screen. I believe Hindi and Tamil films adhered to Indian theater up to the 60s, at which point they felt tempted to raise the masala quotient several notches. Isn’t that when Jeetendra became a huge star? I think that since then, the tendency has been to mix a good deal of masala even into films with strong plots, though there have been several glorious exceptions. My favourite Hindi film of all time – Mausam – doesn’t seem to have succumbed to masala considerations despite being made in the 70s.
LikeLike
MANK
August 23, 2013
Well as you said we indians are a loud and over emotional people and what works in american cinema need not be accepted here, like say Brando and pacino in godfather, when it is remade as tevar makan sivaji and kamal’s performances are amplified up several notches, compare brando’s scene with heads of five families and the analogical panchayat scene in TM with sivaji.
I guess Hindi cinema changed in the 60’s basically due to increased influence of the foreign culture in our society, Especially after almost 2 decades since independence,foreign culture once again became cool. Emergence of shammi kapoor who modeled himself after elvis presley and R.D. Burman with his western influenced music emerged during the time.
With regard to 70’s , which was the time of the emergence of parallel cinema, there was an emergence of directors like hrishikesh mukherjee,Basu Chaterjee and Gulzar who removed the excess glamor from hindi cinema , the cinema that was called middle of the road cinema. koshish,namak haram,anand,Andhi,Mausam,Chupke chupke,Satyakam all wonderful movies i love a lot, all were part of that kind of cinema. What was surprising was that the biggest stars of the time Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra etc supported these movies along with the masala movies . But my favorite movie from the period would still be Amar akbar Anthony. It appears to be some kind of a magical mythical film for me.Even though it is the epitome of hindi masala movie making, there is a kind of innocence and purity to it. It is kind of a precursor to the kind of superhero cinema that Hollywood is obsessed today like the Avengers film where all superheroes come together to defeat a common enemy but lacking the emotional and comic deft that AAA had . Of course since it is hollywood they do it with more technical sophistication.
LikeLike
Dandy
August 24, 2013
I agree with Brangan here about the mythical context of deewar. The reason why “Deewar” works for me apart from an unforgettable performance by “AB” is the film’s screenplay and direction. The filmmaker never looses sight of the film that he is attempting to make i.e. is a moral drama. The screenplay is metabolic in a sense that all the crucial scenes here have a precursor, for instance the “mera baap chor hai” scene in the beginning leads to the ” Jao pehle us aadmi ka sign le ke aao….” confrontation between the brothers. Shakti is another such film that worked big time for me.
LikeLike
Madan
August 25, 2013
“I guess Hindi cinema changed in the 60′s basically due to increased influence of the foreign culture in our society”, –
Well, it would probably be the other way around. I think that to begin with, there was some insistence on aping Western norms because THEY dreamed up show business first. The SoBo elite tried to copy aspects of Western high society. So Mumbai supposedly had a thriving jazz scene up to the 60s. Being born in 1985, I don’t know anything about it. Now, a small elite pays good money to watch world class jazz musicians flown in from USA or Russia, etc, but it’s not much of a local scene. I agree with you that Shammi Kapoor was influenced by Elvis. And Raj Kapoor by Marxism. Think about how odd that is in the context of the 80s or 90s, the height of masala films. I think there was a desire to make movies with a tone that didn’t repel first time or casual audiences and they felt it necessary to package it as entertainment with loud comedy tracks, loud, colourful songs and loud everything. Parallel cinema emerged as the predictable reaction to this trend. There’s always going to be one section that rejects the dominant trend in popular culture and some filmmakers can exploit this niche by making films that cater to their needs. That is, my point is in the 60s, Gulzar or Basu Chaterjee films wouldn’t be parallel cinema. They would be mainstream, commercial. In the 60s, there was space for both a Shammi Kapoor riot and a Dilip Kumar drama in the box office. That began to change by the end of that decade and by the 80s, masala was in full flow.
“Well as you said we indians are a loud and over emotional people and what works in american cinema need not be accepted here, like say Brando and pacino in godfather, when it is remade as tevar makan sivaji and kamal’s performances are amplified up several notches, compare brando’s scene with heads of five families and the analogical panchayat scene in TM with sivaji.” –
What turns me off isn’t necessarily the volume. Even Network has loud dialogues. It has more rants and tirades and shout-a-thons than any Hindi or Tamil film I have watched because practically every character seems to launch into a rant at the slightest provocation. And I love it. I am more interested in the way it is used to further the narrative.
I was just watching an interview by Paddy Chayevsky about Network and he said Hollywood used a lot of violence in 70s films because they needed to do something to make audiences get out of their homes even in snowy weather and drive down to the theater. I think melodrama served the same purpose at that time for Hindi or Tamil film makers. It is easier to get attention by delivering all or most dialogues at a strident pitch and amplifying everything; it could probably convince the audience they had had a good time. But it may not necessarily do justice to the moment, to the emotions at play in a particular scene. I personally think, notwithstanding the perils of generalised observations, that Holly practices or at least used to practice a little more polish in that regard and tries to be true to the moment than to play to the gallery. Their cliches are usually built into the plot, the story (which is probably why I am not likely to get interested in the Avengers series in the near future) but the execution is not compromised too much. I like a lot of old Hindi and Tamil films but I didn’t grow up then and go to theaters to watch them at that time. So I pick and choose according to my tastes and look for satisfaction. If I just needed to entertain myself for 3 hours, I could as well catch the latest flick in town on theater. So maybe because of that an overdose of melodrama where it doesn’t necessarily fit the moment doesn’t really work for me. Oops, sorry this turned out pretty long. Maybe it’s the Network effect!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sev
August 30, 2013
I just saw this one this morning, and I agree with you completely.
You know, I can understand a sexually, romantically naive girl on the cusp on womanhood being confused about flirting and friendship with men; I can see how she might enjoy the flirtatious interactions and be somewhat confused about what it means, or may even be reluctant to want to attach meaning to all those encounters. I can also understand the men, especially an older man being drawn to this awkward flirtatious young girl but I agree with you that never does this go beyond the usual attraction.
Even if Jasmine was to have had brief dalliances with the her suitors, I’d still find it hard to believe that such slight instances could amount to that one great love. An alternative way to interpret the narrative would be to view it from the prism of ego and entitlement. Akshay’s character could be viewed as an entitled jerk who views women as pieces of furniture he owns; he can never share that with a subordinate, no matter how dear he is to him. But that too is not convincingly executed. I also find it hard to see how Jasmine, young and naive that she is, didn’t feel drawn to Akshay and his life. If they had shown some conflict in the woman over the two men, I’d have enjoyed the movie.
Why can’t women who are being admired/ wooed by two men feel drawn to both? I mean, Shaoib is a jackass but he clearly is attractive to women. I don’t know why INdian movies refuse to show women characters in these love triangles as truly conflicted. An old Balraj Sahni-SHarmila movie, Mere Humsafar, lost its steam due to the same reason; it showed absolutely no conflict within the woman; the only conflict was between the men. This, in so many ways, does reduce a living, breathing woman to an inanimate object.
And I so agree with you on the newbies not being able to spout words convincingly (Imran was such a sad sight but I have to admit, though I find him likeable, I never found him talented; compared to him, newbies like Hooda and Hashmi are so much better at wordy dialogues.
As for Mahesh Bhatt’s movies, some of the recent ones are about as thought provoking these days as Karan Johar’s but for some reason, Karan Johar is viewed as “cool” and “articulate” (Yawn!) while Bhatt’s derided. But the man who made the interesting “Daddy” definitely had talent and a certain ambition in his youth.
LikeLiked by 1 person