Bloody, yet compelling

James

Director: Rohit Jugraj
Cast: Mohit Ahlawat, Nisha Kothari, Snehal Dabhi, Shereveer Vakil, Zakir Hussain, Mohan Agashe, Ravi Kale, Ishrat Ali, Rajpal Yadav
5.5/10

James is all about the ‘rising of a hero’, though not the Mangal Pandey type. And this time RGV doesn’t bother to have a story either, for he can make a star out of a man anyway. So he presents Mohit ? pierced eyebrow and muscles gymed to perfection. The hero makes no bones about rising against the underworld types ? Zakir Hussain and his boorish brother Shereveer Vakil, who is after girls like a hungry dog. Our desi Stallone simply goes knocking them down in a manner as casual as knocking on someone’s door. We would have surely appreciated his attitude if only muscles could talk. However macho Mohit may look he lacks miserably when it comes to dialogue delivery ? it’s as flat as his abs. And so the superstar and the superfilm go without some superb dialogues to take back home. Nisha Kothari thrusts her assets at the camera and pouts in a bid to look like the RGV gals and can verily survive the item numbers but hardly beyond. The Gabbar-ish villain and his men and their incessant laughter fill up the holes in the script, but irritates after a point. But still, RGV compels us to sit through.

James is, after all, a Factory product. A dropout medical student Rohit Jugraj can be made to direct as stylish a film as this. The breathtaking camerawork is by a 20-something SRFTI product, Amal Neerad. The pounding background score emotes in place of the lead pair. The choreographed violence is so real that you just might want to throw up. The usual take-offs on Bhansalis and Johars and the use of minor characters like Rajpal command the ceetees. But James is, in the end, just another Factory product, stamped ‘defective’.

Madhuparna Das

What use understanding?

teesta

Director: Bratya Basu
Cast: Debashree Roy, Chandreyee Ghosh, Badsha Moitra, Pijush Ganguly
5.5/10

The first time Badsha had heard Debashree emotionally lipping poetic lines, as she mused about life and mountains, he had felt irresistibly drawn by the beauty of her words, found her mysterious. But when she is still lipping such lines on their wedding night, he is frustrated into an exasperated withdrawal, finding her ice cold. And when her poetical outbursts do not cease, only increase, he feels it’s all nonsense. Though we sympathise with him, as it can indeed be quite unnerving to be married to a woman who prefers talking to the mountains than to him, we do not agree with him. But there is also much that is beautiful in Bratya Basu’s Teesta, a tale of people with failed relationships in search of identities, while questioning like Eliot’s Prufrock the worth of finding or understanding it at all.

Disillusioned by bitter experiences, both Debashree and Chandreyee share a comfort zone with each other, which Badsha in a fit of frustration lashes out as lesbianism. Again, much as we understand his jealousy of the warmth between the two women, we wouldn’t agree with him. For it’s not just Debashree’s acceptance of him too quick and baffling, the way she crumbles into a dead walking doll immediately after her marriage, is not convincing at all. One could try to understand, of course. Or just poetically question, like Debashree does again and again, of what use will understanding be, either.

Deepali Singh

Move over, humans!

tomake selam

Director: Ramesh Modi
Cast: Ranjit Mallick, Shakti Kapoor, Sanjeev Dasgupta
3/10

Dogs are no underdogs when it comes to punishing criminals. Junior Moti in this Ramesh Modi fare demonstrates that they have a remarkable road sense to run or hitchhike all the way from Calcutta to Jamshedpur and have enough leadership potential to form a paramilitary dog brigade along the way. We’re convinced that they can clinch the gory action scenes even with muscular men and somersaulting women around. And also that they can emote far better than their biped counterparts and bark with proper accents and intonations which go missing from the bizarre Bengali-seeming lingo that most actors speak.

However, it’s not an out and out dogged dog show. Because Ranjit Mallick is there with his king-size Afghan moustache which is quite statement-making since Bollywood has already shown us its Rajasthani and UP versions in Paheli and Mangal Pandey ? The Rising, respectively. These apart, the only other thing you may take interest in is the music. Actually, this is the only area where the humans beat the canines. Anyway, why the human cast should go unnamed is something we’re left clueless about. Even the high IQ-ed dog sleuths can’t solve that mystery.

Arnab Bhattacharya