Tag: india

Shuddhi

  By

★★★
“Social justice vs. warrior.”

I should probably start by providing some background the film omits – likely because the intended Indian audience were well aware of it. In 2012, a notorious gang-rape took place in Delhi, the victim subsequently dying. Of the six attackers, four were sentenced to death and one committed suicide in prison – but the sixth, being a juvenile, could only receive a maximum sentence of three years. This loophole appalled many, including two journalists depicted in this film, Jyothi (Nivedhitha) and Divya (Karagada), who begin a campaign to revise the law.

At the same time, American photographer Karlyn Smith (Spartano) returns to India, with a very different but even more personal mission: taking revenge on the men who raped her. This is a highly-risky job, beginning when her attempt to buy a gun turns into a mugging. Matters aren’t helped when another attempted robbery leads to her attacker’s death, and a subsequent police investigation by Rakesh Patil (Purushotham). Nevertheless, she persists, tracking down and eliminating the gang responsible like a female Charles Bronson; initially, one by one, then finding the remainder as they crash a house party.

It really feels like two different movies edited together. You have Jyothi and Divya, touring the country putting on little stage plays, offering an interpretive dance version of gang-rape in a bid to raise awareness. Then there’s Karlyn, opting for a considerably more direct form of protest: shooting rapists. The threads only overlap at the end, in an extended coda where Karlyn may or may not have drowned. It’s all rather confusing, and the film’s insistence on jiggling the time-line for dramatic effect is also more irritating than enlightening. For instance, it opens with an off-camera shooting, that turns out – for no good reason – to be the second robbery attempt on our vengeful heroine.

The good news is Spartano – who has almost no previous feature work to her name – does an excellent job with her part of the film, and it’s that which held my interest. Interesting decision by the makers, to create and cast an American character for this role, rather than using an Indian actress. [The director know the actress from his time at the New York Film Academy, and also brought on board an American music director and cinematographer] Yet it still manages to weave in to its narrative strands from Indian mythology: the title is an alternate name for the goddess Durga, the Hindu warrior goddess. Wikipedia tells me her “mythology centres around combating evils and demonic forces that threaten peace, prosperity and dharma of the good. She is the fierce form of the protective mother goddess, willing to unleash her anger against wrong, violence for liberation and destruction to empower creation.”

Hard to argue with that: at one point, Karlyn says, “When you get used to it – killing – it’s as easy as breathing.” And there’s one particularly memorable shot at the party where Karlyn just stalks past an opening, and it suddenly feels like a wildlife documentary about tigers hunting. Just a shame they film didn’t go full-bore into this aspect, rather than diluting it with Jyothi and Divya’s ineffectual social campaigning.

Dir: Adarsh Eshwarappa
Star: Lauren Spartano, Nivedhitha, Amrutha Karagada, Shashank Purushotham

Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi

  By

★★★½
“Show me the Mani”

The movie opens with a particularly elaborate disclaimer, admitting that “certain cinematic liberties have been sought,” and that “this film does not claim historical authenticity.” Probably wise: Indians take their national heroes very seriously; just last year, another historical epic, Padmaavat, sparked months of protests, up to and including buses being set on fire. This seems to have largely (but not entirely) escaped such a fate, and likely deservedly. It certainly does little to disrespect the woman, the myth or the legend of Manikarnik, the woman who would become Queen Lakshmibai, and lead a revolt against the British who occupied India in the mid-19th century.

It definitely does adjust things – most notably skipping over the whole “child marriage” thing, which was a key element of Jhansi Ki Rani and The Tiger and the Flame. In this case, Manikarnika (Ranaut) is already fully-grown when she catches the eye of the king of Jhansi, eventually becoming his queen. Thereafter, it goes through her becoming a widow, eviction by the British, rebellion and eventual death in battle, albeit with only a moderate degree of historical accuracy. For, undeniably, there are a fair number of those “certain cinematic liberties,” especially in terms of events being staged and timed for dramatic impact. I’m willing to cut them some slack, since a lot of the results are highly effective.

Curiously, there’s a lot of style adopted from Wonder Woman here, in particular the use of super slow-mo during the action scenes. But it also carries a significant amount of heart: perhaps due to the lead actress also being the co-director? Ranaut knocks it out of the park in some scenes, such as when she’s facing off against villainous British officer Captain Gordon (Edward Sonnenblick, who played a similar role in Jhansi Ki Rani). There are a lot of lines which could come over as cheesy, such as, “This throne doesn’t make me a Queen. It’s the love and faith of Jhansi’s people which does.” But the lead actress delivers them with such conviction, even this Brit was left wanting to stand up and cheer, as a subsequent forced departure from her palace turns into a torch-lit procession of support.

After her bad-ass credentials are established with her shooting a tiger, the first half doesn’t have much action to its name, though is never dull. And this is more than made up for by a rousing second-half filled with impressive battles, though the overall impact is severely hurt by some really poor CGI, such as cannons which fire with zero recoil, and breezes which affect only our heroine, not the grass in which she is supposedly standing. The lack of supporting characters is notable: her husband Gangadhar (Sengupta) was most notable to our eyes, for the Indo-mullet hairstyle he wore. On the British side, Gordon is replaced half-way through by Sir Hugh Rose, to no particular purpose.

However, this is probably the most beautiful film I’ve seen this year; it looks like a Ridley Scott film, and there’s little higher praise than that in my mind. Between that and Ranaut’s intense performance, there’s enough reason to see this, and overcome any problems.

Dir: Kangana Ranaut and Radha Krishna Jagarlamudi
Star: Kangana Ranaut, Atul Kulkarni, Jisshu Sengupta, Vaibhav Tatwawaadi

Jhansi Ki Rani

  By

★★★½
“I can only apologize.”

Not for the show, I should stress. But as a Brit… Wow, were were really such utter bastards to the Indians when the country was a colony? I was under the impression it was all tea and cricket. But the British, as depicted here, appear largely to be working entirely for the East Indian company, treating the local population with, at best, disdain, and often brutality. All the while, seeking to manipulate local politics (with, it must be said, the help of some Indians) to their own advantage. After 70 episodes of this, such is the guilt, I can barely enjoy my chicken tikka masala without giving it reparations.

I say 70 episodes, but the entire series is considerably longer. Wikipedia lists it as 408, but those are apparently 25-minute shows. Netflix seems to have doubled it up (bringing its length into line with the more traditional Hispanic telenovelas which I’ve previously reviewed). Yet even allowing for that, to this point they only seem to have about 30% of the show. They also shortened the title from its full name, Ek Veer Stree Ki Kahaani… Jhansi Ki Rani, which translates as Story of a Brave Woman… The Queen of Jhansi.

Simply based on the level of intrigue here, this feels like an Indian version of Game of Thrones. Albeit without the incest. Or the dragons. Or the budget. And is based on a real character, Lakshmibai. But it’s quite easy also to draw a line between Arya Stark and the teenage heroine here, Manikarnika (Gupta) a.k.a. Manu, neither caring one bit for ‘traditional’ behaviour. Manu, in particular, objects to the occupying British forces and their disrespectful treatment of the native population. So she crafts a secret identity, Kranti Guru, and uses this to fight back against the Brits, even (gasp!) desecrating the Union Jack. She’s helped by her mentor, Tatya Tope, who occasionally dons the mask as well, when necessary.

However, a literally stellar horoscope leads to Manu being betrothed to the Maharaja of Jhansi, Gangadhar Rao (Dharmadhikari). And this is my biggest issue. Cultural differences be damned, there is no way in which a prepubescent girl marrying a middle-aged man can seem appropriate, or other than incredibly creepy. Manu gets her first period in one of the final episodes, and the reaction of everyone can be summarised as, “Good, now you can give the king a heir.” [The reality was slightly less creepy: Lakshmibai did, indeed, marry the king at age 13. However, they didn’t have a son until she was in her twenties]

The British – already unhappy with Manu’s rebellious outbursts – are far from happy at the prospect of her marrying Gangadhar and continuing the line. Even before she arrives at the palace, there are backroom conspiracies involving some of his relatives (not least his own mother), who ally themselves with the colonialists for their mutual benefit. These schemes go up to and include multiple assassination plots against the king, and indeed, his bride-to-be. Time for Kranti Guru to come out again, particularly to face off against gold-toothed British psychopath Marshall (Verma). His relentless pursuit, without regard for who gets hurt, earns him Manu’s undying enmity. [Weirdly, he’s played by an Indian actor in “white face”, as are some – but not all – of the other English officers, some of whom are dubbed.]

To be honest, Manu’s action scenes are a bit crap, mostly consisting of her waving a sword around in severely choreographed battles. She’d last about two minutes against other teenage warrioresses, like Hanna or Hit-Girl. Still, she has a certain charm, not least for her razor-sharp intellect, which lets her argue with – and usually kick the mental ass of – religious scholars, politicians and the king. She also has an unshakeable faith that everyone is redeemable, and more than once, turns enemies into loyal allies. Most notable is dacoit (bandit) Samar Singh, initially hired to murder Manu. When the tables are turned, and she forgives him, he abandons his life of crime. That’s the level of devotion she inspires.

Run away, foreigner, run away!
This brave Manu riding the horse is Lakshmi Bai
Fire will rain on you, now you are doomed. 
Look at the colourful India, India will defeat you. 
She has come to claim your head, the Queen of Jhansi has come. 
Run away foreigner, the Queen of Jhansi has come!

Despite its origins, there are no song-and-dance numbers, though the music still plays a significant, if repetitive part. The song quoted above shows up in every other episode, and the re-use of certain cues could be turned into a drinking game, e.g. take a shot every time that “sad trombone”-like arpeggio sting is heard. However, the most defining style element is the reaction shot. It seems nothing dramatic can happen without everyone present in the scene subsequently being ready for their close-up – sometimes multiple times. And considering how often such moments happen in the king’s court… it takes a while. This does lighten the intellectual burden required to keep up. Chris was usually present for only about one-third of the screen time each day, yet she was able to hang in there, with only minor explanations from me.

For the great majority of the time, it’s light stuff, with Manu escaping every pitfall her enemies set for her. Then, the hammer drops: to extend the GoT comparison, it’s the Rani equivalent of the Red Wedding. Fewer bodies, to be sure – just one – yet the resulting emotional wallop was still brutal, sending me through multiple stages of grief during the subsequent fall-out. “No… Surely they haven’t… It’s got to be a dream sequence.” All told, it was easily the most impactful death in any of the telenovelas I’ve watched, regardless of their origin, and the repercussions ran on for multiple episodes. As do the reaction shots. So. Many. Reaction. Shots.

I wonder if the 70-episode cutoff point was chosen by Netflix, being the point at which Manu “grows up”. It appears she is played by an older actress (right) in the latter stages of the series. As it stands, however, it’s an interesting approach to have a series apparently aimed at adults, with a 14-year-old character as the lead. While I can’t say it was wholly successful, it proved a remarkably easy watch, and I was genuinely sorry when I ran out of episodes.

Creative Director: Sujata Rao
Star: Ulka Gupta, Sameer Dharmadhikari, Vikas Verma, Ashnoor Kaur

The Tiger and the Flame

  By

★★½
“The kitten and the candle”

This is the edited and English-dubbed version of the first Indian film released, to have been shot in Technicolor. While becoming a rare example of an Indian movie given a Western release, it was severely cut down, going from its original running time of 148 minutes to a mere 96. Much of this was accomplished by trimming the musical numbers, with all that’s left being the titular ballet, put on by the King of Jhansi (Mubarak) – a bit of an odd scene to leave in. Most of the rest is a reasonably accurate biopic of his wife, Queen Lakshmibai, covering her marriage at a very early age to the King, subsequent widowing, and eventually becoming the local leader at the head of the rebellion against the British in the late eighteen fifties.

One particularly interesting aspect is the way Modi (who produced the film, as well as directing and starring in it) brought on board a significant amount of Hollywood talent to work on the project. These were led by cinematographer Ernest Haller, who won an Oscar for his work on Gone With The Wind. Certainly, in this Westernized version, it plays like a thoroughly solid Hollywood biopic, even if rather more authentic in its ethnic casting. Well, at least in one direction; the British roles are also played by Indians. I’m a bit surprised it was a commercial failure in its home territory, especially considering it was released only 5½ years after the country gained its real independence from Britain. You’d think that would have made its topic resonate well with a local audience.

However, with the obvious caveat that I’m going off the abbreviated, dubbed version, I can perhaps see why. It’s an impressive spectacle – with a couple of battle sequences which are particularly impressive. However, it comes over as the fifties equivalent of disaster porn, being empty visuals without any real emotional content. And, say what you like about Bollywood movies, it’s the emotional content which typically powers them. Local viewers were also apparently unimpressed by the lead actress – not coincidentally, the director’s wife – being in her mid-thirties and thus too old to play the heroine.

Personally, I didn’t feel that was too much of a problem. However, I didn’t get any sense of the characters involved. Lakshmibai is very much a figurehead, rather than an active participant, whose activity is largely limited to giving mildly stirring speeches to her soldiers. Admittedly, we have to bear in mind both the era and the source. But if you consider that Anne of the Indies pre-dated this by two years, it’s clear the era was not an absolute impediment. That does a much better job of mixing history and sword-play, while still giving you reason to care about the people wielding the weapons. This is closer to a pretty costume drama than a heroic tale of rebellion, and offers little insight into how Lakshmibai was able to lead an army.

Dir: Sohrab Modi
Star: Mehtab, Mubarak, Sohrab Modi, Sapru
a.k.a. Jhansi Ki Rani

Mardaani

  By

★★★½
“Korma’s a bitch… Uh, I mean KARMA…

Officer Shivani Shivaji Roy (Mukerji) is part of the Serious Crimes Squad in Delhi, whose approach to policing is very much “by any means necessary.” However, she is taken out of her area of expertise when Pyaari. a young girl she has been helping goes missing from an orphanage. Everything indicates the girl has been picked up by a sex trafficking ring, run by Sunny Katyal (Verma) and his partner, Karan (Bhasin), and will soon be sold off to the highest bidder and exported out of the country. Roy has to work her way up the chain to rescue Pyaari, despite opposition both from her boss, because it’s not her responsibility, and from the gang. As she gets nearer to the top, the climb becomes increasingly hard, with the criminals making it clear they won’t take lightly the threat to their lucrative business which Roy represents. It’s also clear they have friends in high places.

There’s a long-standing issue of extrajudicial action by the police in India, known locally as “encounter killings.” This film is far more likely to be the problem than the solution here, with the heroine behaving in a way of which Dirty Harry would certainly approve, yet severely at odds with contemporary Western policing methods. That’s apparent right from an early scene where she publicly assaults a culprit, punctuating a list of his offenses: “Section 143 – unlawful assembly. [Slap!] Section 147 – rioting. [Slap!] Section 132 – abetment of mutiny [Slap!]”, and so on. To see a male police officer do this in a modern movie would be shocking. To see a woman do it? It’s… kinda awesome, especially in India, a country where at the time the film came out, woman represented only 6.6% of the police force.

This comes to a climax at the end,. when she faces off against Karan, and he mocks her, saying his contacts will ensure he gets off lightly. She replies, “They can do it only if you reach the police station. But you won’t reach the police station, because this is India.” Then, when he asks, “Are you going to murder me in front of everyone?”, she responds, “In India, if 50 people take the law in their hands and kill someone, then it’s not called a murder. It’s called ‘Public outrage’.” As a rabble-rousing, cryptofascist call for vigilante justice due to corruption goes… This one certainly doesn’t hold back.

But it still works well, with Mukerji making Roy a well-rounded and sympathetic character. Her mission is driven as much by a semi-maternal rage as the usual macho bullshit, and she relies just as much on intelligence as brute force. Although the film loses steam when diverting attention to the bad guys, who are little more than cartoon caricatures, I especially enjoyed the phone-calls where Karan attempts to intimidate her, and fails completely. For Roy goes all Liam Neeson on him instead: “I don’t know what your name is. I don’t know where you are speaking from, who your boss is, or where you have kept Pyaari. But I’ve figured your type… I will hunt you down in 30 days.” Even the most liberal of viewers would be forgiven a fist-pump at the end when justice, legitimate or not, is served, piping-hot with a side of poppadoms.

Dir: Pradeep Sarkar,
Star: Rani Mukerji, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Jisshu Sengupta, Saanand Verma

Naam Shabana

  By

★★★½
“Four for the price of one?”

If you took four different films, by four different directors, and edited them together into a single entity, you might end up something similar to this. Oh, make no mistake: I still enjoyed most of this. It just doesn’t feel like a coherent whole, perhaps because it is a spin-off involving some of the same characters from an earlier film, Baby. For at least three-quarters of it, however, not having seen its predecessor shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The first chunk is perhaps the weakest, introducing us to the heroine, Shabana Khan (Pannu), a college student and judo expert, with something of a quick temper. She has just started going out with a new boyfriend, when they get into an altercation with some cat-calling men, which ends with him dead in the street. It’s all rather unconvincing, not least the early incident which does a very poor attempt to establish Shabana’s zero tolerance for harassment.

Things do improve significantly thereafter, for it turns out she was under observation by a shadowy arm of the Indian government as a possible agent. She’s contacted by Ranvir Singh (Bajpayee), who offers to help her take revenge on her boyfriend’s killers, if she comes to work for him. With the authorities apparently uninterested in the case, Shabana accepts, and the next section covers her vengeance, and subsequent training under Singh. This is likely when the film is at its best, taking an interesting concept and executing it with some energy and flair.

Shabana then vanishes from her own movie in the third quarter, as we return to the topic of international arms dealer Mikhail (Sukumaran) he was briefly glimpsed at the beginning, making short work of two Indian agents in Vienna. Authorities have tracked down his ally, Tony, and apply pressure, hoping to discover Mikhail’s location. However, it turns out Mikhail has been using the services of a doctor to change his appearance, making the task of locating him that harder, and it becomes a race against time before he changes again, and the trail is lost.

Which brings us to another switch in direction for the final section, in which Shabana is sent into the hospital where Mikhail is about to get plastic surgery, in order to assassinate him. Here, she’s teamed up with Ajay Singh (Kumar), who was apparently the hero of Baby. There was a point where it looked like he was going to take over – not that we’d have minded too much, as we’ve always enjoyed seeing Kumar in action (despite his creepy mustache here), but this is supposed to be an action heroine film. Fortunately, that’s where it ends up.

Despite feeling a bit like Nikita, a bit like Peppermint, a bit like Alias and a bit like a Jason Bourne movie, there’s plenty going on, and the running time feels considerably shorter than its 147 minutes. It helps that its heroine is made to look relatively plain, rather than the typically stunning Bollywood actress. 

Dir: Shivam Nair
Star: Taapsee Pannu, Akshay Kumar, Prithviraj Sukumaran, Manoj Bajpayee

Raazi

  By

★★★★
“The Spy Who Loved Me”

This Indian spy thriller manages to be both remarkably restrained and human, avoiding a potentially jingoistic approach, and going for something considerably more measured. It takes place just before the war between India and Pakistan in 1971, when Indian agent Hidayat Khan is pretending to give information to Pakistan. In order to get close to their top brass, he convinces his daughter, Sehmat (Bhatt), to enter an arranged marriage to Iqbal Syed (Ahlawat), an officer whose father (Sharma) is a Brigadier in the Pakistani army. After being trained by senior intelligence officer Khalid Mir (Kaushal), she goes to join her new husband, and begins operations as a spy inside the Brigadier’s household.

From there, it’s a series of tense incidents, with a servant becoming increasingly suspicious of Sehmat, but her also falling for Iqbal, and realizing that the enemy are not so different. These conflicting loyalties create emotional carnage, not least when she has to kill multiple people in order to protect her mission. [One of whom is killed using an umbrella laden with a ricin pellet, which is odd, since this was seven years before the KGB used exactly this method to assassinate a dissident, Georgi Markov] She does succeed in sending back vital information to Mir, but he has great difficulty in getting the Indian military to take the data seriously, being uncorroborated evidence from a rookie agent. When the Pakistanis start rolling up Sehmat’s local support cell, it becomes a race against time to extract her before she is caught in the net.

What I particularly liked about this was Sehmat’s “ordinariness”: she has no amazing abilities or combat skills. She is brave, smart and very committed, yet far from immune to the hellish toll a mission like this takes, especially on the psyche of someone thoroughly unprepared for it. The film does a much better job of depicting this than, say, Red Sparrow, in particular with an ending which is genuinely poignant, and a far cry from the black and white depiction which I was expecting. There’s as much ground to criticize the Indian side – not least for their cynical exploitation of a young girl’s desire to satisfy the wishes of her father – as the Pakistani one.

This was one of the highest-grossing Bollywood movies with a female lead ever, trailing only romantic comedy sequel Tanu Weds Manu Returns, and it’s easy to understand why. About the only misstep I can think of, was giving Sehmat’s father lung cancer, as if relying on her daughter’s sense of filial obligation and patriotism wasn’t sufficient moral blackmail. It’s a sloppy and unnecessary bit of early melodrama, whose lack of subtlety is severely at odds with the rest of the film. In a world where most spy movies treat death as a throwaway trifle, this goes a long way to remind us that the taking of another human’s life is absolutely not a trivial matter, regardless of the reason.

Dir: Meghna Gulzar
Star: Alia Bhatt, Jaideep Ahlawat, Vicky Kaushal, Shishir Sharma

Saala Khadoos

  By

★★★
“A maniac training a rebel.”

Despite thrashing virtually every sports cliché under the sun into the ground, this just about manages to skate by on the energy of its two central performances. Adi Tomar (Madhavan) is a boxing coach who gets hit with a trumped-up #MeToo charge by the head of the boxing association Dev Khatri (Hussain), and punted off to the backwoods of Chennai. There, however, he finds a raw jewel in Madhi (Singh), a fish-seller whose sister, Lakshmi (Sorcar), has been training as boxer with an eye to joining the police. But it’s Madhi’s aggression which attracts Adi’s attention, and he eventually convinces her to strap on the gloves.

From here unfolds, pretty much, exactly everything you would expect. Parental disapproval. Sibling rivalry. Madhi mistaking Adi’s devotion to her for something romantic. And, especially inevitably, Dev seeking to sabotage Adi’s hard work and claim the credit of Madhi’s success for himself. It all builds to the finals of the world championships – apparently a team sport – where Madhi goes up against Russian nemesis Natalia Riker, who battered her to a pulp in an earlier match [albeit with various extenuating circumstances]. If the Russki doesn’t quite snarl, “I must break you” before the contest, she might as well do. And if at least avoiding full-blown musical numbers, the songs all but required by Bollywood show up in the form of so many montages, they could form the basis for a drinking game.

I suspect this was inspired by the success of Mary Kom, and has much the same strengths and weaknesses. The makers seem to think that making a woman the central character is enough to offset the hackneyed story. Do not, however, take this as meaning the film is devoid of entertainment. For as mentioned, both leads crackle, and the tag-line on top accurately sums their relationship; it’s a lot of fun to watch develop, as they spar, both verbally and physically. Madhavan certainly looks the part of a former boxer, and although Singh could do with some more definition on her arms, makes up for in pure, undiluted Attitood (spelling and capital letter entirely deliberate) what she may lack in musculature.

That said, the boxing scenes are effectively enough staged that I could overlook the heroine’s wispiness, and this is considerably slicker all-round than the last Bollywood film I stumbled across on Netflix, Warrior Savitri. The cinematography is particularly effective, helping to generate a good volume of raw emotion, and this in turn helps distract from the thoroughly generic “underdog makes good” level of the story. It may even manage to catch an unwary viewer with the occasionally effective shot, such as when Madhi says to her coach, after he has just had to make a very difficult, personal decision: “You gave up everything, just for me. If that isn’t love, what is?” Ouch. If perhaps a low blow, it’s still a line that packs a wallop.

Dir: Sudha Kongara
Star: Ritika Singh, R. Madhavan, Zakir Hussain, Mumtaz Sorcar
a.k.a. Irudhi Suttru

Warrior Savitri

  By

★★½
“BollyNotVeryGood”

This is a modern update of the story of Savitri and Satyavan, originally found in Indian epic saga the Mahabharata [and when I say, “epic saga”, it’s 1.8 million words long!]. The tale has been an immensely popular topic for Bollywood, Wikipedia saying there have been thirty-four different film versions, dating back over a century to 1914’s Satyavan Savitri. The basic story is of a woman, Savitri, who defies a prediction that her chosen husband, Satyavan, will die in a year, and marries him anyway. She then has to talk the god of death out of collecting him.

The director’s day job is as a California dentist, which may explain why a good chunk of this is set in Vegas, and this was his first foray into Bollywood. It was a bit of a jarring introduction, since Gill apparently received death threats as a result of this film and was burned in effigy. Hey, everyone’s a critic… But it was actually religious fundamentalists who were responsible, sending him an email which said, “Self ban your film Warrior Savitri. It shows Goddess Savitri in poor light. If this film is released, you will be beheaded in public.” He still appears to have his head: perhaps the fundamentalists saw the film and realized it wasn’t worth a fuss. While I can see what it’s trying to do, the bulk of it doesn’t work.

That’s largely down to poor execution, though the plot has enough of its own problems. For example, the scene setting has Savitri (Raizada) learning martial arts after nearly being abducted as a child. However, this is then all but forgotten in the particularly tedious middle portion, as she meets Satya (Barmecha) and elopes with him to Vegas after a poor astrological prognosis of imminent doom causes her father to nix the marriage. After some more messing around – and, of course, the inevitable (and not very good) musical numbers – the predicted doom occurs, with Satya critically injured in a poorly-staged car-crash. Savitri gets involved with the evil Money John (Smoorenburg) and his sidekick, Candy (British page 3 girl, Lucy Pinder), to whom Satya owes money, while also having to bargain with Yama (Puri) for her husband’s soul.

Raizada isn’t actually the issue here; indeed, most of the performances are fairly serviceable and occasionally good. Puri is particularly impressive, his portrayal of the Grim Reaper as a world-weary, avuncular type being both against the obvious approach, and almost endearing. The scenes with the god of death chatting to Savitri are the best in the movie. The problems are more technical: most notable are some really bad digital effects, from green screen work to CGI explosions, and horrendously awful foley work during the martial arts fights. Really, when you’ve got a lengthy cat-fight between two women like Savitri and Candy, and all that sticks in your mind is how bad the sound effects were… something has clearly gone horribly wrong somewhere.

Dir: Param Gill
Star: Niharica Raizada, Rajat Barmecha, Om Puri, Ron Smoorenburg
a.k.a. Waarrior Savitri [yes, with two a’s!]

Hate Story

  By

★★★
“Hate trumps love.”

After exposing construction company Cementec as involved in corruption, journalist Kavya Krishna (Dam) is surprised to get a call from Siddharth Dhanrajgir (Devaiya), son of the company’s owner. He ends up offering her a job at far above her previous salary, and the two eventually grow into a relationship. However, it’s all a ruse: Siddharth dumps and firing Kayva, saying, “I fuck those who fuck with me.” When she tries to strike back by telling him she’s pregnant, he has her kidnapped and forced to have an abortion, which leaves Kavya permanently unable to have children. She vows to destroy Siddharth and his company, by any means necessary, using her investigative skills – and no shortage of feminine wiles – to get the information required.

An enjoyable pot-boiler, this has some of the traditional aspects of Bollywood cinema, not least a lengthy running-time of 139 minutes. It is, likely fortunately, light on the musical numbers; though the songs clearly play a significant part, there’s only one scene in a night-club which comes close to what you’d expect from Indian cinema. It’s also an odd mix, which I can best describe as “chaste raunchiness”. This is a film, after all, about a woman prepared to go to absolutely any length for vengeance, crammed chock full of sexual situations… Yet the movie contains no nudity beyond the PG-13 level, and not so much as a kiss. Even Siddharth’s trademark line, frequently repeated in English, is far more politely (and inaccurately!) rendered in the subtitles as “I ruin the people who mess with me.”

I largely tracked this down, because I saw that Hate Story 2 was on Netflix at the time, and not the original.  I feel it’s perhaps the kind of story which would be better served by a Western remake, which wouldn’t have to abide by the strict censorship rules of India. [I’m reminded there is apparently a Bollywood version of Basic Instinct, which I can only imagine!] There may not be anything quite like the poster present in the film, and some of the plot contrivances are, frankly, incredible. For instance, Kayva ends up on the board of Cementec, a position obtained almost solely by making doe-eyes at a cabinet minister for an extended period.

However, it’s still a thoroughly satisfying tale of a woman, abused by a powerful man, turning to strike back at him; a tale of sexual harassment and its reversal like has more resonance now, than when released in 2012. Dam cuts a striking figure, and I thoroughly enjoyed the scheming interplay between Kayva and Siddharth. For example, he sends his investigator to bug her house, only for her to find the audio-visual devices and use them to send disinformation back at him. Then he releases the steamy tapes to the media, framing her for the murder of her lover. I was impressed with the ending, too – it’s moral and grim at the same time. Despite the extended duration, the time sped by: while the sequel is no longer on Netflix, you should still expect a review, sooner rather than later.

Dir: Vivek Agnihotri
Star: Paoli Dam, Gulshan Devaiya, Nikhil Dwivedi, Joy Sengupta