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Khiladi
PostPosted: Sat Sep 06, 2003 3:58 am 
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Calcutta Mail

By Taran Adarsh


Film-maker Sudhir Mishra makes a shift into commercial cinema with CALCUTTA MAIL. A critically acclaimed director whose hard-hitting middle-of-the-road sensibilities in IS RAAT KI SUBAH NAHIN won rave reviews. Needless to say, his latest endeavour is surrounded with expectations.

Expectations may generate curiosity, but they can also prove to be the downfall. A routine potboiler, this CALCUTTA MAIL has arrived, but with little to offer in terms of novelty or freshness, thereby giving its passengers a bumpy ride.

The film starts off with Anil Kapoor arriving in Kolkata in search of his son. He finds a chawl as a temporary residence and bumps into Rani Mukherji. Rani is a novelist in disguise staying with the chawl tenants to observe closely their mannerisms and behaviour. Anil has to share his room with Rani and she slowly gets attracted to him.

In the meanwhile, Anil's search leads him to Saurabh Shukla, who knows the whereabouts of Sayaji Shinde. Sayaji is a criminal from Patna who kills as and when he likes. He is believed to have fled with Anil's son and is hiding in Kolkata.

Days pass by, but Anil is unable to trace Sayaji. Then one day Saurabh betrays Anil and tells Sayaji everything about Anil and his purpose. Sayaji lays a trap. In the fight that ensues, Anil is stabbed [twice].

A recuperating Anil goes into flashback and narrates his past to Rani. The past brings along Manisha Koirala, who is on a run escaping from her father Satish Kaushik, a famous industrialist who wants her to marry Sayaji.

Anil saves her from the clutches of Sayaji amidst gunshots and a train accident. And subsequently cupid strikes. They marry and are happily settled with their son Yeshu. But not for long, as Manisha's father traces her. Things move from bad to worse as Manisha is killed and Yeshu is missing.

Cut to the present: Anil recovers, but the whereabouts of his son still eludes him. The rest of the story revolves around Anil's search for his son and also trace his wife's murderer.

The film, set against the backdrop of a three-storeyed chawl, brings to the fore the essence of Kolkata. Sudhir has given the story a very realistic feel, which is very much evident from the streets, bylanes and houses of the city, where the film is shot.

The director has handled certain scenes with aplomb. Anil's outburst when he realises Rani wants to propose, to revealing his purpose of arriving in Kolkata, as also the one where a man hangs his son from the balcony demanding money from his wife, can be highlighted.

Even the scenes where Rani and Anil are having silly arguments are well executed. But, unfortunately, such scenes are few and far between.

A remake of Telugu blockbuster CHOODALANI VUNDI, CALCUTTA MAIL is touted as an emotional thriller. But neither is the emotional quotient potent enough to give you goose bumps, nor is it an edge-of-the-seat thriller.

Even the climax, which has room for suspense, doesn't appeal when the real killer comes to the fore. Also, the film lacks continuity at certain places. Gangsters pop out from anywhere and everywhere.

Another factor that works against the film is its music. The songs act as speed-breakers since they are forced in the goings-on. In fact, the film would've had a better impact had it been a songless enterprise. Dialogues are passable. Ditto for the cinematography.

It's the performances that are the saving grace, as the big names don't disappoint. Rani is natural. Her light moments and chatter-box mannerisms provide a welcome relief. This performance will add value to her already-heavy resume.

Manisha Koirala impresses in the little footage she gets. Sayaji Shinde gets stereotyped in another negative role, which he executes with full justice. Satish Kaushik's transformation from doing light-hearted comedies to a negative role is a pleasant surprise. His performance is first-rate. Saurabh Shukla is competent.

But it is the ever-reliable Anil Kapoor who comes up with a powerful performance. His emotional outbursts, as a helpless father in search of his son, engage the viewer to a major extent.

On the whole, CALCUTTA MAIL disappoints. With no hype or hoopla surrounding the film, it will face an uphill task at the box-office.

Rating:- * ½.
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Khiladi
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 06, 2003 3:59 am 
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Rules - Pyaar Ka Superhit Formula

By Taran Adarsh


When you saunter to a theatre to watch a film with such an unusual title and a not-too-established star cast, obviously the expectations are not too great. It is this low-key expectation that takes you completely by surprise as the lights go off and the story unfurls.

RULES – PYAAR KA SUPERHIT FORMULA is a feel good entertainer with a refreshing storyline, but an ordinary screenplay, coupled with some illogical turn of events, take it downhill.

Radha [Meera Vasudevan] is an assistant to renowned fashion photographer Uday. She has a crush on a supermodel, Vikram Verma [Milind Soman], ever since she was a kid.

Vikram, after ruling the fashion circuit for quite some time, nurtured a dream to become a restauranteur and move beyond the arc lights. Maggi [Namrata Barua], Vikram's girlfriend, has other plans, to switch over to films.

One fine day, Radha's world changes dramatically. Her childhood crush is shooting for an ad film in the same studio where she works. But becomes miserable when it dawns upon her that Vikram already has a girlfriend and she has no hope of ever winning him over.

Enters Radha's grand-mother [Tanuja]. Worried about her Radha's behaviour and her extent of affection towards Vikram, she gives Radha five rules to woo the man she loves.

Radha is ecstatic, as one by one all the rules gets her closer and more closer towards Vikram till she finally wins him over. Now what?

When everything was just working fine, Radha realises that she exploited Vikram's good nature and manipulated the rules to get what she wanted. She opts out of the relationship, leaving Vikram completely bewildered.

Loosely inspired by LOVE IN SIMLA [Joy Mukherji, Sadhana], RULES – PYAAR KA SUPERHIT FORMULA has many aces up its sleeve. The narrative moves at a brisk pace, keeping you hooked.

Besides the principal characters, there is also a housewife, a corporate woman, a producer and a gay couple adding spice to the happenings. What's appreciable is that these characters gel completely with the screenplay and don't hinder the film's progress.

Debutante director Parvati Balagopalan impresses in her debut. She should not only be complimented for trying such a different theme, but also for the way she brought innovation to film-making techniques.

Special mention has to be made of the way she has introduced certain characters and subsequently weaved them in the story, without deviating from the main plot and yet all those characters are complete with no loose strings hanging.

Radha's crush, her reasons for pursuit, her initial embarrassment and her grand-mother's concern seem very close to reality.

On the flip side, the film leaves several questions unanswered… But the issue that remains on your minds is, why does Radha leave Vikram when, after all those efforts, she has finally won the man she desired all through? Even otherwise, the 'rules' are nothing much to rave or rant about.

Moreover, the graph of the film takes a dip towards the second half. It's not as exciting as one would've expected it to be.

Music [Sandesh Shandilya] is tuneful. The songs are in sync with the happenings and move the story forward. Cinematography is alright. Dialogues are quite good.

Milind Soman does his part well, expressing the right expressions at the right places. Tanuja lights up the frame whenever she appears. Meera Vasudevan has a dream role and she doesn't disappoint. She emotes the vulnerability and innocence well and is at ease both in emotional as well as light moments. Namrata Barua is just about okay.

On the whole, RULES – PYAAR KA SUPERHIT FORMULA is a feel good, decent entertainer that holds ample appeal for the youth mainly. At the box-office, its business prospects at metros and more specifically in multiplexes should prove to be the best.

Rating:- * *.
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Khiladi
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 06, 2003 4:04 am 
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oh crap! i did it again..sorry arsh..just realised that you already posted these reviews :bangbang:
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hutbay
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 08, 2003 4:33 pm 
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PLANET BOLLYWOOD REVIEW


Avant-garde director Sudhir Mishra makes his foray into the commercial arena with this latest Anil Kapoor starrer and delivers an absolute taut thriller reminiscent of the innovative and imaginative Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin. This time Mishra takes a different route, straight into the chawls of the City of Joy (aka Kolkata) and using his trademark explosive narrative style enthralls the audience through this super-jet ride, via "Calcutta Mail".

Affirmative to the tagline, "He has arrived in a city where everyone wants him dead" seen in the pre-release promos, a train passes through the bustling Howrah hub of Kolkata and that is when Avinash (Anil Kapoor) arrives to the city in search of someone. He is in search of Lakhan Yadav (Sayaji Shinde), a Bihari goon currently on a hideout in Kolkata and to reach him, Avinash has to work through his only contacts in the city, Shankar Paswan and Ghatak (Saurabh Shukla). During this search process, things take an abrupt turn and before Avinash can realize, he becomes the one who is being hunted and that is when the puzzle starts to get more intriguing (both for the main protagonist Avinash and the viewer). By making the rounds of the trams and metroes of Calcutta and exploring the effervescent Kolkata, Avinash starts to put the clues together and gets some assistance from Bulbul (Rani Mukherjee). Unknowingly, Avinash gets deceived as Lakhan Yadav gets to know about his whereabouts and stabs Avinash to eliminate him in this cat and mouse game.

Nurtured by Bulbul, Avinash regains consciousness and relates his past to Bulbul and the reason behind his frantic search. Avinash tells her about his chance-encounter with Sanjana (Manisha Koirala) and the events that lead them to get married, inspite of the disapproval of Sanjana´s politician father Sujan Singh (Satish Kaushik). What happens next? Why is Avinash after Lakhan Yadav and vice-versa? Is Sanjana a part of this? What is Avinash really looking for? Sudhir Mishra efficaciously takes us through this gripping thriller with the help of a superbly constructed plot and a suspense-driven cat and mouse game that gets the viewer to the edge of his seat.

The central idea of the movie is definitely adopted from the Telugu movie "Choodlani Vundi" starring superstar Chiranjeevi. While Choodlani Vundi is regarded as a good masala entertainer, Calcutta Mail is anything but a masala movie. It clearly shows how different and innovative Sudhir Mishra´s treatment is by presenting such a taut thriller with a superbly written screenplay (Sudhir Mishra, Saurabh Shukla and Ruchi Narain). While Anil Kapoor´s character has been defined with a lot of depth and with ample scope to perform, even the supporting characters played by Manisha Koirala, Satish Kaushik, Saurabh Shukla, Sayaji Shinde (his suffers a little for being a stereotype as compared to others) make an impact with their unique characterization. Touted to be an emotional thriller, the writers have intelligently crafted the emotions that can be seen through the character of Avinash. The emotions are not created for the audience, instead the director relies on the character of Avinash to display the emotions at every stage of this puzzle and the audience is made to go into the mind of the character Avinash and feel the emotions that he is going through at every stage. Saurabh Shukla´s dialogues are also noteworthy.

Sudhir Mishra´s direction is just sensational to say the least. Shot amongst the ´Durga Poojas´ , ´Yatras´ and the tension filled atmosphere, he has captured the ambience of the underbelly of Calcutta in a noteworthy fashion and just like Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin (with his penchant for chase sequences and all the happenings in the night), he grips the audience right from the word go. Some of his sequences do remind us of Bimal Roy, especially the way he uses Calcutta as the backdrop. The train sequences, the tram sequences, the scenes at the railway platform during the climax are some of the most gripping and top class sequences by Mishra that you might have ever witnessed in a Hindi movie. Throughout the movie, Mishra has given the feel of a journey a man is going through and how one thing can lead to another.

However, there are a couple of instances where the Calcutta Mail runs off the track. It is difficult to fathom why would Sudhir Mishra, an auteur associated with meaningful cinema, throw in unwanted songs and the baggage associated with those songs, two in a row that would test the patience of a viewer when thoroughly engrossed with the rest of the proceedings. The second half also provides some unwanted sequences between Anil Kapoor, Manisha Koirala and the young kid that tend to drift a little away from the script.

Technically the movie is top-notch with some terrific work in the editing department by the late Renu Saluja and Shirish Kunder. As seen in Renu Saluja´s earlier works (Parinda, 1942-A Love Story, Ardh Satya, Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin and many more), the editing is razor-sharp and gives the movie the required slickness. Ravi Chandran´s cinematography is in a league of it´s own. From the rustic Virasat to the fresh Dil Chahta Hai and now the vibrant and rugged work in Calcutta Mail, proves he is amongst the best.

Anil Kapoor delivers one of his absolute best performances. His character has been defined with ample scope to perform in this screenplay-driven performance and in spite of the strong supporting cast, this really comes out as Anil Kapoor´s one-man show. In the first half, he draws the viewer into contemplating the thoughts going in his mind through his tremendous body language while in the second half, he delivers the power-packed dialogues and carries out the emotional scenes with aplomb. After the superbly restrained performance in Armaan, Anil enacts an orthogonally different explosive character with as much pizzazz and sincerity.

Manisha Koirala looks absolutely stunning after a long time. Though she doesn´t have many scenes to display histrionics in this male-dominated show, she makes her impact as seen in the train chase sequence and thereafter. Rani Mukherjee´s role is not clearly defined, but she provides some light moments in this movie. She is supposed to be the catalyst to move the movie forward in the first half, but frankly speaking her scenes and songs put the breaks on this Calcutta Mail. Kaushik impresses in his very first negative role and quite a departure from what we have seen of him. There is no doubt that he is a far better actor than he is a director. Sayaji Shinde is quite good in many scenes especially the second half, while in some scenes he is typical and suffers from the typical Bihari villain characteristics. Saurabh Shukla is good as Ghatak, the pimp. The rest of the supporting cast including Shivaji Satam don´t have much to do.

Calcutta Mail might be viewed as a trendsetter in Hindi cinema as far as thrillers are concerned and Mishra´s vision needs to be applauded. This movie is definitely not for the light-hearted and is extremely violent and heavy. Never mind some derailment of this Calcutta Mail, thanks to the songs and the excess baggage that goes with the songs, the nail-biting chase-sequences, the nerve-wracking action sequences, the high-action thrills with the entire mesmerizing backdrop of Calcutta and a flawless one-man show by Anil Kapoor, make up for that and takes the viewer for one heck of a ride and makes Calcutta Mail an absolute memorable endeavor.


PB Gives It 9/10



Edited By hutbay on 1063038838
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