dus
Director: Anubhav Sinha
Cast: Sunjay Dutt, Abhishek Bachchan, Suniel Shetty, Zayed Khan, Pankaj Kapur, Shilpa Shetty, Esha Deol, Ninad Kamat, (Dia Mirza, Raima Sen)
6.5/10
You have seen designer tearjerkers (think Karan Johar), designer romances (think Yash Chopra) and designer period dramas (think Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Vidhu Vinod Chopra). Now, welcome to director Anubhav Sinha’s world of designer action.
Dus may not give you a single good reason to hold it worthy of a ‘10’ rating, but it does provide moments of exhilaration that not many hyped action thrillers from Bollywood ? with the exception of Dhoom ? have been able to do in recent times.
Redolent of Hong Kong wizard John Woo’s manner of filmmaking, Dus depends as much on style as it does on action, intrigue and emotions to keep the adrenaline flowing. Yes, too many of the characters are often too smart and stylish for their own good, but that’s all part of the package. Flirtatious Zayed, the baby of the anti-terrorist squad on the trail of a mysterious mayhem-maker, even flirts with the bomb he has been asked to defuse. “Oow, baby!” he coos before wondering which of the two white wires to snip. Sunjay, who heads the group, may be weighed down by a hundred worries, but never forgets his slow-motion swagger. The bat tattoo on Shilpa’s lower back, too, gets as much camera coverage as her face. Then there is Abhishek’s character, who may not speak much but his style screams “cool”.
For a man whose last film was the weepy Tum Bin..., Sinha seems to have switched genres effortlessly. Stunt director Allan Amin’s technical brilliance supplements Sinha’s adroit handling of the narrative, which straddles continents and leads to a gripping climax. It helps that there are only two song-and-dance interruptions ? even the popular Dus bahaane number is over with by the time the last of the introductory credits disappears from the screen. The actors play their parts well, especially Sunjay, though it is difficult to imagine why anybody would choose to fight terrorists dressed in a suit. Ah, designer action!
Ritu Parna Dutta
Fareb
Director: Deepak Tijori
Cast: Manoj Bajpai, Shilpa Shetty, Shamita Shetty, Milind Gunaji, Kelly Dorjee
4/10
One is naturally more empathetic towards relatively small-time ‘underdog’ films pitted against over-hyped huge Bollywood releases. But watching Fareb, after several consecutive films with almost identical treatments, one runs out of patience ? and wants to run out of the theatre ? big time!
Though technically smart, director Deepak Tijori’s thriller is just another run-of-the-mill, smart alec remake doing the rounds, about marital infidelity (Aitraaz, Zehar, Yakeen) and merits little new comment. Really, what can one say about such utter mediocrity? Tedious to view, and to review!
A whodunit twice over, Fareb’s plot is a clever amalgamation of dozens of Hollywood A-,B-,C-grade murder mysteries, replete with deception, betrayal, revenge, blackmail, greed, lust. Merry widow (Shamita), suspected for killing unfaithful husband, seduces unsuspecting man (Manoj) and is ultimately killed by his loyal wife (Shilpa). But even watchdog cop (Kelly) turns blind eye to Shilpa’s crime because ‘she-dun-it’ for the ‘good’ of ‘innocent’ husband, being corrupted by ‘bad’ woman.
Moral of story? Self-appointed keeper of morality can get away with murder? Dicey message, no? Manoj displays his honed method-acting craft in one-dimensional role. But sibling duo is displayed more as great gym bods than emoting faces. Too bad their sister act is so underplayed. Playing on a sort of good-bad-alter-ego-ish intrigue using their similar appearances would’ve been a good stylistic device.
Mandira Mitra
NAGORDOLA
Director: Raj Mukherjee
Cast: Rupa Ganguly, Krishna Kishore Mukherjee, Samata Das, Sangeet Bhoumik, Nil Mukherjee, Tamonash Ghose, Satinath, Anuradha Roy, Indrani Halder
4/10
Raj Mukherjee aims his camera this time on the righteous do-gooder wife Rupa Ganguly. The loud-mouth wife, to whom her colonel father is the ultimate man, goes nitpicking her little son, teenage daughter (Samata) and her quiet husband (Krishna Kishore) while they, in the bid to maintain peace, just accept. She, caught in her own world of rights and wrongs, vehemently objects to the marriage of her niece to the boy she had seen hauled up by the police, condemns adult film shows in school in the name of sex education, creates a ruckus when her premises are encroached upon and gets hyper at her daughter’s impudence. In spite of the best of intentions distance creeps in and her painter husband seeks friendship in his secretary, the daughter gets carried away and naively indulges in sex, and the son suffers physical abuse at school in silence.
But Mukherjee takes too long to establish the characters before reaching the dramatic high and Rupa’s diagnosed with a cancerous throat. The high-pitched drone comes to a stop and the family unites to do their bit. But it takes one Indrani Halder and her psychological ‘games’ to push the film to its conclusion. The film peters out due to unnecessary sequences that follow. A person with such rigid morals wanting her minor daughter to give birth to the child is unconvincing.
Possibly Mukherjee realised that the end is too predictable. The controversy that he couldn’t churn up with Rupa-Krishna Kishore’s lingering kissing scene or even with the explicit scene between the teenagers, he hope perhaps to create with this outrageous conclusion. It actually spoils what was shaping up as a good film with good performances.
Madhuparna Das
