Baby (Hindi) (2015)

One day…. Maybe someday soon, we will see a refreshing and reassuring Bollywood Espionage movie that is action packed from start to finish.  Stuff that most of our aspirations are made of right? Well fasten your seatbelts and get ready for a ride that has been most strangely named BABY.

Hate Story 2

Akshay (Jay Bhaushali) is about to be beaten up by Mandar Mhatre’s (Sushant Singh) henchmen.  Akshay screams, “Mandar Mhatre!!! Agar tu mard ka bachcha hai toh akele ladh ke dikha” (If you are a man then fight alone).  Mhatre replies with a scowl on his face, “Koi zaroorat nahin mujhe dikhane ke liye ki mai mard ka bachcha hoon” (I don’t need to show YOU that I am a man).

Gunday

I was in a conversation with a good friend last night and she asked me what I thought about Gunday.  My reply to her was, “It seems like an overly done up movie with more emphasis on looking good and creating hype than focusing on quality cinema”.  Her reply to me was to go in without a bias.  I did exactly that.  But at the end of the day, my expectation was met.

Yeh Saali Zindagi

It beats me. It beats me completely. Does the use of profanity through a movie make it spunky enough? The likes of a Good Fellas – which coincidentally holds some kind of a world record for the maximum number of explitives in a movie – doesn’t become a great movie because of the profanities. It has a lot to do with the other aspects of the movie such as direction and acting to begin with. And it would be fair to assume that someone like Sudhir Mishra who has given us the likes of Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin and Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi would know better than that right. Surely an amateur critic like this one doesn’t need to point out these basics to the immensely talented director. But this amateur critic continues to see enough and more articles in the tabloids (cannot call them newspapers) that scream out from the front pages that likes of Yeh Saali Zindagi and No One Killed Jessica are creating waves with the audiences coz they are spunky movies. Does anyone pay any attention to consistency these days? Sudhir Mishra would definitely be embarrassed to see the end result of his latest so called potboiler. To point out something very basic, Priti (Chitrangadha Singh) calls Arun (Irrfan Khan) from a Bombay Vodafone number and not a Delhi number. Considering they have been in Delhi for a while and that Mobile Number Portability is not equal to circle portability as of now or when the movie was made, surely someone should have given some thought to that.


Arun is a CA par excellence who is required to keep Mehta’s (Saurabh Shukla) books in order. When Mehta cheats him of his share of the adjustments he stops working for him much to Mehta’s disgust. Mehta almost kills him but Arun refuses to join back. In the heat of the moment, Arun also decides to ask Priti to marry him. Arun had met Priti a while back when he was recovering money for Mehta from a borrower. He was instantly taken in by her but for some reason has never voiced what he feels for her to date. He now finds himself in a situation where he walks into a restaurant to see Priti coochy cooing with Shyam Singhania (Vipul Gupta) although Shyam is about to get married to Anjali who is the daughter of the Home Minster Verma. Now Verma is responsible for getting the local don, Bade (Yashpal Sharma) into jail. Bade is taken care of @ Tihar Jail by the local inspector Satbeer (Sushant Singh). He also has a soft corner for Kuldeep (Arunoday Singh) who wants to get out of the illegal business and go straight. He hasn’t been spending quality time with his wife Shanti (Aditi Rao Hydari) who is anything but peaceful about it. Completing this Egg Bhurji is Chhote (Prashant Narayanan) who is Bade’s transvestite younger brother and wants to eliminate Bade at the earliest and get his hands on all the money lying in various international bank accounts.

As mentioned earlier, Sudhir Mishra has tried to sprinkle this melee with several profanities and slang words which can be associated with Delhi but falls significantly short on the basic attributes of direction and acting. Chitrangadha Singh hasn’t acted in her life since Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi (Maybe even there she had very little screen time to probably notice). No idea what the big deal is about Arunoday Singh and Aditi Rao Hydari. They are decent but nothing as great as the tabloids seem to be calling out. YSZ saves a lot of face thanks to the immense talent of Irrfan Khan, Saurabh Shukla, Yashpal Sharma, Sushant Singh (very under rated) and Prashant Narayanan who come up with sterling performances in their respective roles. Average music and bad editing round up this mish mashed movie which could have been made so much better. 5 on 10 at best.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXuLeso_jbg

Rakht Charitra

This one is based on a true story – But ironically claims that all characters are fictional and that any resemblance to a person living or dead is purely coincidence – Now that’s what u call playing to the laws of the land. The funny part is that both these claims follow each other at the beginning of the movie itself. Now hows that for absolute irony. Based on the story of Paritala Ravindra, this one is everything that you can expect out of an RGV biography. Home Territory as one would call it. This is RGVs backyard. This is what RGV does best. And he comes reasonably close to his previous best.

Ananthapur is a district in Andhra Pradesh where Jungle Law prevails. It is led by and completely controlled by Narasimha Reddy, the local politician. His right hand man from the lower caste (wonder why this was beeped out in the movie) is Veerbhadra (Rajendra Gupta). He painstakingly helps Narasimha build his empire over 2 decades. And on Narasimha’s insistence goes ahead with the listings for the upcoming elections. Obviously he favours people who are closer to the so called downtrodden and thereby gives the people hope of a brighter future.

Unbeknownst to him, Nagamani Reddy (Kota Srinivasa Rao), yet another close associate of Narasimha Reddy is extremely upset with the turn of events which is taking away a lot of power from the upper classes (which coincidentally is not beeped out). He starts sowing seeds of doubt in Narasimha’s mind of how VB is misusing the power and tarnishing his image with the lower classes. Wonder why Narasimha never looks at checking up on these claims but directly takes away all power from VB. VB is obviously incensed about this entire episode and decides that he doesn’t need the lead party’s support. Goes ahead and launches his own challenge to fight the elections. Not a good idea Mr. VB. Remember – Jungle Law prevails. Obviously the result is his death – brutally murdered by his own kin – Manda (Ashish Vidyarthi) – who is threatened by Nagamani.

All hell breaks lose after this. Shankar (Sushant Singh) who is VBs elder son leaves the town for the jungle and starts plotting the revenge plan on his father’s killers. Simultaneously news reaches Pratap (Viveik Oberoi) who, at that time has just returned after discussing his plans to marry Nandini (Radhika Apte). He returns back to see an ocean of blood all over and his brother leading the revenge. Only a matter of time before he has to jump into the slug fest coz Shankar is also killed by the local cops who are hand in glove with Nagamani.

RGV’s home turf as I had mentioned earlier. Music is atypical Sanskrit Shlokas in the background. Some unnecessary stuff songs thrown in for bad measure. Could have done without it. And then there is the kicker in the shitter – There is RC2 releasing on November 19th 2010. Now how is that for squeezing the market dry. Smart Marketing RGV Saar!!!! Glad to say that VO is back although his entry could have been much better than riding on a scooter in slow motion!!!! Come on guys lets give the guy his due. But the absolute stand out performances are by Abhimanyu Shekhar Singh who plays the role of the disgusting despicable Bukka Rao – Nagamani’s son and by Kota Srinivasa Rao who plays Nagamani. Super performances by both. Overall RC1 is a 6 on 10. Not too close to Sarkar which was much better executed. Don’t think RC2 is going to be too great. But will be worth a dekko I guess.

Knock Out

This one is an out and out cut copy paste job of Phone Booth (Colin Farrel). Just a change of language to Hinglish. Irrfan (no longer Khan) is Tony a.k.a Bachchu, a middleman in high value political dealings going into thousands of crores of tax payer’s money. He is the guy who knows how much of the money is in which bank account for a leading politican called Bapuji (Gulshan Grover). He lives with his wife (Rukhsar) and daughter in Mumbai. He treats women with absolute disdain and uses them as toys and has several extra marital affairs. His wife, however, thinks he is the best husband possible.

Sanjay Dutt is a common man who decides the take things into his own hands. He works alone but has access to the best available technology – stuff that only people @ very high levels in the services would have access to. One fine morning, Bachchu is at his favourite PCO (u CANNOT use mobile phones if u are such a high profile pimp). What he doesn’t know is that he is being watched / stalked by Sanjay Dutt at the same time. He takes his list of drop off points for the day and is about to leave when the phone rings. Against better sense, he decides the pick up the call and quickly finds out that he is trapped inside the booth. At least till his stalker decides otherwise. When a druggie decides to harass Bachchu for some money he was to pick up, he gets shot in broad day light.

A crowd slowly starts building up, followed by the cops led by the officer in charge (Sushant Singh) and his sidekick. It is only a matter of time before the media also arrives led by Nidhi (Kangana Ranaut) who is a correspondent for India TV. And a smart correspondent at that. She takes long range shots of the area, especially the phone booth much before the crowd becomes uncontrollable. Starts putting 2 and 2 together and figures out that there is a stalker. What does she do? Like any other responsible media person goes both to the cops and her boss. She is attractive enough to make a Mumbai Cop drool and dim witted enough to believe that she will get the first rights to everything that happens around the area.

The drama then slowly begins to unfold into what can be described as a mini laugh riot. It is appalling to see the bad bad bad execution of a very good original. The direction is Tacky. Mani Shankar it would seem hasn’t learnt much from his earlier experiences which were equal disasters. The execution is all over the place. Editing – almost non existant. Consistency – out of the window. Effects – looks pasted. Green Screens – again non existant. Sanjay Dutt and Irrfan continue to perform in any movie to the best of their abilities. Although Irrfan could have done with a proper hair cut. Kangana is sincere to the core. She is definitely good looking – I am increasingly beginning to believe that since Once upon a time in Mumbai. But her dialogue delivery totally sucks. She says everything with an emphasis on every single word like a class 4 student would do in her first elocution competition. Cant quite say anyone else existed. Quite a badly made movie – not surprisingly – 3 on 10.