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kanishkamech
Reviews
Salaar: Part 1 - Ceasefire (2023)
Insufferable
A flailing script with characters flailing each other. It is difficult to fathom how theatre goers kept their sanity on a trip to this movie unless this is the type of movie one likes to watch. But again, it is difficult to decide what genre this movie belongs to; there is so much coming at the viewer here one has to marvel at the director's ability to show so much without showing anything meaningful. The entire script is arrowed toward building the myth around the central character. It does create some of that but the steampunk fictional city, the on-the-nose, plain, unmixed evil of villainous characters put on the script strictly and only as foils to accentuate the physical superiority of the central character, the ludicrousness of the geography and the one dimensionality of supporting characters (there are so many lookalikes it is difficult to keep track) makes the whole movie a vomit inducing testosterone driven, beard-filled sensory flogging. Only use of a movie like this that I can think of is that one can get an idea of the depths that directors and scriptwriters will plumb to in order to pander to audiences still unbelievably hungry for violent-Superman based cult movies.
Raajneeti (2010)
Legacy of Prakash Jha is ruined
Let me start with the principal flaws of the film. 1. Ranbir Kapoor: Mr Kapoor's good fortune of being able to work with such an exceptional director, a host of experienced and immensely talented actors, bears a striking and a tragic resemblance to one of the main themes of the movie where political leaders get chosen just because of their lineage. Mr Kapoor is miscast, terribly inept to handle a role which requires not just depth but a personal conviction and solemnity, somebody needs to tell him that just by keeping a pensive face and faking seriousness, one cannot discharge the duties to a character whose features and intricacies can give the best scriptwriters in the world their biggest challenge. It is incomprehensible to me that a director of Mr. Jha's status would even consider such a recessive and callous actor for a role which simply put is too 'big' for him. 2. Katrina Kaif: It is a well known fact that actresses in Bollywood do not require acting skills but Ms Kaif's character has some real acting to do, at least the writer would have envisioned it so. One cannot begin to illustrate how bad she really is and how bad is it going to get in the future. I do not even want to begin on that horrifying accent. 3. Arjun Rampal: Mr. Rampal should really consider going back to his previous profession, but he would not. His crass handling of the character with hints of western accent mixed with his feeble attempts of sticking to his character's intended accent make a vicious mixture that not only poisons the fluidity of an otherwise simple film. Without mincing any words, it has to be put forward that Mr. Rampal is a very bad actor. 4. Shoddy direction and screenplay: This one was a first for a Prakash Jha film, who not so long ago made an impeccable film called 'Gangajal' with a great collaborator and actor, Mr Ajay Devgan. The script is so loose at times that it leads to frustration and irritation, something that you just don't expect from a Prakash Jha movie. The predictability of the plot was another drawback. The direction was full of complacence and perfunctoriness. The list of things that are wrong with this movie is long and one would not want to waste a lot of time enumerating them. Positive Points: 1. Veterans: Mr Patekar, Mr Bajpai and Mr Devgan don't just stand out but they carry the movie which at places seems so light because of extremely vacuous performances of Mr Kapoor and Ms Kaif, and lend the movie a vestige of validity that it certainly deserves. Especially in the case of Mr Patekar who plays the cagey,quiet and hyper intelligent strategist on Mr Kapoor's side. Some of the scenes and dialogues have been so deftly handled that one can only marvel at the fact that this movie provides the zenith and the nadir of acting skills repeatedly in two hours and forty odd minutes. 2. Few plot sequences which really bring out the connivance that really lurks behind every move in politics.