abhishekmahajan-34801 Reviews

Saaho (2019)

This is what you call 'Lavish Mess' or Wannabe 'Michael Bay Flick'

[6/10 · 5 January 2020]

I saw this movie on the first day in a jam-packed metroplex. And what I witnessed was 'Saaho' had polar apart reviews. Either they were extremely negative or too good. One thing that resonated with everyone was 'Runtime'. 'Saaho' fails big time in its editing and handling of the subject. The newbie director had so much resource (read budget) at his dispense that he fell prey to the grandeur of the project. Now coming to the allegations of plagiarism, I saw the French movie 'Largo Winch', right after the news broke-out. And I have to admit it lifts up not only the theme, plot but entire screenplay as well. NOT COOL. If the producers were so intrigued by 'Largo Winch', they could have just procured the remake rights. Not only 'Largo Winch' but 'Saaho' draws influences from many Hollywood movies, most noticeable ones being 'Fast Five', 'Mission Impossible' etc. 'Saaho' had a chartbuster album, and the visual effects were truly State-Of-The Art. The movie had a technical finesse, be it cinematography, stunts, locales, digital intermediate, viz, color grading. 'Saaho' was promoted as India's Biggest Action Thriller, and tries so hard to prove it, that it goes unnoticed because of the unnecessary side-plots. When talking about action, how could we not mention 'The Action Auteur - Michael Bay' and his frequent collaborator Kenny Bates. There is a specific sequence in the pre-climax which will give you a Michael Bay flick Vibes (only if you know the guy well) 'Saaho' was a big screen experience indeed, but fall short on parallel screenplay, amateur direction, editing and the subject. I recently tried to watch it on Amazon's Prime Video and I left it after some 20+mins.

War (2019)

FORMULAIC- Stylish, Script Loopholes, Chartbuster Album, Male Leads and more.

[5/10 · 5 January 2020]

I know it's a little too late, but I happened to stumble -upon the title 'War' on Amazon's Prime Video, but I did catch-it-up in the theatres last year, hence decided to review it. Okay, first things first, The pairing Hrithik Roshan - Tiger Shroff, is LIT. Both of the lead actors are hardworking, and lets not take that away from them. Hrithik is a gem, can be titled as the 'Best of Nepotism', Tiger is improving with each film. The last true hit YRF witnessed was 'Tiger Zinda Hai' in 2017, director Siddharth Anand's last outing 'Bang Bang' in 2014, was a Semi-Hit. 1) 'War' is movie which has very high dosage of action but much less thrills. If you are a movie-buff you can easily identify the theme similarities with movies like Mission Impossible:2, 007's Die Another Day, Furious 7 etc. 2) 'War' is a regular action thriller, mounted on a huge scale. But it tries too hard to showcase itself as the biggest action affair of the year, and thus falls prey to its genre. Watch 'Mad Max: Fury Road' and you will get there is no definitive screenplay but its the action that takes the story forward. 3) A normal phenomena in film-making is, your story starts building-up and reaches a cresendo at the interval, post-interval dips a bit and again starts building-up, before finally exploding in the climax. 'War' doesn't follow this norm. It has a very streched first-half and thus fails to reach cresendo in the interval. 4) The female lead Vaani Kapoor is totally wasted. Even Katrina Kaif had a better role 'Ek Tha Tiger', 'Jab Tak Hai Jaan', 'Tiger Zinda Hai', similarly be it Anushka Sharma or any other YRF regulars. 5) 'War' is technical a very rich and polished product, be it Locales, Cinematography, DI (Digital Intermediate - Color Grading), Special Effects (not the VFX), but the biggest letdown is the VFX by yFX (YRF's in-house Vfx facility). 6) 'War' does one thing very perfectly, bare minimum songs. The placement of 'Jai Jai Shivshankar' is questionable, but 'Ghungroo' is on-point. 'Jai Jai Shivshankar' can be called one of the film's USP, but I feel they could have kept it for promotional purpose only.

Vedict: 'War' is completely watchable, if you can ignore some of the loopholes, bear with the unnecessary show of muscles and machoism, predictable twists, and try to enjoy this 'Escapist Cinema Form' and appreciate just the sheer hardwork of the entire crew.

Race 3 (2018)

Slow, Lame, Boring, Not even a Typical Salman Khan Movie.

[1/10 · 15 June 2018]

First things first... I liked Sultan, Dabangg, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, even TZH and Kick were entertaining. Salman Khan is known for his stardom, fanbase, court cases except acting. Even his flops Jai Ho and Tubelight have crossed 1.1 billion mark at the box office. Race 3 is a movie which has been trolled the most than any other film of Salman or any other actor. Remo D'Souza was a very bad choice for big budget, multi starrer, action franchise. He is better off with dance related movies, A Flying Jatt was perfect lesson for him. Salman's involvement in Race Franchise, Questionable. Without giving any spoilers, and keeping the fact in mind that Race 3 is big budget movie sold to Distributors at very high price is really half baked, slow, illogical, bumpy and jerky roller coaster ride with hight production values. Good Cinematography, but Ayananka Bose had done better work before. Poor VFX, Prime Focus is good VFX company (see Bang Bang). Budget provided for VFX seems marginal. Performance are average. Music is letdown. Dialogues are wasted. Runtime is 159min too long. Too many songs. Even Abbas Mustan couldn't have pulled off this task (read weak script). They should have kept Saif Ali Khan (loyal to Race Franchise).