PK (2014)

"Peekay ho kya?" is a question I feel like asking Mr. Rajkumar Hirani. Even a four year old can see that it's a grammatically incorrect sentence. However in Mr. Hirani's world, everyone makes the same erroneous choice of words while asking the confused, moronic looking alien (Aamir Khan) if he is drunk. Now the correct way to frame that question would be "Peekay aaye ho kya?" or "Peeye ho kya?" But no...everyone says it like a C-grade grammar pupil just for the sake of creating an age old pun and somehow giving the eponymous character his name in a poorly contrived, lame joke!

Anyway, so this PK arrives on the planet, to do some research! And yet, he isn't with a team. He is alone, stark naked (a nod to Arnold Schwarzenegger's entry in "The Terminator" (1984))?, with just one trinket around his neck as the only means of contacting his planet or his ship. This is a life-form emotionally, physically and physiologically similar to human beings, yet far more technologically advanced and intelligent.

Hell, they even have special powers by which they can read minds, and download an entire language database from a human being by simply holding their hands. They can even transfer their writing skills, language no bar. Such marvelous beings, and yet, they are dumb enough to send a single organism from their planet, wearing a removable remote control! Because if they allowed any backup contact mechanism on his person, then the rest of the plot would fall flat on its face. Fine...this contrivance excused, but with great hesitation!

Moving on, this sweet, emotional, sentimental alien finds himself lost and depressed when his exotic looking trinket gets stolen by a local countryman somewhere in Rajasthan. His only means to contact his planet or his species is gone! What amazing security measures for their research scientists. There is absolutely nothing else that he can use to communicate. Hell even the beastly "Predator" (1987) had some push-button gizmo built within his arm!

The alien struggles to survive on planet earth, by stealing clothes from dancing cars, which are shockingly in abundance in small Indian towns in Hirani's world. The dancing car is basically a visual result of couples having sex in cars. I mean, whatever happened to motel rooms and dingy bed and breakfast lodges? There's a limit to which you can repeat the same gag. It loses not only its humour quotient, but also any logic if at all...for not all of them make out in cars, and not all of them have to start dancing!

Later, fate lands him in the company of Bhairon (a bloated Sanjay Dutt) who takes him to a brothel, from where the alien finally picks up an Indian language (Bhojpuri in this case) and is able to convey that he is looking for his "Remote-wa"! (No wonder the film was made tax free in Uttar Pradesh!). And guess what Bhairon does? He merely infers that it is likely the trinket has been sold off in Delhi! That becomes the alien's first clue and he travels to Delhi. No surprises for guessing that that is where he eventually finds the trinket! What a small world, eh?

Nevertheless, it is in Delhi that his quest for the trinket lands him his name and also gives him his new mission: the search for God! Why? Because as the Indian colloquialism would have it, whenever he asks someone they all reply with either "God knows" or "Only God can help you" or "Trust God".

But little does the alien, now christened "PK" know that what he is dealing with is the land of a multitude of Gods and religions! Who shall he seek out? And who will ultimately return his trinket? The quest ultimately lands PK in a quagmire of organized religion and fake Godmen. Unbeknownst to him, he finds himself becoming a media created icon out to expose fakers acting as messengers of Gods, taking advantage of the poor and the ignorant and playing on their faith. One of these Godmen is Tapasvi Maharaj (Saurabh Shukla), who also happens to hold P.K's trinket, claiming it to be something that belonged to Lord Shiva!

P.K, in turn, is manipulated by a duck-billed Anushka Sharma, who one may easily confuse for Donald Duck had it not been for the lack of the sailor hat. A bird nest wig makes up for it, nevertheless. The spunky journalist is the only one who knows of PK's true identity.

And thus, Mr. Hirani and team manoeuvre their puck with so many ridiculously forced situations in order to manipulate the plot in their chosen direction, that you lose count. The entire film follows the Hirani textbook formula. Add loads of cheese, schmaltz, some unnecessary romance, uninspired song and dance numbers, a messiah-like hero, and touch upon pertinent issues with lots of sugar on top in the form of humour, and voila! You got a perfect weekend mega blockbuster, with the 1000 crore currency notes showing and fluttering all over the place AND a tag of being offbeat.

Speaking of romance, there's a poorly written romantic subplot revolving around Anushka's character and her Pakistani beau Sarfaraz (Sushant Singh Rajput, who's awful to say the least; one wonders how he even got this far). This romantic subplot comes full circle in a sickeningly contrived and ludicrous, laughable climax, where the subplot becomes the main plot and on its weak foundation rests the denouement that should actually have been magnanimous, cathartic and earth-shaking.

But Hirani chooses to chicken out and screw it all up with a cheap conclusion, while poorly putting across an India-Pakistan harmony sentiment. And sure enough, that scene takes away any credibility, or weight from the plot that boasts of being brave and audacious, taking on organized religion, causing hullabaloo amongst right wing protectors of various religions and whatnot! But the truth is, there is about one teaspoonful of mature, meaningful ideas sprinkled in a bucketful of utter rubbish that borders on juvenility.

The ideas of religious dogmatism, the middlemen in religion, and their questionable practices are barely touched upon. The rest of it is purely an exercise in silliness. The attempt to make a trendy new catchphrase, 'Wrong number' in this case, is forced and rather inchoate, compared to the earlier more popular catchphrases like 'Gandhigiri' and 'Jadoo ki Jhappi' in Hirani's Munnabhai films. In essence, the film bears a resemblance to the poser Godmen it attempts to expose, for it is nothing more than overcooked fluff, donning the garb of intelligence, trying hard to be intellectual and socially relevant, and claiming to be a clever satire.

Mr. Aamir 'Perfectionist' Khan mostly hams it up as expected, except in a few scenes where he shines with his authentic Bhojpuri accent. It is that one sequence surrounding a stage performer in the garb of Lord Shiva that brings in some good laughs. That, and the attempt to exchange a Gandhi image for food. Anushka is okay, and Mr. Boman Irani who had been the other star in Hirani's Munnabhai films is reduced to a thankless and forgettable role here.

Just when you think the senselessness may have passed as the film enters its penultimate moments, you get a sappy exchange between a love-lorn P.K (yes, this alien falls in love too!) and Anushka's character. In this scene, we learn that PK is carrying a huge trunk of Duracell batteries (yeah!) with him back to his planet for he doesn't get them there, and wishes to play some audio tape! So here's an alien species that has made and powered spaceships to fly across planets, but they lack the technology to play audio equipment? Sigh!


Score: 3/10

Ek Villain (2014)

Once upon a time in Bollywood, plagiarist Indian director Mohit Suri and his team of writers rummaged through their foreign film DVD collection and this time around, chose South Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon's grisly, gory, bone-chilling serial killer thriller, "I Saw the Devil" (2010) as the next victim of their butchery. Suri is already credited with directing "Awarapan" (2007), a copy of another Kim Jee-woon film, "A Bittersweet Life" (2005) and "Murder 2" (2011), a copy of Na Hong-jin's "The Chaser" (2008).

It wouldn't be farfetched to think that Suri and team sat over lunch one day, and laughed about how Indian audiences are all ignorant fools, and may not be aware of the original material they shamelessly lift their ideas from. Moreover, Kim Jee-woon's "I Saw the Devil", is the kind of film that many may simply avoid, given its disturbing content and ultraviolent nature. And that was probably the kind of environment and sentiment with which the unfortunate massacre of Kim Jee-woon's film took place, and a Bollywoodized, dumbed down version took shape.

And so the work began on the new, edgy, Bhatt style Bollywood thriller, except this time, the production house responsible is Balaji Motion Pictures. It was impossible for these folks to recreate a product as raw, unflinching, and primal as "I Saw the Devil" and so they chose not to stay faithful to the original script or characters, and toned down the violence to a large extent. The central plot, however, remains the same. The protagonist's wife is murdered by a dangerous psychopathic killer. He tracks down the perpetrator and subjects him to a deadly game of torture in which he tracks the killer's every move, thwarts his future attempts at crime, physically assaults and badly injures him, but keeps him alive and even leaves back some cash for him to get his injuries treated! The intention being, to make the killer suffer the same amount of pain and brutality that he inflicts upon his victims.

The original film had a rather straightforward story, with the thrills coming from taut writing, an exciting cat-and-mouse/hunter-and-prey chase game, a raw, realistic depiction of brutal violence along with some twists and turns at the right places, clubbed with terrific acting performances from the two leads. With today's fresh faces on board, an inherent tendency to portray all characters in the sympathetic light, and to drive home the film's cheesy title, we are served "Ek Villain", a ham and cheese sandwich with some Bollywood masala, sugar, spice and a liberal dose of salt in the form of schmaltzy melodrama.

Enter Aisha (Shraddha Kapoor) the overacting, ultra talkative, bubbly, chirpy teller of jokes who gets bumped off in the very beginning by a cloaked stranger. The cloak is actually a raincoat, and makes the killer look like the grim reaper, except this one has a screwdriver in his hand, instead of a scythe. So irritating is Aisha in her first scene, that we are somewhat glad that she is killed off in the first few minutes. But no! We enter flashback mode. All characters get their flashbacks and back stories and the actual plot takes its own sweet time to come to the forefront. The flashbacks enter further flashbacks, and the screenplay meanders, eventually losing its focus on the plot, rendering it secondary.

In line with the Bollywood fixation of creating sympathetic character portrayals, via flashbacks, we learn that the protagonist, Guru (Siddharth Malhotra) is a hardened criminal henchman of Goan gangster Caesar (Remo Fernandes), but as cliche would have it, it is circumstance and a tragic, dark past that made him a criminal. 

His girlfriend and wife Aisha is all exuberant and an epitome of unlimited happiness, but all the over-the-top joyousness is in fact hiding the harsh reality that she is suffering from an unnamed terminal illness and is going to die soon (Yawn! Did we really need an "Anand" (1971) in this?). She even maintains a bucket list, in which one of her desires is to get a couple of old lovers married in a sweet, syrupy wedding ceremony, a la "Lage Raho Munnabhai" (2006). There are other tasks, which her lover helps her fulfill, amid lots of sappy songs and awkwardly tear-jerking moments.

Which brings us to the killer, the ultra cold, ruthless, screwdriver driller killer Rakesh (Riteish Deshmukh), who is also a victim of circumstance. Guess what his circumstance is? A nagging wife! Yes, believe it or not, it is a perennially petulant wife, a low self esteem and supposed incompetence, stemming from his middle class roots that makes him a misogynist and invokes the killer in him. Any woman who even so much as makes a slight complaint about anything at all, gets screwed by his driver...er, gets killed by his screwdriver that is! But the killer likes to fancy dress himself up with the black cloak of death before he does so, and during his victims' final dying moments, he finds enough time to break into monologues about how frustrated he is at home, and how he cannot do anything to his wife and also loves her very much, but has to release his pent up emotions somehow!

He carries home with him a souvenir after each killing. One such souvenir is a paper fan/windmill which you can find on any Mumbai chowpatti (beach), but our genius Sherlock of a hero, Guru just runs into a little boy carrying such a fan, instantly recognizes it as being one crafted by his lady love, and voila, the killer is found! The boy happens to be Rakesh's son. Easy peasy...and in a city inhabited by 20 million people! Guru, the hunter finds his prey Rakesh, and the game of torture begins but once again meanders, thanks to a shifting focus, and secondary characters who are forced into the narrative, each with their own contrived motivation for their actions.

The cop is using Guru to get his hands on Caesar; Caesar wants his top guy back, so he intervenes in the whole drama, and some other ludicrous happenings continue to unfold in front of our eyes. Suri casts the most hilariously irksome clown on the planet, Kamaal R. Khan as Brijesh, another misogynist wife-hitter who preaches misogyny to Rakesh but looks and talks like a complete dork and all you want to do is just strangle him to death!

Ditto for Remo Fernandes who hams it up and it is not clear whether he has a problem with his Hindi or that's the accent that was demanded of him. Prachi Desai appears in a mandatory, thankless item number set in some dance bar in Mira Road in the Thane district. She doesn't even get enough footage in her sole song, as the camera shifts to scenes elsewhere while it is in progress.

Physics defying plunges and fights follow, clubbed with logical holes. Rakesh who falls from the same height as does Aisha in her fatal fall, survives to even pick up a huge rock and deliver more long monologues about how he will eventually triumph as the hero of their tortuous tale. Dialog is often repeated from memory or flashbacks, some of it quite didactic as well, to hammer across some philosophies that the director doesn't believe his audiences would understand if made to hear only once. The biggest problem in the script lies in completely neglecting the electronic tracking device that the protagonist plants in the body of the antagonist in the original film. This device helps him follow the killer's every move. There is no such device in "Ek Villain", and yet, Guru manages to somehow reach Rakesh at the scene of a crime in the nick of time. It is all appalling to say the least!

Siddharth Malhotra tries hard as the brooding hero/villain combination, but doesn't always succeed except in a couple of scenes, in displaying some good acting chops. For the major part, his act appears forced. Shraddha Kapoor either whines or goes in the chatter mode. While she does a good job of emoting, she mostly irritates when she opens her mouth. 

It is Riteish Deshmukh who delivers in the acting department, with his intense, expressive eyes and range of extreme emotions from the silent, pensive loser at the receiving end, to the volatile, violent killer. The actor is no match for the devilishly frightening Choi Min-sik in the original, but he surely shines here, with a reinvented image, given his overused comical side in several trashy Bollywood comedies.

"Ek Villain" is the kind of film that makes you stare at the screen in disbelief and occasionally roll your eyes. It is the kind of film that makes you laugh every once in a while, despite its grave nature, and makes you cringe, thanks to its stilted dialog. It is the kind of film that makes you look at your watch and induces a yawn, despite a modest running time of 120 minutes. And for someone who really likes and admires the South Korean original, it's a travesty that is downright insulting.

Score: 2/10

No Smoking (2007)

Maverick Indian filmmaker Anurag Kashyap ventures into surrealist territory with his ambitious but strange little film titled "No Smoking". This film was unanimously panned by critics and audiences alike upon its initial release in 2007 (much to Kashyap's dismay who has called it his favorite amongst all his directorial ventures). That certainly doesn't come as a surprise in a country that thrives on trademark Bollywood potboilers full of song and dance and essentially a mix of genres of slapstick comedy, romance and action. With "No Smoking", Kashyap pushes all boundaries and and presents to an unprepared audience, this Kafkaesque nightmare, partly inspired by films of David Lynch and some other filmmakers who don't mind messing with their audience's minds!

The story revolves around a central premise directly lifted from the Stephen King short story "Quitters Inc." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quitters,_Inc.). A man named K (John Abraham) is an arrogant, self-centered, narcissistic, filthy rich tycoon spoiled sick by his chain-smoking habit. He smokes practically everywhere, in his plush bathroom tub, in his bedroom, all over his house, his office and even the elevator in the building as he rudely asks a poor old woman who requests him to stop smoking, to take the stairs! 

His wife Anjali (Ayesha Takia), sick and tired of his habit and refusal to quit plans on divorcing him. But so arrogant is K, that he throws attitude standing in front of the mirror, talking to his reflection: "Nobody..tells me..what to do!" ("Taxi Driver" anyone?). An old pal Abbas Tyrewala (Ranvir Shorey) who seems ill at ease and visibly troubled, runs into K and mentions that he had successfully kicked the butt, thanks to Shri Shri Prakash Guru Ghantal Baba Bangali Sealdah Wale (Paresh Rawal), a god-man at the helm of a rehabilitation center simply called Prayogshala (The Laboratory).

After an initial reluctance and after his wife actually leaves the house, K agrees to pay Baba Bangali a visit. And this is where things start to slip into a nightmarish universe. This Prayogshala is unlike anything you may have seen. It has a call center/customer care run by women clad in veils. Several levels beneath the floor of a ramshackle shanty, strangely equipped with a single hi-tech gizmo, a palm-print identification device, lies the Prayogshala inhabited by the sinister Baba Bangali and his strange looking team of men and women assistants.

K soon realizes that once you get inside the Laboratory, you can’t get out on your own free will. Baba Bangali will always be watching you. Baba Bangali’s method of curing the addict involves the mechanics of fear. The addict is threatened with dire consequences to himself or a loved one, every time he/she succumbs to the vice! 

As it turns out Baba Bangali keeps the entire record of the addict’s history of smoking and the knowledge of people close to him in VHS tapes archived in an old dusty library..! A twisted complex maze of a journey now commences; K’s De-addiction program, one that would defy rationale and threaten to change K’s life as he knows it, forever!

Anurag Kashyap astonishes from the initial few frames and does it with aplomb, kicking off the proceedings with a bizarre dream sequence set amidst snow-clad landscapes in Siberia. At the culmination of this dream, as the soldier prepares to shoot K, the latter asks him for matches to light his cigarette! Kashyap holds our attention for almost three-fourths of the film despite the far-fetched nature of the plot. There are some spectacularly quirky traits of the director in the film-making which is perhaps the first of its kind in Indian cinema. We see some comic strip like speech/thought balloons appearing on screen to indicate a character's thoughts in sequences where there is no dialog.

Adding to the idiosyncrasies are some flashback sequences filmed in some crude black and white cinematography, with equally old tunes playing in the background and an accompanying sitcom-like laugh track in some darkly hilarious flashbacks, a la "Natural Born Killers". The dark humour infused within is extremely clever and there are some subtle jabs at older Bollywood films as well. The best thing about these oddities is that they work remarkably well in the black comedy context of the film and add a special touch to the proceedings, almost never found in Indian cinema.

There are some even darker comic moments in sequences between Paresh Rawal and John Abraham in the first visit to the Prayogshala, also involving the meek little midget assistant (Chaurasiya, played by Zahir) of Rawal. Kashyap's use of surrealism and seemingly irrational situations is actually a sign of some great symbolism-heavy, intelligent writing. There is a lot of spiritual meaning to be deciphered from the jargon used in the film about sin, redemption, forgiveness, and freeing of the soul from the root of all evil!

There are other themes running about too, those of a personal freedom and the thwarting of it by a greater power; perhaps the dominance of society and censorship on artistic freedom? In a rather brilliant piece of writing, Rawal's character tells K that his fee from the huge amount of money being charged is only INR Re. 1, which he accepts only in cash! In the film’s terrifying culmination, some light is thrown on what this Re. 1 is actually intended for. "No Smoking" is filled with sequences which are an absolute delight for lovers of surrealist films. There are moments that will make one respect Kashyap’s panache for writing and his commendable imagination and creativity.

Sadly, where Kashyap disappoints slightly, is in his own handling of his brilliant script. Apart from most deftly executed sequences including the aforementioned, eccentric but unique touches, sometimes Kashyap loses his way and behaves rather clumsily with some of the material, especially in the last act. There were some sequences which could’ve been better filmed or at least better edited to save it from spiraling down to the nadir of incoherency! It is considerably clear what Kashyap is trying to say as a whole, and it is very much appropriate that he chooses not to spoon-feed the viewer. But if you have chosen to let the images speak instead of blatant words of explanation, then it is imperative that it be done with a kind of finesse to make the images rich or substantial enough for the viewer to derive a satisfying theory or multiple ones at that, in a manner convincing enough, if you sit down to dissect each scene.

And this shift to incoherence is so abrupt, that Kashyap seems to be in a hurry to transport the viewer to the shockingly unreal climax in a flash, even forgetting that the viewer needs to go there in a steadily paced fashion in order to grasp what he is trying to communicate. Kashyap, also, unfortunately resorts to an unnecessary cabaret performance filmed on Jesse Randhawa, that heavily slackens the pace and kills the urgency of the narrative! In fact, most of the scenes after this have some irritatingly misfit, jarring songs accompanying them, most with lyrics related to smoking that are sometimes quite funny to hear, and that really mar the quality of these sequences. One particularly shocking sequence involving the protagonist’s brother comes off as rather flippant and unintentionally comic thanks to the horribly misplaced song in the background! A better choice of ambient accompanying score or sound design could’ve rendered these sequences much more effective.

Technically the film excels, especially in the sound design, art direction and the cinematography department. John Abraham shines in a performance of a character tailor-made for him. He fits the arrogant K to the T, even in some demanding sequences. This is arguably his greatest performance so far. The plump Ayesha Takia who doubles up as K’s wife Anjali and also his buxom, Barbie-doll secretary (curve-enhancing wardrobe, gaudy lip gloss, spectacles, the works!), doesn't really get much to do except make sad faces while watching Steven Spielberg's holocaust drama "Schindler’s List" and putting heavy makeup on! Paresh Rawal chews the scenery in whatever few scenes he has and gets to mouth some of the best lines in the film. Special mention must be made of Ranvir Shorey for his fantastic performance, albeit in a tiny role, as K’s paranoid friend Abbas.

"No Smoking" is a solid effort from one of the few Indian filmmakers who dare to embark on a path devoid of conventionalism. As far as the handing is concerned, unfortunately, it falters somewhat. But the idea that is "No Smoking" is far too extraordinary to nitpick based on minor flaws of the craft. A few mistakes notwithstanding, Kashyap has made an important film, and I wish he and other Indian filmmakers take cue and make more films like these.

Score: A solid 8/10