Trashy Sequels 2013: Race 2 and Murder 3.

I really could not tell you why I decided to watch Race 2. I'm not a film critic, I'm not getting paid to watch and write about it. I'm also not a fan of the 2008 original Race movie - in fact, I devoted my entire review of it to praising the fact that stupendously bad Hindi films are still being made, and that film being an indicator of just how bad it can get. Race 2 continues this proud tradition, but with all the updated sleekness that I assume a budget twice the size of the first Race film can afford.

Not that plot or characterization is of particular importance in this film, but let's recap a bit anyway. Saif Ali Khan is back as Ranveer, sans his Bipasha Basu as Soniya, though she makes a brief appearance in a flashback. His new rival/friend is John Abraham, an Indian mobster who loves nothing more than money. Deepika Padukone is his half-sister, developing feelings for Ranveer's smooth-talking ways (picture me rolling my eyes as I type this mess). Then there is John's girlfriend, played by Jacqueline Fernandez, who seems to know Ranveer from somewhere. Unfortunately RD, Anil Kapoor's unfunny cop character from the first film, is also back, this time with assistant Cherry, Ameesha Patel. 

The biggest problem with Race 2 is that it's actively annoying and insulting to one's intelligence and other senses. I don't think a couple of songs can be even called music - even if you're a fan of electronically altered singing voices, this amount of autotune renders every human effort into hopeless robotic noise that is not pleasurable to listen to, even in a club setting. There's some sleek action that is entirely too reliant on wire work, so much so that it stops being interesting in its defying of reality, and more just unbelievable and dragging on needlessly. In some ways, Saif is more of an uber-capable agent man in this than in last year's Agent Vinod, jumping from windows and from tops of buildings like he's Spiderman. 

Then there are the twists and the incredibly dumb dialogues we all know and dislike from the first movie. The twists once again make sure you don't really trust or care about any character. There is none of that feeling of betrayal when one character appears to be bad when you previously believed them to be a good guy. In the world of Race movies, it doesn't matter. They'll re-align themselves three times by the time the film is over, so you're better off just about following along and not caring too deeply.

It almost feels a bit silly to talk about performances in films like this, where the dialogues are an insult to whatever modicum of talent each actor on the cast has. I'm sure you've seen the best ones quoted on Twitter or in other reviews, but here's a sampling of the groanfest we've come to expect: "So hot .. I'm burning with envy." "Cherry, I don't have time to pop your cherry." "You're gonna be so dead and I'm gonna be so rich."

Ameesha Patel and Anil Kapoor's plotline is particularly painful since they have set out to ruin fruit as a healthy snack for everybody who enjoys an apple or a banana every now and then. Who thought this was a good idea? 

But perhaps the most horrible thing about Race 2 is that it's simply so goddamn boring. It aims to cater to the most base needs of the audience - some violence, some twists, some bare skin (of both sexes) - and fails entirely to actually entertain. It's not so bad it's good, or fun to watch to cackle at the horridness. It's just dull and irritating. 

Murder 3, in true Bhatt sequel fashion, seems to have nothing to do with the first two movies, other than the confused title. It is also a very trashy sequel, but manages to at the very least be interesting in its utter stupidity. There is just one twist here, and it's silly as all hell, but it's the type of twist that makes sure you want to see the conclusion to it, no matter how inane.

Vikram (Randeep Hooda on a bad hair day) is mourning over the disappearance of his girlfriend Roshni (Aditi Rao Hydari) by getting heavily drunk. The girl who works at the watering hole he visits, Nisha (newcomer Sara Loren), takes him home one night because he's not in shape to drive himself home, and the two eventually begin a relationship. There is something strange about Vikram's house, however, Nisha soon discovers, and what ever did happen to Roshni, anyway?

Randeep Hooda (who is on a seriously, seriously bad hair day, and I cannot emphasise enough how much this diminishes my enjoyment of the movie) has the odd talent of portraying guys who just seem off in a way, which lends the first half of the movie a strange atmosphere. It feels like every warning bell in Nisha's head should go off, but apparently this guy who lives alone in a house far away from the city, with a girlfriend who's mysteriously vanished into thin air, is just dreamy enough to have sex with (yes, there are sex scenes, in a film from the Bhatt house - I'm as shocked as you are!). Or maybe Nisha's character is written as pointlessly stupid, only possessing a brain when the script wants her to have one.  

The only shining moments for Randeep (on a continuous, very, very bad hair day) are the scenes where he gets to play drunk, as he does quite a good job of it. Sara Loren is merely okay - she opts for under-acting instead of over-acting, which fools you into thinking she's quite capable, but in reality all she has to do is this blank frown of horror at various noises. It's not great acting.

As such, the film belongs to Aditi Rao Hydari, who I really enjoyed in London Paris New York (even if I didn't love the film itself). Her acting can be over-the-top at times, and her character is written as not precisely the sharpest pen in the pencil case, but at least she tries to spin this ridiculousness into a believable direction, and somewhat manages it.

The post-interval twist creates quite an intriguing dramatic circumstance, that made me actually interested in how the film was going to end. It's completely unbelievable and silly, of course, but in a way that kept me hooked until the end, and a part of that was Aditi's better-than-the-film performance. There's another twist the film could've taken, but opts out of, which proves that ultimately films like these are just absolutely horrible to women, and to the female characters they portray. I almost want to discuss spoilers with regards to this film - where it could've gone, and where it opted to go. 

Still, the amazing thing about watching this film after sitting through Race 2, is that it seems like a masterpiece of thrilling cinematic story-telling in comparison. I realise it is not - it's a stupid thriller that spins a plot to allow for some "bold" and "daring" sex scenes to be in there, while remaking (officially - to give them credit) a Colombian thriller called The Hidden Face. It does not deconstruct love, the claim made by producer Mukesh Bhatt, as there isn't a tale of love told here - at least not believably enough to count. I'm not sure who I'd recommend this film to. Probably no one - it's a film, it exists, you can watch it, but I'm not entirely sure why you would. Aditi Rao Hydari is good but not that good, and there isn't enough Randeep Hooda goodness here to sate a fangirl of his. Maybe give the Colombian original a spin instead?

Slumdog Millionaire and escaping the reality.

First of all apologies for the lengthy silence. It's one of those points in time for me when it's difficult to work up excitement over all things Indian cinema related. Everything exciting is coming out close to the end of this year, and I'm never in the mood for anything in my large pile of DVD's-to-watch. I haven't seen a single 2009 movie yet. It's odd.

But let's talk about what I have seen, specifically that little movie that won the Best Picture Oscar.

Slumdog Millionaire is a quizzical - pun unintended - piece of cinema. It weaves together the realism of violence and misfortune of the streets, gangsters, religious zealots and orphaned child beggars, with the dreamy escapism of Bollywood films, love conquering all obstacles and the idea of fate, 'kismet'. You could argue that because of this, it portrays Mumbai or Bombay perfectly, the two sides of the city both brought on display. At the same time, for this particular viewer at least, it created a strange discord - I didn't know how to allow the movie the benefits of both styles, how to reconcile the illogical parts with the ones that made more realistic sense.

You must all know the story by now. Jamal Malik (Dev Patel, who I previously loved in the UK television series Skins) is a kid raised in the slums and out on the road, who ends up on the game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, hosted by Prem (Anil Kapoor), and against all odds, knows the answers - simply because he does. Accused of cheating, he is forced to relay his life story to a police man (Irrfan Khan), a tale of misfortune but also of success, and of his search for his childhood love, Latika (Freida Pinto).

It feels a bit silly to critisize the movie for things I felt were unrealistic, in a way that quite bothered me, because for one, I did truly enjoy the movie. It was powerful and had a lot of great elements coming together effortlessly. Then, for two, who am I to say what is and isn't realistic? Despite my long interest in India and my knowledge of it, I'm oh so far from all-knowing on the subject. And yet -- would slum kids truly learn such fluent English while being out on the streets (or on the rails, as it were)? Would they ever, later in life, converse fully in English? These are small complaints but they threw me off all the same. It's odd how I could easily suspend my belief on the existence of fate, but not these smaller things.

The film is nicely paced, and especially the scenes with the children actors - first very young and later slightly older - were fantastic. As Jamal matures, Dev Patel carries the role splendidly, but the adult Latika, played by Freida Pinto, is sadly not as convincing. This made me lose interest in their love story just the tiniest. If Freida did have the chops to pull off the role, it felt like she was not giving her fullest and was more of a pretty face than anything else. The other actors, such as Anil and Irrfan, are as solid as one could expect - the layers in Anil's Prem were a pleasant surprise for me. The sound design and music overall deserved the Oscars they received, punctuating scenes fantastically. The song-and-dance, which is surely not a spoiler at this point, is not up to Bollywood standards (the choreography is partly fine, partly reminds me of cheesy 90's Hindi films) but if nothing else, allows the film to end on a high note and was not as bad as I initially expected.

I think it's wonderful that Slumdog has gotten the success and publicity it has and that India, too, has embraced the film as if its own. I'm glad to have seen it and enjoyed it - even though it doesn't quite make any of my favourites lists.

The good, the bad and the misunderstood. Tashan.

It's a little bit weird to review a movie such as Tashan, which received a lot of hype prior to its release but never lived up to the expectations of the audience. Critics were less than fond of it, as well, and pretty much all of the Hindi movie loving crowd rejected the film. Of course there were things other than the film's quality that affected this catastrophic box office success; promotion was far from aggressive, and it clouded the film's actual plot in mystery. The director Vijay Krishna Acharya discussed the movies of his youth and how he and producer Aditya Chopra modelled the promotion according to those days; the days when you knew next to nothing about a film and had hardly seen a trailer when walking into the theater.

This promotional campaign, no matter how unuseful, was not the only thing Acharya took from the 1970's Hindi cinema. In a brilliant essay on 70's masala, Tashan and Om Shanti Om, Filmi Girl details all the throwbacks that make this film indeed seem like a grandchild of the days when Ajit was the villain, Amitabh was the hero and Pran featured in nearly every film you would see. Another fantastic review that gave me a bundle of interesting things to ponder regarding the movie was that of Qalandar's, which focuses on the topic of language in the movie - the Hindi, the English, which the characters speak and understand, and how this reflects them and their importance in the film. (Both of the linked reviews contain spoilers so surf carefully!)

The thoughts sparked by these reviews mark at least one thing - Tashan may be the brainchild of Dhoom 2 writer Acharya, but it is a far cry from the metro-crowd pleasing sleek action that the Hrithik starrer provided us with. In Tashan you have sand-dust and blood, revenge and betrayal. The true masala dish is also spiced with an awkward 'item number' where Kareena attempts to shake the booty Aditya Chopra told her to diet off, but the brief song scene is about the only thing that really reminds you of the writer's previous work.

The movie begins with Saif Ali Khan's Jeetender who in true urban fashion has turned into Jimmy, an English-speaking, English-thinking call center executive and part-time English teacher. He addresses the camera directly and brags about his lady conquests - the combination is somehow a turn-off and generally I regard the beginning quite poor. It alienates even me, the biggest Saif fan, by presenting a character that is like a poor, exaggerated replica of his characters in Salaam Namaste and Hum Tum. Jimmy meets Pooja (Kareena Kapoor), a beautiful girl asking for help, which leads him to teaching Anil Kapoor's cartoon-y villain Bhaiyyaji English. Jimmy is less concerned with teaching English, however, as he is with oggling at the beautiful Pooja. As luck would have it, though, she turns out to be quite the bag of tricks, leading Bhaiyyaji to call Bachchan Pande (Akshay Kumar), an UP wannabe-gangster, to work with Jimmy and catch the girl who cannot be trusted.

After the story truly kickstarts, following Pooja's disappearance and especially Bachchan Pande's powerful and amusing entrance, Tashan transforms from an awkward, messily narrated film into a fun masala ride that endeared me to its characters, its performances and its storyline. It's by no means the perfect film - besides the beginning, there are a few scenes and few plot diversions I think could be smoother or just better, but overall, I really enjoyed it both of the two viewings I've given it so far.

Saif's character Jimmy I only began to warm up to half-way through my second watch. It helps to see the character as the opposite of Bachchan - the illiterate who speaks a Kanpur-accented Hindi versus the urban English-speaker achiever. They don't have a lot of scenes together, but the relationship is important to the film, though it's clear that one learns more from the other than vice versa. On the other hand, Kareena's Pooja is the truly central character. While Akshay has the presence to carry the story, and he is easily many people's favourite thing about it (indeed Bachchan combines beautifully a lot of the things that Akshay can pull off - the comedic fool, the action hero, the romantic lead), Pooja brings something that Hindi film heroines sometimes lack. Not only does she kick ass and take names, she has the guts to toy with the male characters, and at the same time, have a vulnerable side to her. And despite her slightly too skinny form, Kareena looks gorgeous in the movie.

The film has its share of whacky moments, most importantly the song picturization of "Dil dance maare", which has an explanation and an amusing context in the film, but still makes you ask, "what the hell were they thinking?". Regardless, maybe the explanation is that they were thinking. The lyrics of the song read as a Hinglishized parody for Bollywood song clichés. Instead of 'gori gori', you get 'white white'. Is it a Hinglish song to mock Hinglish songs? Whatever it is, it's not to be taken seriously.

I'm a big fan of the soundtrack. Vishal-Shekhar have provided the movie an Indian rock sound, heard as electric guitar on several tracks and especially in the title song which brings some definite attitude. It's not everybody's thing, but as somebody who used to mostly listen to American rock before Hindi tunes came to my life, it suits me perfectly. Out of the picturizations, besides the crazy fun "Dil dance maare", my heart belongs to the beautiful "Falak tak", featuring Kareena and Akshay in various Indian locations.

Action movies have been far too sleek nowadays, but this film offers up rough and dirty fight scenes in an abundance. The action director Peter Hein has previously worked in the South, but while entertaining in here, I think his best work remains in the Tamil industry, for example the recent Rajni film Sivaji. Regardless, the scenes fit in the tradition of Hindi films - the gore of the post-Sholay industry. No bullets or wire-work go spared, and it could certainly be better, but I enjoyed a lot nonetheless.

Anil Kapoor's Bhaiyyaji is a confusing combination of a twisted, cold-hearted killer, and an amusing villain who speaks funnily. Regardless, the man is perfect for the role, and it's quite a wonder how accurate the overall casting for the film is. Kareena is given a very cool female role which she pulls off well, everybody but Saif as Jimmy would be a knock-off, Akshay was tailor-made for Bachchan and even the minor character casting seems pitch-perfect (the back stories of the main cast feature wonderful young talents).


If I have one major complaint to voice about Tashan, it would be the use of the title in the film itself, which strikes me as horribly gimmick-like. The look of the characters is mostly inconsequential and for example Saif's moustache does nothing but give me the creeps. To say any film is about "style" is to undermine its story and heighten the superficial qualities and despite what people may say, this is not a vapid film. It's a film like any film - made to entertain, but to call it stupid is to ultimately sell it short. But I suppose in the end the 'tashan' of Tashan is not about hair or looks, it's about the 'style within', the attitude and confidence.

Snark mode on, review in 3.. 2.. 1 - Race!

People of the Hindi film following world! You can all rest easy now. Stop holding your breath in, just exhale slowly, and breath free once again. The future is secured.

I ought to specify. The future of the long-standing tradition of bad movies made in the beautiful language of Hindi/Urdu is secured. That's right. All is once again right in the universe. Dumb dance routines, insultingly bad lyrics, awkward try-hard plots and characters you forget as soon as you leave the theater – Race has got it all.

The film works on the premise that if you have something that isn't anywhere near as good as anybody involved in the making of it hoped for, you can flip it around in hopes that the audience will find the constant plot twists exciting instead of predictable and (by the time we get into the last third of the movie) just plain boring. I've got news to the makers; whichever way you decide to flip a turd, it sadly still looks brown.

Race isn't really that bad. And that's another tragedy right there – it doesn't get the crown of being the worst film ever, nor does it gain the honor of a fun “so-bad-it's-good” trainwreck. It's just unexcitably sucky. Not that they don't try. There's enough Bipasha skin to call it Dhoom 2 and enough Saif skin to call it Fangirl Hook Collection 2008. The songs go from bad (South-African white cowgirls shaking ass along with some of the cringeworthiest moves I've witnessed in a while) to worse (Zara Zara Let's Keep a Safe Distance, Okay Katrina and that other song with Saif cleaning his face against Bipasha's chest – ugh). This is one of the few times even I denounce English lyrics in songs. And the theme song? Annoying as heck.

About individual performances, well, did it have any? Akshaye, as much as I champion him, had the most unlikable character here and Saif was not too sympathetic himself. The ladies weren't worth much. Quite frankly all of the leading four were just so forgettable, which leads me to..

I cannot believe I'd prefer a whole three hour movie about Anil Kapoor's character to rewatching Race, but hey, there you go. This was seriously the best part of the movie.

A special mention to the dialogue writer who came up with Saif's infamous “I celebrate losses” (You should, yaar, because this one? Not a winner! Also? 1993-2000..) as well as this one, which I shall leave as my parting wisdom, as voiced by Akshaye Khanna: “All a man needs in a weather like this is a cold beer and a hot chick!”