By Subhash K Jha
FILM: Khiladi 786
CAST: Akshay Kumar, Asin, Mithun Chakraborty, Himesh Reshammiya, Raj Babbar and Rahul Singh
DIRECTION: Ashish R Mohan
What can be said about a film where a couple named Mili and Bhagat conspire to bring their employer’s empire down?
Khiladi 786 is the kind comic orgy done in shades of green, orange and pink, which doesn’t require us to strain our brain. The kicks and grunts, guffaws and chortles, the antics raillery and tomfoolery flow out unstoppered like an uncapped toothpaste tube.
The formula is simple. And stark. Get the audience to laugh at any cost. And some of it does work quite well.
We have a hero. No, make that a super-duper-hero, who flies across the air, pounds automobiles to a pulp with his bare fists, breaks down a jail cell’s stone walls with a flick of his manly fist, gets goofy or gooey-eyed depending on his co-star on screen.
Akshay’s crazily improvised performance as a sham cop borrows dollops from Salman Khan’s Dabangg and Akshay’s own Rowdy Rathore. The derivative derring-do doesn’t diminish the impact of the italicised antics that range from the arresting to the exasperating.
Sample this. Asin (back in fetching form for the first time since Ghajini) loves a lout who is chronically incarcerated. Each time the jailed loverboy (Rahul Singh, well-cast effectively played) is about to be released, he’s sent back packing for some unintentional crime or the other.
The script seems to be written by someone who loves Akshay’s humorous heroics and his emphatic but spoofy hijinks. Both the traits are amply accentuated in the script. Khiladi 786 ultimately becomes a showcase for its insanely successful superstar hero’s talents. Akshay, as we all know, loves to play the Punjabi Devdas. He did it effectively in Vipul Shah’s Namastey London, where he stepped back gallantly to let his wife Katrina Kaif make a fool of herself with an undeserving boyfriend.
Exactly the same triangular situation crops up in the second-half of Khiladi 786, when midway through the anarchic hilarity, Akshay decides to play the bleeding teary-eyed martyr “gifting” Asin to the aforementioned jailed jerk.
Mamta Kulkarni in the early Khiladi film Sabse Bada Khiladi had done the airheaded lovergirl running after the wrong man. Back then, Akshay stood guard over Mamta with the same steadfast loyalty as he does for Asin.
Some things never change in Hindi cinema. Heroines may come and go. Heroes live on forever.
A sense of continuity runs through all of Akshay Kumar’s comedies. He doesn’t do anything here that he hasn’t done before. The trademark goofy grin and the self-deprecating humour are back. Here, the hero is desperate to get married. That’s a sporting part whose subtext screams, ‘Look, I am such a big star and I play a character who can’t get a woman to marry me, ha ha.’
The music by Himesh Reshammiya is splendidly in-sync with the film’s wacked-out mood. He often uses standard background effects from old Hindi films to remind us that we are laughing at conventions that never grew outdated in our cinema. — IANS
(DVD courtesy:
Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha)
A pleasant romantic comedy
By Colin Covert
FILM: Playing For Keeps
CAST: Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Dennis Quaid, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Uma Thurman
DIRECTTION: Gabriele Muccino
Playing for Keeps is a perfectly pleasant romantic comedy completely lacking in novelty. This will leave many viewers unengaged, but may not be a disadvantage for its core audience.
Genre fans, like children, love to hear their favourite stories again and again. They will find a comforting familiarity in this well-worn tale of a sensitive, immature hunk tamed by the love of - but I dare not reveal the ending.
Gerard Butler stars as a former soccer star, now broke, divorced, and trying to learn how to co-parent his young son. When we meet him, he is shooting an audition tape for a job as a TV sportscaster. Jessica Biel is his ex, a levelheaded, capable type. Judy Greer, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Uma Thurman are soccer moms who fling themselves at the hunky Butler when he signs on to coach his son’s team. Call them Flighty, Flinty and Flirty.
Greer is winningly ditsy, alternately melting into tears and throwing her arms around the befuddled Scotsman. Zeta-Jones, a former ESPN broadcaster herself, offers to get his tape to the right people in exchange for such services as an unattached woman of healthy appetites might deem appropriate. Thurman plays the neglected wife of obnoxious local moneybags Dennis Quaid, a hale fellow who befriends Butler with so many attaboy slugs on the shoulder their relationship suggests a one-sided boxing match.
Quaid passes Butler fat envelopes of cash “to fund the team and buy uniforms, y’know”. Of course, if Coach can see putting Quaid’s son at goalie and give his daughter the microphone to sing The Star Spangled Banner, he wouldn’t mind. Quaid’s generosity has its limits. He informs Butler that he’s violently jealous and has hired detectives to follow his wife. This is known as foreshadowing.
The film is a bit better than standard, and not bereft of laughs. Quaid plays a guy who lives on maximum overdrive without overacting beyond what the character calls for.
Greer pivots between coquette and weepy waterworks so fast it’s like watching a magic trick.
Zeta-Jones’ nickel-plated vamp is well within her comfort zone. Thurman brings a vaguely alcoholic unsteadiness to her bored housewife, flinging herself at Butler as if launched from a catapult. The cartoonish flattening of the female characters didn’t seem to bother anyone in the predominantly female audience I saw the film with, any more than Quaid’s brash jerk offended the men. They exist only as foils for the leading actors, hurdles to be dealt with before the uplifting conclusion the formula requires.
Though Butler, who also produced the film, is onscreen in almost every scene, Biel fares better, delivering the truest performance of her career. Butler’s character is a flat, well-meaning sort who can’t help it that women are attracted to him by electromagnetic force. Rather than feeling reinvigorated by their interest, he deals with their advances sheepishly. By contrast, there’s a touching vulnerability in Biel’s work as she struggles to reconcile her emotional ties to the man she once loved with her need to move on.
She may be helped here by director Gabriele Muccino, who made the moving Will Smith drama The Pursuit of Happyness. Muccino directs comedy with a distinct lack of zing, but with his leading actress’ help he nails the affecting dramatic undertones. — Star Tribune/MCT
A taut little thriller
FILM: Brake
CAST: Stephen Dorff, Tom Berenger, Chyler Leigh
DIRECTION: Gabe Torres
Brake is Stephen Dorff’s latest foray into direct-to-video cinema.
Dorff plays Secret Service agent Jeremy Reins and Reins is having a really bad day. He just woke up in a giant plastic box in the trunk of an automobile not knowing how he got there. He has a CB radio and next to him is a giant digital timer that counts down. Something bad happens when the counter reaches zero.
It turns out that terrorists have kidnapped him and they want the location of the Presidential emergency bunker in Washington DC. Reins will not yield, but by not giving them what they want they’ll continue to torture him physically and mentally. Whenever the giant digital timer strikes zero - there will be more pain and punishment to deal with.
Brake, which has an uncanny resemblance to the plot of Ryan Reynolds’ Buried, works fine as a taught little thriller. It won’t win awards for acting or best film, but it succeeds at being entertaining.— WS
(DVDs courtesy: Kings Electronics, Doha)
