For the lack of a better option
and blind faith in one of my friends who recommended me this movie, given the
fact that I was sick and hence stuck in my office guest house with a pirated
copy of this movie…I just managed to play the movie “players” on my laptop
today afternoon….
Sunday afternoons should be spent
sleeping, but in my case i wasn’t able to manage it, thanks to the incessant
bout of coughing and terrible headache… so I sat down to watch a movie which I
was told breaks paradigms in terms of style quotient… I am yet to understand
which paradigms my friend was referring to…. But I can definitely say “aab uski kissmat achchi hain ki mein dil kaa
achchha hoon” (sorry for being corny) aur else I could have given Mahesh Bhatt
his Murder 3 script as well…..
Getting back to the movie review
(sic), it starts with an exceptionally lame “grand theft” in a jewelry store;
which seems to have absolutely no security features for a store of such
grandiose scale, the windows are left open for the convenient entry of a thief and all that. The police for obvious reasons fail to check Bipasha’s bra
during interrogation (assuming the cops in whichever country it was,
interrogates) for the necklace… the thieves
seem to be a "perfectly in louv" couple who have a pact -not to contact each other
6 months before or after a theft… shucks for their love life…
The scene moves onto 6 months
later, where someone is murdered by the Russian mafia in a car accident, that
someone had been trying to steal a huge pile of gold from Russia all alone (!),
but had realized he can’t do it, hence had shot a video instructing his best
friend to complete the task. The video tells Charlie (Junior B) the entire plan
of robbery but then Aftab leaves it hidden inside a book which he leaves with
his wife, to be delivered post death. Thankfully, once Aftab was hit by the
car, he had enough sense to call his sensuous wife and instruct her to deliver
the book to Charlie. And the wife of a gangster obviously dosent suspect
anything wrong in this “book delivery post death business” and hands it over to
Charlie….
After a gobbledygook attempt by
the director-duo at some comic relief and humor (!), the scene moves to Victor
Dada, who is possibly the most respected criminal ever on cinema…. Not getting
into details, Junior B convinces him about his last great robbery as the
“non-playing captain” of the team, who will recruit all the best brains/crooks
required in pulling off this heist…and yes the Hindustani dil of Victor Dada is
on display as he agrees to pull this one off to build that dream school for
orphans…WOW! Cool way to convert black money into white… typically, the others
members in this “greatest team ever” also have quite a few senti stories which
get revealed later…
The plan is not much
complicated, the illusionist, the makeup artist, the hacker, the locomotive
expert (and part time seductress) and the master of voice modulation and some
unknown talent forms the team which can do no wrong. The entire robbery needs
to be done in 10 mins. Naturally the Russians hire the most notoriously
promiscuous and bar hopping army chief as the man to carry on the job of
transporting the gold bullions (for the Govt) from Russia to Romania.
Surprisingly the security features in this entire operation is so high that the
Govt has advertised its entire security plan on newspapers- openly saying to
its Mafia- try me bitch….
But our team of Desis- (remember:
the best crooks in the world always come from India) come up with an invincible
plan of stealing all that gold. They do their stunts, their illusions and the
maverick train rides etc and are then finally required to transport the gold
from one train to the other manually. I cant imagine how so much gold can be
transported in less than 4 mins?? And I cant imagine how someone can be strong
enough to transport so many gold bars at a time…. Hercules- you may be a
demi-god.. but Junnior B can beat you any day… anyways gold successfully stolen
you feel good and wanna thank gwad the movie has ended…. But then comes that
surprise betrayal (sic) another hindi film
classic…
So betrayal, double betrayal,
attempt-to-kill, and coming-back-to-life-after-being-shot-to-fire-that-last-2-rounds
later you get that much needed intermission. But then it also comes as a
shocker- the other half of the movie (read torture) is still there for you to
watch…
The least I would like to say about
the second half is apparently there are plots, sub-plots and betrayals, repeated
all over once again. Sonam Kapoor all of a sudden decides she is her papa’s
daughter after all and ends up being a crook wanting to hack almost
anything…She even tries to play the seductress unsuccessfully in a sloppy song
which I was forced to fast forward… I prefer to look at her pretty face and
curly hair in Sawariya (hick) rather than those attempted seduction moves… and
all of a sudden before you realized it, the story changes from that of a
robbery to one of revenge… shoddy dialogues, Jhonny Lever's buffoonery and 2 firang kids attempting to speak suddh Hindi and display Bharatiya sanskriti doesn’t do enough to sweeten the already sour mood. The
movie keeps heading in no particular direction and you start realizing that 2nd
half is a carbon copy rip off of the English movie The Italian Job with a dash of our desi tadka. Bipasha looks like a million bucks, but is evidently a
girl who is uncertain about her loyalties (sounds familiar? anyone?)…she even
manages to kill herself for a guy she doesn’t louv and considers a looser…
yeah-makes sense…*scratches head*…
The movie has innumerable
loopholes- more than the number of tears in a Salmaan Khan jeans… no idea how
they managed to steal so many bullions in less dan 3.5 mins, no idea how
someone manages to buy the most expensive house in d world with ill gotten
money without raising any eyebrows, no idea how you manage to create a whole
car body out of gold in a matter of a
few hours, no idea why you always need to have chors with a solid 24carat
heart, no idea how you can beat an air tight security with just a tanker kinda
car in a matter of minutes, no idea why the world best illusionist wanted to
use stolen money to create a house where everything is automated- he could have
just done so in his illusions or with earnings from magic show money…. The list is endless… Abbas Mastan
actually begs you to believe that you are an idiot for watching this movie…
apparently it picks up exactly where SRK left in RA.One and Salmaan in
Bodyguard….
However, to conclude, I am a bit
concerned with this attitude of the Indian filmmakers these days… they are
blatantly telling you “I know you are an idiot” and laughing their way to the
bank because we agree to them… the only good part about all this is I end up liking
some people just because I get to know I ain’t the only idiot in this
world…there are plenty more….
My Verdit: Skip the movie… or
skip your sanity while watching it.
PS: you may find the post a bit long and boring...honestly i got bored writing it as well...but trust me, thats wat such movies can do to you...
