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Knock Out...whom?

There are two kinds of producers in Bollywood. One, the likes of KJo who remake Hollywood movies & insert hit Hollywood tunes into their movies, but do it with dignity by purchasing rights. Then there are the rest, who simply rip off the concept and/or story and hope to strike it rich back home.

Sanjay Dutt starring Knock Out falls into the latter category, I presume. Borrowed right off Colin Farrel's Phone Booth, Knock Out flatters to deceive not in parts, but almost in full. Phone Booth's concept is Indianized, but the execution falls awfully short of class, glamour & substance.

Irfan Khan plays Bachchu Khan. An investment banker by day, he is also the politician's middleman, by day. His "do number ka dhandha" is to pick & drop money from here to there & earn commission to lead a lavish life. One fine morning he steps into a telephone booth to get instructions on his daily delivery routine. He's about to step out when the phone rings, he picks & is trapped there for the rest of the movie.

It's Sanjay Dutt, an unknown stranger to Bachchu. Thus begins the cat & mouse game. Bachchu is hard pressed to recall why the stranger is black mailing him. He tries to wiggle out his way by offering "dus pethi" (aka Rs. 10 lakhs) to the stranger. Angry old Dutt screams his head off fuming that the sniper rifle he's pointed at Bachchu's head (of course from afar, through the Windows of an adjoining sky scraper) costs 15 pethi. The stranger also knows all about Bachchu's lavishness; that his Rolex was bought at Piccadilly Circus in London (an all cash deal); that his shiny shoe was bought at a Dubai mall; that in spite of being faithfully married (faithful part is for his wife) Bachchu is two-timing and in this manner whatever Bachchu knows about himself the stranger knows them too.

To wiggle out his way, the money factor now increases to fifty pethi, but the stranger still refuses. The stranger also knows that Bachchu now has some several pethi's in the briefcase that he's carrying & that he got this from the Child Welfare Department's (CWD) secretary. Bachchu's bulb lights up & he knows that he is talking to CWD's chief Col. Gill. Fraught with fear & new found respect for the army men, Bachchu tries to wiggle out by singing "Yeh desh hai veer jawaon ka", by praising the Colonel's achievements in Indo-PaK, Indo-China & Kargil wars which the colonel has never fought. None of it works and the laser from the 15 pethi sniper is still trained on his head inside the phone booth.

Col. Gill channels his anger on Bachchu on how he has aided CWD goons & politicians & how they were involved in child trafficking. Bachchu is also made to realize that some long time ago when he had a jolly good time with some lass, it destroyed her life & drove her to suicide. By this time, the media, the police and the public are all around the perimeter of the booth. Its confession time. The colonel asks Bachchu to talk to a reporter, played by Kangana Ranaut in a teeny-weeny one-and-half bit role. But before the confession we ought to have some entertainment & Bachchu dances to the tune of "zara zara touch me touch me". Irfan does this jig so entertainingly that its hard to not break out into a laughter. 

Humiliation complete & confession over, we now have a man with new found respect for all the womenfolk. But Col.Gill's, who is actually not Col. Gill, job ain't over it. We learn that Bachchu is the sidekick of a politician (played by Gulshan Grover) & he has the secret 19 digit code to the politico's Swiss Bank account which is guarding a whooping Rs.32000 crore. Dutt talks to this newly righteous man, trying to convince him to bring back all that money back to India. Between all this we have some more masala thrown in. A good cop handling the case is transferred & killed instantly. A corrupt trigger-happy cop takes over the case. Nancy Drew inspired Kangana tries to involve in hunt on finding who's holding Bachchu to ransom, squabbling politicians who now fear losing their money & an attempt to kill Bachchu in broad daylight in full view of the audience. Phew! so much action for so nothingness of a plot!!!

What could have been a pot boiler, turns into the oft repeated Nationalism & Patriotic jingoism. New leaf turned Bachchu transfers all the 32K crore money into Indian Treasury's bank account. We are also shown a progress bar of the money transfer being done. That was enough for me to smack my forehead, once again but for the last time. The end titles urge use to knock out such corrupt politicians & I chose to knock out this movie from my mind as well.

Somewhere in the plot, Bachchu asks Dutt, who is he working with. Dutt responds "Mein insaanon pe bharosa nahin karta, mere liye technology hi kaafi hai". Someone should have told Mani Shankar, the captain of this titanic, that "plot churaane se kaafi nahin hai, story ko develop bhi karna padta hai".

Guzaarish, if I can make one to SLB

I have never been a fan of Sanjay Leela Bhansali, (who I'll call SLB for short) nor his brand of film making, ok maybe except for Black. Like his hero, @iHrithik, SLB too appears once in a while on the blue-black bollywood sky to showcase his story telling skill set.

And Lo! comes SLB in 2010 sashaying with Guraarish. Knowing who directed the movie, I would never have wanted to watch it. My idea of a movie is not jerking off, tears. I want to relax, enjoy the fun/action/mystery but tragedies are not my cup of tea/coffee/vodka. Nonetheless, Hrithik Roshan if one fine actor-dancer who I admire a lot. Aishwarya was never among the on screen lasses who I liked.  But it was for Hrithik that I wanted to watch this flick.

What intrigued me was how would such a hunk of muscle & fine dancer be curbed & tied to not showcase what he'd got.

We get to know that Ethan Mascarenhas is a magician whose has had plenty of glory days & admiration. He has been Goa's favourite son. Something befell him & turned him into a quadriplegic, ahem thats Med jargon for being paralyzed in both arms & legs. Yes, Ehtan cant feel anything below his neck. Sophia is Ethan's dutiful nurse, nursing him for the past 12 years. She feeds him soup & garlic breadsticks; changes him; brushes him, both teeth & hair; looks beautiful as well and isn't willing to let any discomfort come over Ethan. Practically she runs his household & hasn't taken a single day's leave ever since being recruited despite having no family life & a abusing husband Nevile (Markand Deshpande).

Now being paralyzed even on a small part of the body is tough, but Ethan has fought & lived. He has written a book Learning to Fly which has inspired fellow quadriplegics. He hosts a show on Goa's FM radio which is about zindagi & living it to the fullest. In all, Ethan is happy & spreads the cheer around. His long unfulfilled wish is to see Sophia's long sexy legs & he's confident that when she comes wearing a mini skirt, he'll start walking again.

But is he really happy & cheerful? There's a part of him which wants to ends his life. He asks his unwilling, but helpful Lawyer friend, Devyani (Shernaz Patel) to file a petition in the Goa High Court. His long time Doc Dr. Nayak (@suhelseth in a surprising cast) isn't happy either. Sophia is red-bleary-eyed too because she reads Ethan's decision to him from a Newspaper. Well nobody wants Ethan to do 'Ethanasia'. He chooses to get a Vote on his show from the Goans whether he should end or not. His protege Omar Siddiqui (Aditya Roy Kapoor, who looks as  if a cuckoo built it's nest on his head) doesn't want the Merlin Master to end it all either. Its an over whelming NO but there's an Yes from his erstwhile stunningly beautiful assistant Estella (Monikangana Dutta). She give an affirmative because she knows how much he has gone through.

Mamma Mascarenhas (still charmingly looking Nafisa Ali) doesn't stay with Ethan because he doesn't want her to, isn't among the affirmative lot. But she understand's her boy's pain. Thereby begins the legal quest to change India's justice system to accept the fact that whoever has a right to live dignified, has an equal right to choose to end it as well. 

Hrithik has put in a marvelous performance. His bearded long haired looks doesn't make him any less good looking. He is too talented to not showcase his art even though he neither fights nor dances in this movie. His facial expressions convey the message and his dialogues are crisp as well. His discomfort can be felt when the leaky roof drops one drop at a time onto his forehead when he's sleeping. To my surprise Aishwarya has put in a grand performance in Hrithik's company. Her eyes talk so much more when she doesn't have any lines. She enacts well, moves gracefully & looks good too. Per me, this has been one among her better performances till date. Others in their bits & pieces do their job well. SLB is the music director as well and the music isn't much to write home about. Udi is foot tapping & has Aish dancing as well much to Ethan's amusement. I have a feeling that Hrithik has crooned in the scene of Maama Mascarenha's funeral, oh he has such a wonderful voice & it makes me want to listen more of him.

As with any other SLB movie, the lights are elaborate. But the dark gloom overrides it all. Goan splendor hasn't been showcased & apart from the large looming Mascarenhas villa nothing else is shown. 

There are three scenes overall which struck me. Unable to feel anything neck down, Ethan oohs-aahs sensually when Sophia is massaging his legs & he continues even when she isn't massaging any longer. The leaky rooftop scene showed his true hold over his character. The public prosecutor isn't willing to accept Euthanasia & is arguing against it. Hrithik requests the judge to perform a magic trick & has the prosecutor closed for 60 seconds in a box. Few seconds into it, Rajit Kapoor starts banging & the judge gets panicky and Ethan is like you couldn't be Ethan Mascarenhas for 60 seconds and I was at it for 14 long years.

I don't know what is it with SLB that all his flicks have to tearjerkers. Hum Dil De Chuke was pure Aspirin stuff, Devdas had an alcoholic death, Black has diseases all around & now this. Dear SLB, my sincere Guzaarish is please...please...do something different next time. 

And how does the movie end. Sophia agrees to marry Ethan, agrees to help him end his suffering, Ethan has a grand going away party with his chosen few friends & they merry all night in the last frame. So how did it end? Probably she showed him her long sexy legs & he died of shock!

Of Naataka, Politics, Caste & Karnataka

The recent happenings in the Karnataka politico ring has been nothing short of shamelessness, sham and an attitude of they-have-done-it-so-i-have-done-it-too.

B.S.Yeddiyurappa got his golden chance on a platter when the power greedy H.D.Devegowda  & his low esteemed cohorts pulled the plug on the BJP-JD(S) combo government. BJP didn’t need to take any larger pains to convey their credibility & intent to the people of Karnataka. The mass voted massively in their favour and they managed to scrape through the required majority to form the first ever BJP government in South India.

Hopes were high, expectations were higher but what did Mr. Yeddy do instead. The greed of land seems to have ensnared all the high & mighty. Favour after favour made to his kith & kin was lapped by the media and they stripped his dealings clean in reams of paper print. And how did the God-fearing, rather God-visiting, CM react? His ice cool response to the opposition was that he would open the land cases from their ruling days and to the media he reacted with such audacious fervor that he done nothing wrong and his deeds were similar to what other had done before. 

Ummm…interesting thought Mr.CM. There is not an iota of shame, guilt, felling of disgust in your bones. (...and Mr.CM, but we didn't elect you to be similar to others in past or to redo their misdeeds again. Much better was expected from you, but you've failed us miserably!) And how does our print happy media react? They decide it’s time for a change of guard and start throwing up potential probabilities for the musical chair. So how is the candidature decided? Age, experience, management skills, ability to garner support from all, pleasing exterior outlook whom the state people can depend on?

NO, none of that actually matters. 

• Jagadish Shetter is a Lingayat and might be a good replacement because Karnataka has such a large Lingayat base. 
• Sadananda Gowda is a Vokkaliga. They are large in numbers as well, so he might be a good choice as well. 
• Suresh Kumar is a Brahmin. He has a clean image, might be a good candidate.

All excellent points indeed, except their capability skills aren’t questioned anywhere. Do I really care if the CM is from a dominant caste, do I care if he prays to the same God as I do, do I care if he observes the same rituals as I do or do I care a damn if he is an antagonist?

Meanwhile, Yeddiyurappa seems to have been born with more lives than a cat’s and has managed to retain his chair based on the point that the Lingayait community would get offended & would not support BJP in future. Wonderful lines of reasoning, indeed! Would a community be so glaring as to accept an incompetent to represent them? Will this social class ever cease to exist? Will there be an end to choosing the leadership based on this spectrum, ever! Will the cattle class ever get anything able?

Questions are aplenty, answers don’t seem anywhere near and neither beyond the horizon!