The Attacks of 26/11

A very interesting way to market a movie and especially one of the magnitude of this one.  I stumbled upon this clip on you tube when I was looking for the trailer of The Attacks 26/11.  It shows the actual 7 minutes at the beginning of the movie.  Not a trailer but the actual 7 minutes.  So here goes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmSIJhfmXq0

One thing is for certain after watching the first 2-3 minutes.  RGV doesn’t have too much command over the English language.  Neither does his team.  He actually compares 9/11 with 26/11 and calls the former shocking and the latter audacious.  First of all, why compare? And how can the word audacious be associated with one and not the other?

166 people died and 238 were injured on a night that I cannot forget for a variety of reasons. It was only a matter of time before someone picked up the events and made a movie out of it. And it came as no surprise that Ram Gopal Varma was first in line. The story had enough and more intensity for RGV to convert into a movie.

But of late, RGV's intense movies are restricted to those to study the History of Cinema. With little or no production value, The Attacks of 26/11 turns out to be a damp squib - in tems of a movie. There is a severe emotional chord that the movie will strike with most of you - especially those who come from my city.

But, for that, do you really need to watch the movie? I don't think so at all. If anything, it will make you lose your faith in an already crumbling system and maybe even consider leaving this country. The movie has its high points but they are too few to leave a lasting impression. There is Nana Patekar of course in the role of the Joint Commissioner.

He says, "27 saal ke experience mein jurm ke baad police pahunchte the. Par yahaan pe jurm jaari tha. Aur jo log jurm kar rahe thhe, unko marne ka ya police ka dar nahin tha. Iske liye kabhi training nahin dee gayi thhi" (in a career of 27 years, I have reached the scene after the crime. But I was faced with a crime in progress where the people involved weren't scared of either death or cops. We haven't been trained for a situation like this).

Food for thought - A city with the population of Australia wasn't prepared for a terrorist attack and doesn't have the equivalent of a SWAT team. Life goes on - ridiculous right?

To his credit, RGV does not make it into a communal movie. If anything, he makes it a point to be more unbiased through some well written screenplay about Islam and the Koran. How many people will eventually understand that message and not turn their angst against a religion is something that remains to be seen.

Lastly, the fact that we as a race can actually laugh at some of the dialogues shows how shallow we actually are. We don't have the basic education to understand that the dialogue was meant to hit hard and not make u smile or laugh or to mock something.

One last request. At the end of the movie, the producers request the audience to stand up as a mark of respect. Please stand up. Don't walk out. Stay for a while. Spare a thought for the 166 who died and 238 who were injured and God knows how many other people who experienced this first hand and are living with it day after day. Stand up.

4 on 10 for the movie.

Trailer on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20v_DINmWXo