Neat teen flick

We r friends

Director: Jaidev Chakravorty

Cast: Aditya Seal, Jackie Shroff, Asrani, Shakti Kapoor, Govind Namdeo, Mohan Joshi

5/10

A young happy film for friends and family, We R Friends is watchable. It has the usual school teenage pranks, a lot of music, dance, masti and drugs, romance and, as the film promo says, ‘wake-up call for parents’.

A group of friends stand by each other but their parents don’t. While they try to save a friend from the menace of drugs, their parents are either busy being at each others’ throats for some inexplicable reason or they are busy minting money. The principal stands in and saves them as does the school driver in his own way. Lots of small skirts, long legs, very young cast and good locations. The music by Anand Milind is good and there maybe a lot of young fresh talent in the cast of the students. Credit to Chakravorty for having young fresh faces that look the age that they play.

Anasuya Basu

Killing Collateral: Job is job

The Killer

Director: Hasnain S. Hyderabadwala & Raksha Mistry

Cast: Irrfan, Emraan Hashmi, Nisha Kothari , Zakir Hussain

5/10

What’s that about Collateral and Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise? It takes a Bhatt production to kill all that and Indianise it even while retaining all the frames in sequential order.

What is everyone going on about The Killer being a frame-to-frame copy of the very recent (2004) Hollywood film? Aw, c’mon, was Collateral shot in Dubai? Nope, it was only Los Angeles. And did Collateral have three hot item numbers (not even one) by Nisha Kothari playing a bar girl?

She must be the first heroine of even an Indian film who appears only for the item songs, and that’s being as economical in her screen time as her wardrobe. Which is just as well, or the title would have applied to her, for an entirely different reason.

And did Collateral play on a home-grown Serial Kisser’s image by letting him pucker up only at the end — and there too with him stopping just short of a smooch, grinning at the audience and saying, maybe next time. And did Collateral have any of these slick one-liners written by Sanjay Masoom? Shucks, nope.

The Killer is also a rare Indian film that has two heroines, Nisha Kothari and Emraan Hashmi.That’s because of two reasons: (1) Nisha, because of her minuscule role, becomes a ‘side heroine’ actually (maybe she heard about bar girls in Mumbai and flew there to help sisters in distress and undress).And (2) Emraan apart from being given a running line, “Correct bolen?”, is used as a flower vase, though he is placed at the steering wheel of a taxi in Dubai. The real hero, the one who plays the title role, is Irrfan. He’s given all the beady-eyed machismo, the deadpan dialogues, the running line, “Job is job”, and someone (heroine Emraan) whom he can take it out on. Irrfan is the new Nana Patekar.

Anil Grover