Mukkabaaz: A Cinematic Knockout By Anurag Kashyap

Butch Coolidge is hardly what you call a hero. The first time you see him in ‘Pulp Fiction’ is with a grimace of disappointment on his face, as Marsellus Wallace talks, explaining about why he should lose his next boxing match. It is nothing personal, you see. It is the norm of the world of prizefighters that a day would come for them to lay waste to all their accolades to keep the mob bosses, who put them there in the first place, smiling contentedly. It is supposed to be a matter of little significance and Coolidge should do it. He will do it. 

Except that Coolidge, either by accident or intention, breaks this golden rule and then becomes, unexpectedly, the hero of the film, a befuddled yet undeniably brave character whom we root for amidst a gallery of loveable goofs and despicable goons. 

The greatest, most enthralling cinema is the one that frequently snatches away the rug beneath our feet and Anurag Kashyap, much more than just yet another Tarantino wannabe in Bollywood, has done that time and again, subverting genre and exceeding our expectations, on occasion a touch self-indulgently. 

And so, it might deceive everybody that his latest film ‘Mukkabaaz’ might be as simple and formulaic as its name, roughly translating into ‘The Brawler’, suggests. Sure, formulaic it is, doffing its hat to a bit of Sylvester Stallone and Salim-Javed and armed with a grungy, gritty style that could have dazzled Martin Scorsese again and yet the final film is anything but simple, every bit a Kashyap creation, bursting with sizzling flavor, bruising wit and subversive storytelling.

Like Coolidge, our hero Shravan Kumar Singh has just defied his master’s commands. A rookie boxer in stifling Bareilly, who is exhorted, between training, to do piffling household chores, he has just lost his heart a girl whom he never saw before and, filled instantly with the heady and suicidal thrill of inevitable romance, takes a stance, delivering a sucker punch that takes his tyrant of a coach by brief surprise before he himself is beaten to a pulp and condemned to lose all his chances in one swift stroke. 

The fact that the girl is Sunaina, the speech-impaired yet spunky niece of the said tyrant Bhagwan Das Mishra, does not do anything to rob off Shravan’s giddy delight, propelling him with hope towards being a winner inside the ring. The stage is set for his own test but not before Kashyap, armed with a deft and even nuanced screenplay co-written by a team of skilled writers including the film's hero , fills the frames with the irresistible yearning that our two lovelorn souls share, even as the town and its casteist and communal milieu feel unmistakably stifling. 

Most Bollywood films mistake romantic chemistry for just repartee and post-modern banter; the director, who reinvented the ground rules in ‘Dev.D’, instead fleshes out their stolen glances and moments with a lovely essence of longing that feels genuinely refreshing, even poignant by turns. It is not just about the way Sunaina ruminates indulgently on her bubble gum while Shravan blushes coyly or in how this eloquent-eyed lass describes how her man stares at her like Ranveer Singh (punctuated as ‘Ranbir’ by her mother). It is also in the way how he tries at being cocky while she pens a letter that spills with such stirring emotion that can only be found in her glistening eyes. Beautiful. 

To make us root for such a spectacular romance, the trick would be to dole out stakes that feel too insurmountable to overcome. ‘Mukkabaaz’ does that, sticking more faithfully to the very pulpy love-against-all-odds template that Kashyap has deferred from time to time, letting the simmering and seething Bhagwan Das Mishra, a man who takes his first name literally and his Brahmin lineage seriously, loom like a constant menace over this star-crossed pair. And yet, in the process, what we get are challenges and hurdles that feel not just genuinely dramatic but most crucially credible and hard-hitting. The film skewers adroitly not just the infuriating bureaucracy and petty mediocrity so ubiquitous in the world of sporting in our hinterland, from the inadequacy of funds for equipment to rejection of players on the flimsiest of excuses right down to the rampant use of illegal drugs to rig matches but also the political and social foibles and how they can be misused in blithe, even brutal abuse of power. 

‘Mukkabaaz’ spends its first half as the terrifically imperfect yet willingly heroic Shravan sets out to achieve glory in the ring, taken under the wing of Dalit coach. Kashyap hits his trademark strokes, peppering his urgent, crackling frames with a deft, self-assured hand; not for once does the authentic flavouring feel exaggerated or out of place. The dialogue, as always, is pitch-perfect and devilishly clever; a father confuses ‘passion’ for ‘fashion’, the said coach confesses to having been inspired by Pele and a humdrum, even annoying bureaucrat relishes English mannerism as a way to keep Shravan on a leash. And there is enough cheeky political incorrectness as well, right down to Shravan declaring that Bruce Lee was from Hollywood and not China. 

And then, unexpectedly, it turns the tables and what follows in the film’s latter half is a bigger, riskier game, a standoff of an underdog against a domineering kingpin who never forgives an insult or injury. It is here where ‘Mukkabaaz’ takes such incredible leaps that they are risky, to the point of slowing down the film and even hurtling it into inevitable territory. But the director plays these tropes with sly, salacious wit, pushing our star-crossed lovers into the darkest corners, all the while padding troubling subtext and real immediacy and yet making the stirring drama so winningly believable that we cannot help but root only for escape, a happily-ever-after even amidst such palpable menace and one that he hands us eventually, though not how you expect it. 

Visually and aurally, as said before, ‘Mukkabaaz’ feels as earthy as ethereal and while Kashyap has always been a most fantastic, almost addictive visual stylist, there is something almost mesmerising about this film, about how he eschews stylistic flourishes, except when lingering slow-motion captures both ups and downs in the relentless narrative. It’s a superbly shot film, rich with texture and flavour, the boxing scenes are stripped-down and punchy and the music by Rachita Arora and Nucleya never misses a beat. This is a showcase of the ace filmmaker now in total command of his craft. 

In Zoya Hussain’s Sunaina, we get a heroine unlike any other. She sparkles with effervescence, spirit, vulnerability and enough spine to make her more refreshing and loveable and Kashyap and his writers etch her out with such strong, indelible strokes that, at some places, she emerges as more heroic than Shravan himself. This film makes no muddled concessions to being feminist; it gives us a real, preternaturally striking woman endowed with the courage to protest against the evil instead of much-abused stereotypes.

Ravi Kishan is reliably endearing as the coach, a man whose eyes gleam with focused determination and fiery defiance, as he wears both his warmth and skepticism on his sleeves. Jimmy Shergill, playing Bhagwan Das, creates a cinematic monster who is more cold-blooded than any of the grand villains that Kashyap has created before. His real intentions remain always inscrutable but his vitriolic and vicious fury at being challenged or defied are always unsettling. The actor portrays this seething evil with tremendous balance, never exaggerating the depths of darkness that his stony eyes betray and yet remaining convincingly repulsive, nailing him as someone who deserves his comeuppance. 

And yet, 'Mukkabaaz' would be incomplete without its titular hero, played superbly by Vineet Singh. Singh, who has played intriguing parts in previous Kashyap outings, is in blistering, breathtaking form here, playing the naive yet always admirable Shravan Kumar Singh with such boyish pluck and irresistible spontaneity that it is impossible not to cheer or whistle at his exploits. His is every bit a foolhardy character, a fighter who leaps before he thinks but while all of the director's trademark rebels in previous films have been destined to lose it all, here is also a hero who comes of age as he lets it rip in the battle that rages outside and inside the ring and becomes, in the end, wholly deserving of the glory and happiness that the narrative rewards him. It is a sensational, revelatory performance. 

'Mukkabaaz' is more than just a radical, seminal film. It is, quintessentially, also a thrilling, deliriously drunk celebration of the pure power of pulp when served with so much delicious enthusiasm and energy as can be expected from a true artist of the medium. Sure, it has enough political and satirical punch but, as that fabulous climax reveals, everything takes a backseat once you have won the ultimate trophy of love against every conceivable odd. 

Those boys were right then. All you need is love, really. 

My Rating- 5 Stars Out Of 5

Tiger Zinda Hai- Too Lame And Long To Be Alive And Kicking

I was seven years old when I watched both Sean Connery foil the plan of Auric Goldfinger and Arnold Schwarzenegger mow down, with his biceps bulging, a whole horde of attackers with a machine gun. 

And it was only later that I struck upon the crucial difference between Schwarzenegger and Connery, between beefy action movie hunks and the suave and smart-talking secret agents. When it comes to sticky situations or saving the world, the former will use their brawn while the latter will be using their brains. 

'Tiger Zinda Hai' does not follow this rule, though. Like 2012's 'Ek Tha Tiger', its titular RAW agent hero is supposed to be a bit of both personalities, both as smart as a secret agent and as muscular as an action hero. However, since he is played by Salman Khan, the brawn frequently takes over brains and it seems that he earned his code name more for physical dexterity rather than intelligence. 

That is not to say that such a combination can be an utter misfire. 'True Lies', featuring Schwarzenegger as Harry Trasker, a government agent using both his head and his hands, was a fine example. Yet, while you can have a hero both razor-sharp and Rambo, you also need an effective, enjoyable action film to make the blend work. 

Unfortunately, this is not that film. 

Directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, 'Tiger Zinda Hai' suffers from the same, plodding and ham-fisted approach that crippled his last film 'Sultan' and prevented it from being a simple, conventionally enjoyable tale of an underdog rising to glory. Once again, the writer director tries to fashion this sequel, to an already insubstantial original, with unnecessarily epic aspirations when a simpler, even cruder B-movie formula, the kind that John McTiernan or Michael Bay can serve so well, could have done. Instead of being the 'shoot-em-up' or 'save the hostages' yarn that it could have been, it is bloated, overlong, filled with sub-plots and characters that are of no significance and (let's be honest) not even half as spectacular as it should be. 

Unlike the original, which turned a promising set-up in the first half into a redundant MacGuffin in favour of predictable romance, 'Tiger Zinda Hai' does have a plot, sure. In Ikrit, an alternate reality version of real-life Tikrit, the ISC, with allusions to the real terrorist organisation, and headed by the fearsome yet striking Abu Usman holds hostage a hospital complete with 40 nurses of both Indian and Pakistani ethnicities. Both Langley and New Delhi decide to intervene, albeit with frustratingly deliberate delay, but crusty old RAW chairman Shenoy (Girish Karnad, now looking convincingly weary) knows whom he can trust for the job. 

Alas, much of this convenient scene-setting is stretched self-indulgently, with the film shuttling to frosty Austria where Tiger and Zoya, the fugitive spies-turned-lovers from the last film, are happy as they can be, with a son who is, for some strange reason, forbidden to speak much of English. Still, so far, the film is heading in a safe, if surprise free, direction. Thanks to a poorly shot standoff with wolves and a botched mugging (in which Zoya tries her hand at being Jason Bourne), we are told that the pair is still able to kick ass. And so, Tiger is roped in, as he assembles his own team of agents for the dirty field work and plans are laid out with comfortable exposition so that we can rub our hands in anticipation. 

Here is the problem, though: when the audience has been told repeatedly that there is only a week left for a heroic rescue mission before the trigger-happy Americans blast away the hospital for good, there should be some tension, or even the semblance of some urgency in the proceedings or how our hero and his allies get cracking. Instead, right from the beginning, Zafar crams in only cliche and digression after another. 

The writing is awful. Shenoy wastes almost a couple of days in visiting Langley and Austria to persuade Tiger to choose the mission; so much for him being the head of an intelligence outfit confronted with a deadline. Similarly, the other characters are etched with the most obvious strokes. A young agent in Tiger's team is a Muslim who must carry with him a Tricolour to remind us of his patriotism. The nurses, except for Anupriya Goenka's Poorna, are reduced to whimpering victims. Abu Usman's army is made up of thick-headed men who can get whacked even by local thugs. Paresh Rawal shows up in between as a slimy Indian fixer, the masterful actor hamming it up here atrociously as a caricature who is suddenly, or rather lazily, revealed in the end to be yet another RAW agent.

Introducing potentially interesting characters and plot devices is a very good thing but it can be anti-climatic if they do not amount to anything. For every grand scheme being put in motion, it is infuriating to discover in the end that it built up to nothing. 

As viewers watching an action film expected to take our breath away at each turn, we are disappointed with how each major incident suffers either from sloppy action staging or how inconsequential it all feels, to the point of being shoved aside for yet another chunk of melodrama. Living upto the standard trope in any hostage action film, Zafar keeps on hurtling minutiae from scene to scene, keeping track of the days left for the airstrike in the end. It is supposed to generate some suspense but it only shows, each time, just how messed-up things and the whole film are. 

Salman Khan, as Tiger, is refreshingly restrained in the role, trading yet again pithy quips with a dry-witted sense of humour. Like in the previous film, he does a fair job of balancing self-assured yet understated confidence with a natural vulnerability; this time around, you can even see the rough edges, as in any ageing hero, but this feels welcome since he comes off as wearier than ever. It is problematic, though, that he is given charge of a team of passable agents who belong to a different film, most probably a 'Expendables' style ensemble rather than a film which should be all about the swaggering hero. And that itself serves to prolong the film to exhausting effect, the narrative morphing awkwardly from what should have been a thrilling rescue film to a tedious commentary on almost everything, including patriotism, India-Pakistan unity, the role of America in ruining the Middle East, illegal immigration with nothing of the subtext being even remotely insightful or deep. 

And then there is Katrina Kaif. Playing Zoya, supposedly a tightly wound ISI firecracker, needs at least some zest instead of just stone-faced expressions and slow-motion stunts. Her character also gets the rawest deal in the climax, when she is condemned to the fate of the archetype damsel in distress, destined to be saved from her hulking husband. Sajjad Delafrooz, playing the kingpin Abu Usman, brings welcome menace to the proceedings from time to time but is not given, tragically, the luxury of being even slightly intelligent; for the record, he does not even have a single clue of all the plans being hatched, despite how poorly conceived they are.

Is it all worthless? No, there are some bits and pieces that work. The scorching, ravaged locations are impressive and absorbing, shot slickly by Marcin Laskawiec. There are a few nice moments of camaraderie between the RAW and ISI crews, sharing guns and discussing Shoaib Mallik's present form. The much-hyped action scenes, however, turn out to be staged haphazardly and without the slightest coherence; RPGs are fired every now and then without reason. Also, every time you expect a sensational stunt or explosion on the screen, the film lets you down sorely; a car rotates mid-air like the one in a James Bond film but does not quite turn the whole 360 degrees. In the end, Tiger seems all poised to go blazing with his own machine gun but, rendered in excruciating slow-motion, it all feels vastly unspectacular. 

And for most part, amateurish obviousness chomps up the frames. Why does that Austrian shop-keeper read Hindi dictionaries? Why does it take almost half an hour when only ten minutes are left for the attack? Why should Kumud Mishra's hacker Rakesh be there for generating gags for being portly and unaccustomed to guns? Why must Abu Usman be only a victim of Guantanamo when he could have had a different agenda for his reign of terror? 

I know that I might be nitpicking but given all the praise and box-office numbers that this film has been collecting, Tiger Zinda Hai' is just a massive letdown for even the most undemanding action movie fans because it is too lame and too long when it could have been fast and furious. 

In a nutshell, it is The Spy Movie That Disappointed Me. 

My Rating- 2 Stars Out Of 5

The Best Bollywood Films Of 2017

It is that time yet again for me to look back at the year that has gone and rank the films that made the most impact in terms of brilliance, storytelling and, even, by handing us performances to rave about. 

And while 2016 was studded with instances of brilliant writing, blistering, no-holds-barred filmmaking and truly terrific performances, 2017 has been a humdrum time at the movies, with big-budget no-brainers dominating regretfully the multiplex screens, depriving us of more intelligent cinema. 

Thus, the smallest, or even the most conveniently written-off, films fared the best, pushing the envelope and daring to go beyond boundaries. Even then, some of the better films made this year sputtered in places and simply could not deliver the punch expected from them. 

But I would still be generous to them since this is a strictly average year for Bollywood and while I am still short of a movie in the tenth place, the other nine, a mix of the truly sensational and the merely smart and safe-playing, deserve nonetheless to be championed in every sense. 

10- 

The tenth place on my list is reserved as a consolation prize for the films that had tons of potential but could use only an ounce of it. So, there is 'OK Jaanu', a breezy Bombay millennial romance that boasted of talent in all departments except for its awkward, inconsequential storytelling; there is 'Badrinath Ki Dulhania', a rom-com armed with the most endearing young onscreen couple in recent years but one that wastes away the sparkling chemistry on predictability; and there is 'Daddy', which promised, with its gritty, unsparing tenor and Arjun Rampal's towering central performance as Arun Gawli, to redefine the gangster movie genre but sputtered in its cold place and misplaced ambition. 

9- Raees 

Dir- Rahul Dholakia

Could one of the year's most hard-boiled pulp entertainers be one of the best films too? Sure, it could come close to it. Rahul Dholakia's 'Raees' is refreshingly lacking in hammy melodrama or even shallow self-worship, even as it stars a superstar most lambasted for the latter. Instead, by blending just the right amount of authentic flavour and nuance and enough simmering masala, it also gives its titular kingpin hero both rippling charisma and rough edges to nail him real. It goes on far too long and the plotting is, at times, both convenient and contrived but there is enough rollicking style and crackling repartee between Raees (Shah Rukh Khan, in pitch-perfect form) and Majmudar, the enforcer determined to bring him to justice (played by a smarmy and slick Nawazuddin Siddiqui) to enjoy as a pure, thrilling crowdpleaser notches above the usual Salman Khan-starrer. 

8- Hindi Medium

Dir- Saket Choudhary

In today's era of bombastic propaganda disguised as cinema, it is rare to find a message movie that makes it point without feeling too preachy. Saket Choudhary's charming, if a tad too basic, comedy is about an archetype nouveau riche Delhi couple whose dream is to get their daughter enrolled in a typical upper-class English medium school. Irrfan Khan and Saba Qamar are irresistibly charming as the said couple, increasingly beleaguered and befuddled about the city's distinctive class foibles to which they should adhere for the sake of acceptance. Zeenat Lakhani's well-intentioned script turns from witty to didactic and the supporting cast is mostly sidelined. But the film is rescued frequently from tedium, thanks to Chaudhary's clever infusion of nuance and Deepak Dobriyal's infectious ghetto dweller who teaches this couple a thing or two. 

7- Ittefaq 

Dir- Abhay Chopra

Best leave out Yash Chopra's seminal 1969 film from your mind when sitting back and enjoying this unexpectedly sleek and self-assured update on the same. Debut director Abhay Chopra resurrects the much-abused Bollywood whodunnit genre with style, simmering suspense and even an unexpected dimension of emotional pathos. What 'Ittefaq' lacks in clean-cut plotting, it makes up amply with its flab-free efficiency and its Rashomon-style approach which transforms it, from a textbook thriller formula to an intriguing debate on the fundamental fallacy of perspective. Even as the director and co-writers Nikhil Mehrotra and Shreyas Jain bend logic and rationale for their own purpose, the film remains mostly compelling and convincing, aided in no small measure by a top-form Akshay Khanna as the wily yet warm CBI officer Dev. 

6- Lipstick Under My Burkha

Dir- Alankrita Srivastava

The most proudly feminist film of the year is also one of its most hilarious and saddest in equal measure. Alankrita Srivastava's raunchy and rambunctious film shuttles between four anguished women in stifling, steamy Bhopal and how they try their desperate to break barriers, both sexual and social, in vain. Punctuated by a burlesque comic timing and yet tinged with biting satire, 'Lipstick Under My Burkha' also compensates for its ungainly narrative with superlative performances from its leading cast of ladies, particularly Ratna Pathak Shah's disillusioned dowager and Konkana Sen Sharma's sexually dominated wife. It is patchy in places and the slapstick jars sometimes but when it has to knock out our hypocrisies and foibles, it delivers punch after sucker punch with real force. 

5- Bareily Ki Barfi

Dir- Ashwini Iyer Tiwari

In a year when romantic comedies either played too safe or tried too hard (just think of 'Jab Harry Met Sejal'), it is truly special to be served a romance as flavourful and appetising as its name. Ashwini Iyer Tiwari's rollicking semi-urban love triangle fleshes out a simple, even unassuming premise with layers of delicious detail and spontaneous writing. A smart and contemporary riff on 'Saajan' and without a shred of its melodrama, 'Bareily Ki Barfi' coasts confidently and delightfully on the warmth of its characters textured with authentic rustic hues and the crackling interplay that they trade. The charming Kriti Sanon is irresistible as the plucky tomboy Bitti and Ayushmann Khurrana's Chirag is a cocky Libran leading man with easy charm. But it is Rajkummar Rao's cuckolded yet almost chameleonic Pritam Vidrohi who frequently eats up this endlessly enjoyable feast.

4- Rangoon

Dir- Vishal Bhardwaj

Yes, you can bring out all those brickbats about its unwieldy plot, about the slow, almost elegiac pace, about the excess of ideas crammed in the canvas. And even then,  you cannot deny 'Rangoon' is nothing less than auteur Vishal Bhardwaj's signature storytelling served on a truly epic scale: an ambitious, even overarching period romance rendered with an unmistakably poetic and nuanced touch. Stitching together a yarn of love, jealousy and stirred-up passions against the backdrop of both war and revolution, the master storyteller serves up an indulgent yet sumptuous feast that lingers in the mind and then haunts us with its profound depth. The acting is uniformly splendid, especially Kangana Ranaut's fiery and frivolous Julia and Saif Ali Khan's sleek yet simmering Russi Billimoria. And while it deserved a more well-executed end, there are stunning images, musical daredevilry and acidic humour to keep you thrilled. 

3- Newton 

Dir- Amit V. Masurkar

This is not a political film. 

It is not even about the political situation in India even as it has the most timely and astute observations on how our elections are run without much thought and shallow pragmatism against the odds of a fickle and befuddled population refusing to give their opinion. Rather, Amit V. Masurkar's brilliant, thought-provoking satire is about a naive young man, an insufferable snob wielding a rulebook and caught in the midst of the dance of democracy. 

Rajkummar Rao plays this titular conformist, with smooth and self-assured persuasiveness and 'Newton' is all about the day of his acid test, trying to run a successful election in a remote Naxal-operated district and trying to fathom, in the process, just how democracy works in our land. The razor-sharp and economical narrative bristles with dry, deadpan comic punch, as Masurkar lets this tightly wound and upright protagonist bicker and banter with fellow officers, the swaggering Major Atma Singh (a terrific Pankaj Tripathi) and others as he discovers whimsical and harsh truths he never could imagine. 

This is an intelligent and incisive character study, a coolly sarcastic jab at the futility of rhetoric in the face of reality; yet, in the end, Newton, living up to the namesake's significance, as propounded unforgettably in the beginning by Sanjay Mishra's wise veteran, proves with his determination that we do need a balancing force for the chaos.

2- Jagga Jasoos

Dir- Anurag Basu

Has there been any other film that has been an exotic and eccentric fest for the senses as Anurag Basu's breathless comic adventure? 'Jagga Jasoos' serves up sights and sounds that refuse to be dislodged from your mind. S. Ravi Varman's visuals stir up a zesty cocktail of panels drawn by Herge and stunts staged by Steven Spielberg. Leave alone those lovely melodies; the improvised musical numbers, punctuating the narrative, have all the magic and mischief of Disney and Monty Python with lyrics and rhymes that could have penned by both John Lennon and Thomas Pynchon. 

And yet, none of that would have mattered if the film had not been so infectiously, deliriously thrilling. Basu's film is propelled relentlessly by a rippling thirst for adventure and peril, matching the unabashed pluck of its fiendishly smart and lovably boyish hero in every step. Ranbir Kapoor's Jagga is literally a bushy-tailed boy wizard for ages, conjuring up zingy heroism by always grabbing more than he can grasp, driven by a childlike curiosity that feels too good to resist. 

Yes, it is a bit too wild and berserk for the typical Bollywood audiences, accustomed to easy exposition instead of telling it all in song. And regardless of that, 'Jagga Jasoos' is a gloriously nutty experience, one that Bollywood needs to celebrate to realize its penchant for cinematic kitsch. A movie in which dogged detectives lounge in African baths, ostriches sprint in pursuit and murder mysteries are deciphered in song. A movie in which 'Tutti Futti' does not mean the sweet sugary bits but rather broken legs and bad luck. Genius. 

1- Trapped

Dir- Vikramaditya Motwane

A man. An apartment. A lonely, desolate skyscraper. And a city that refuses to pay heed to his cries for help. It takes a truly brilliant filmmaker and a brilliant central performance to flesh these bare bones with not just the throbbing pulse of a ripped electric circuit but, most crucially, the blood of real pain and flesh of beautiful, almost allegorical subtext. Trust then Vikramaditya Motwane, one of our most meticulous storytellers and Rajkummar Rao, possibly the finest young actor of our generation, to deliver all that and more. 

At heart, 'Trapped' is a thundering thriller, doing justice to both the existential cinema of Werner Herzog and Danny Boyle's visceral '127 Hours'. Yet, while all those films were primarily concerned with exploring the personal demons of their hapless protagonists, Motwane, armed with a ruthless narrative by Hardik Mehta and Amit Joshi, sets out to do more, nailing the relentless urban  sprawl of Bombay not as the backdrop but rather the main antagonist of the story. The city looms up frequently in Siddharth Diwan's sweaty visuals, silently staring and even mocking the plight of our protagonist as the film laments implicitly the sense of alienation and cold indifference that this buzzing, hearty metropolis is capable of. 

That is not to say that it is without soul. Rao's Shaurya, a mild-mannered, even mediocre office worker plunged into heady romance and plucky impulse, is a character worth rooting for and the actor and Motwane portray his predicament, fears, bravado and silent, seething determination with true gusto. Forget Herzog and Boyle. By padding this lean and mean thriller with ironic metaphors on both urban life and the tribulations of love, Motwane has achieved the heights of Alfred Hitchcock. And that is something. 

Justice League: A Cinematic Injustice To Superheroes

Not all bands can fight and still be fabulous like The Beatles. 

It is a bit startling, for instance, to realise that beneath the dazzling and eclectic versatility of 'The White Album', the pitch-perfect melodic brilliance of 'Abbey Road' and the hard-slamming edge of 'Let it Be', there was not just a conflict of interest. Instead, the recording studio had assumed the air of a battlefield with almost all four of them (with the notable exception of Ringo) sparking off with their talents and egos. And yet, the result is some of the most daring and audaciously spectacular work that they pulled off together, sealed with a poignant climax in 'The End', in which all four created the most stunning rock and roll solo ever. 

That is what being a great team is all about, something that Zack Snyder does not understand. 

The idea of a superhero team is potentially fantastic, even as it has been done to death by none other than Marvel which continues to not only make similar movies about one ensemble or the other but also make new teams altogether out of the same old guys and girls and some new members in tow. Yet, while the formula does not always work successfully, at least even the weakest movies, say 'Avengers: Age Of Ultron' or the excessive 'Guardians Of The Galaxy: Vol 2', offer us heroes or costumed freaks worth rooting for and who share a fairly thrilling level of repartee that makes them preposterous fun while they last. 

'Justice League', Snyder's latest ham-fisted chunk of superhero bombast, has the diametrically opposite problem. 

It is a well-known fact among us comic book lovers that, with no offence to fans of Captain America or Tony Stark, the distinguished members of the Justice League are more intriguing because of the rich wealth of personal backstory and characteristically sparky interplay they share with each other. It has always been interesting to see how the slightly nihilistic and cynical Batman can end up working with the samaritan Superman or how the laconic Martian Manhunter can kick ass alongside the constantly wise-cracking Flash. The wonder, as with Marvel's Avengers, is always in the uncanny way in which these mismatched saviours get together and save the world in style. 

This film, to begin with, does not have heroes worth rooting for. 

Sure, they may have names penned by legends like Bob Kane and Jerry Siegel but the so-called 'heroes' of 'Justice League' are in no way worth being called heroes. Yes, that means you too, Diana Prince, no matter how conventionally solid a standalone movie you got yourself some months ago. 

Rather, this is a bunch of thick-headed and confused freaks who would do a lot better if they are left alone, without the need to fit into the plan of a man who was once a true delight on the silver screen but is now just a smug and self-obsessed snob. 

When asked by a speedy and snack-chomping Barry Allen (who also dubs himself, with true relish, a 'snack-hole') as to what exactly his superpowers are, the Bruce Wayne of this film replies, 'I am rich,' thus making a distasteful political allusion that would have won him the love of Donald Trump. Being the undeniable dark-edged hero of the comics, Batman could have said anything, even about having 'eight-pack abs' as in the lovely, lovely 'The Lego Batman Movie', but Snyder's version, played by a patently unlikable Ben Affleck, has to be so glib and selfish that even his reason for uniting a ragtag team of heroes is just to save his face over the fact that he came embarrassingly close to killing a fellow superhero for no real reason. 

And that is all to the threadbare script really, which makes me wonder just what did Joss Whedon, one of the brains behind 'Toy Story' and, to hit closer to the mark, the creator of the cinematic Avengers team itself, have to do with this piece of bilge, co-written most incoherently by Chris Terrio, who seems to have forgotten that he had written 'Argo' as well. The director himself feels awkward and hesitant this time around, which means that, in a flash of optimism, that 'Justice League' is at least less loud and hammy than all his previous films and it ends, at least, when it has to. That does not mean, though, that it is even remotely a good film. 

For one thing, it is a long excruciating wait for us all before we actually see all of them come together and start doing something. 'Justice League' starts typically with an all-too-literal eulogy for Superman, whom we saw buried beneath the ground at the end of 'Batman V Superman' and then, without the slightest hint of imagination or inspiration, starts tracking down each of the characters without ever bothering to flesh them with soul or even much of enthusiasm. 

That is not to say that the actors are any bad; it is just that they deserve a lot better than just being etched out as empty-headed idiots who simply choose a mission because they should choose a mission. 

Jason Momoa makes for a very fine Aquaman, if just for the overwhelming visual idea of strength and snobbish sarcasm that he embodies well; he is the only player in the team who has the gall to declare this Batman a nut. Ezra Miller is a lot of fun as Allen but the film carves his Flash to be only a goofball. Ray Fisher is agreeably a tormented Victor Stone but is not given much of an emotional resonance despite the intriguing developments in the beginning. 

When I watched 'Wonder Woman' some months ago, I felt that, despite the film's many narrative limitations, it worked because Gal Gadot played the titular character with the same winsome believability as with which Christopher Reeve played the Man Of Steel. This time around, I still believe in the lovely actress' increasing confidence as the iconic lasso-wielding lass of charm but could not help feeling that she is playing it a bit too safely, sticking to the uninteresting plot tropes that Snyder and his team hand out to her. She and the others are all performed earnestly but they are given precious little significant to do. There are bits and pieces when they get their share of the limelight, like Prince holding her own against in a team of men mostly leering at her legs or Aquaman delivering a fine little monologue announcing his intentions. But mostly, they are paper-thin cutouts who are there only to defeat a villain without even the slightest shred of menace. 

Maybe it is because 'Justice League' has such a frustratingly imbecile supervillain that the film feels so deprived of real stakes or even the merest hint of danger. Ciaran Hinds' Steppenwolf is a wasted caricature armed with the most ridiculous lines like 'Mother is calling' or 'You will love me,' directed at people trying to stop him. The rest of the fine actors are marginally lucky, with JK Simmons playing a not-so-bad Jim Gordon and the always reliable Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth, the real unsung hero among a crowd of people who think they are heroes. 'I cannot recognise this world,' he laments brilliantly in the film's most resonant line. 

He is not wrong, of course. It is increasingly difficult to relate the bleak, grimy world of Snyder's films to whatever the brilliant comics and the films by Richard Donner, Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan had offered to us in the past. Batman's gadgets look like grey, ugly toys and yes, they can be destroyed pretty easily too. The man himself looks more of a fat-necked and furiously inflexible idiot in a suit with Affleck's mediocre performance bordering on being unforgivably vicious and sexist at the same time. Beyond that, the film's desperate attempts to link all that stupid, blatant subtext about people fearing aliens of all types with a half-baked commentary on the necessity of heroes are just laughably bad. I found myself laughing unexpectedly on a throwaway scene in which a foul-mouthed woman complains about her husband being kidnapped by extraterrestrials. For the rest, I was trying not to nod off. 

Then, there is the writing, the godawful and risible writing and those senseless plot developments. What is SteppenwoIf's agenda, really? What, in God's name, are those Mother Boxes and why is it so easy to hold them? Why do all the Amazonians run like the unforgettable John Cleese' Sir Lancelot in 'Monty Python And The Holy Grail'? And yes, I was rolling my eyes in some of the dialogue. Amy Adams' Lois Lane nuzzles up to Henry Cavill's newly resurrected Clark Kent in the midst of a Kansas field and says, thoughtfully, 'You smell good'. And a couple of lines, even when said by the naturally effervescent Gadot, don't make any sense at all. Even the occasional punchlines are extremely lame. Did Whedon really co-write this stuff?

Predictably, as if to offer some faint sense of superheroic wonder in the typically overblown climax, Superman shows up, played by Cavill in a refreshingly light and low-key fashion, allowing himself the welcome luxury of a hearty laugh at the end of it all. But it is too late to save the party. 

'Justice League' is not just a stinking piece of entertainment. It is also a film that stinks even as a superhero film. It does not even know what to do with the elements even if they are in place. This is a film which plays John Williams' 'Superman' theme in the background when the said hero is instead beating up his own comrades to a pulp. 

Let's pray that this band breaks up without any further delay. 

My Rating: 1 and a half stars out of 5

Amazing Adaptations: Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange'

When I was in college, I watched 'A Clockwork Orange' one afternoon, expecting, being the lascivious young lad at that impressionable age, it to be a racy skin flick. What it turned out to be, other than a few scenes of (it must be said) gratuitous nudity, including a particularly titillating scene of rape, was something that dashed all my hopes. I was even nauseated, eventually, by just how sick it all felt in aftermath and I resolved never to watch that film again, neither for sinful entertainment or for insightful enlightenment. I had enough satisfying options for both. 

It was only in ripe adulthood that I did watch Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange' with the now-mature perspective to discover a real, seminal classic of cinema. I have gushed about my experience in my review here and while I admired all the trademark Kubrick elements to be found in his other films, namely the deceptive emotional coldness and the stunning use of technique in audio-visual storytelling, what amazed me the most was its central argument: a cure for crime and depravity can be more criminal and depraved if it deprives a person of his soul and self-respect. More than being just an anarchic film, it was an experience that made me think.

I document these seemingly redundant and separate experiences of watching and understanding this radical film not just for nostalgia's sake. Rather, the point that I wish to make is that there is more to 'A Clockwork Orange' than just its strident cry of rebellion against the hollow concept of correctional therapy. 

That additional dimension is what is evident, not in the film, but rather the source that inspired it in the first place. Written and published in 1962, Anthony Burgess' 'A Clockwork Orange' was, like the cinematic adaptation, a shocker and sensation in equal terms. It was banned from many an American high school syllabus and yet it also elicited some of the finest praise for being a truly ground-breaking work of postmodern literature, at a time when that genre still needed to be defined in the real sense by the upcoming spree of American and English authors. Burgess himself dismissed as too preachy to be effective and was particularly critical of Kubrick's version of the story (something that I will come to later). 

But both the book and the film continued to be legendary, albeit not only for the uncompromising portrayal of nihilism, violence and political manipulation rooted into a near-future urban society. A large part of its popularity and quotability is also attributed to the nearly suicidal yet ultimately spectacular linguistic trick that Burgess employed and that Kubrick (to give him further credit) followed slavishly. I am talking, of course, about Nadsat. 

At one point, we, who have all been part of gangs at school and college, can relate to the idea that our choice of language and vocabulary in those days of latency period would have been our own to use and merely a trifle or amusement for the grown-ups around us. Burgess understood that perfectly when etching out his protagonist and narrator, the unforgettably flawed yet wonderfully endearing and ernest Alex, as a fifteen-year old teenager who, with his 'droogs' (Nadsat for 'friends'), sets out every night on a spree of 'ultra-violence', including mugging, physical assault, breaking-in and rape. The language that they banter in, called as Nadsat, is a fascinating, maddeningly heady blend of slightly tweaked Russian words, Cockney slang, schoolboy lingo, Biblical phrases and even an occasional dash of old English and even Arabic. And yet while the words themselves can be quite confounding to say the least (I would urge every novice to keep the dictionary of Nadsat handy), such is Burgess' mastery of a highly absorbing, atmospheric storytelling, especially his vivid sense of detail, both morbid and mesmerising, that you are going to read it all in a trice even if you do not quite get some words or the way they are used. 

Naturally, it would have been a tall order to be so faithful to the source so as to even use Nadsat as the primary language in the film. But Kubrick, being Kubrick, did it nevertheless and the result is an unexpected success (I found myself saying frequently 'Appy polly logies', 'devotchka' and 'eggiwegs') both as an experiment and a path-breaking narrative device that sucks the viewer, as it did to the reader, into the morally twisted universe of Alex' world. It is also worthwhile to observe that Kubrick nails the dislocation of Alex from the rest of the world through the combined medium of language and music. None of the characters around him speak Nadsat as trenchantly as he does and at the same time, none of them even share his passion for music, especially the work of the maestro Ludwig Van Beethoven, which also puts him in a different league than the others, thus adding to his eventual predicament. 

Much more than the fairly faithful loyalty to the book's major narrative and its central argument (though I do wish that Kubrick had given even a brief mention of the allegorical meaning of the title), it is always intriguing to see how Kubrick breathes life into the material. The film's visual palette, with low-angle spaced-out photography and flashes of orange and milk white to punctuate the bursts of violence and depravity, is almost stunning aesthetically while the use of slow-motion and orchestral swells to punctuate certain pivotal scenes is still unrivalled in sensory impact. And the writer-director also adds a new dimension to the penultimate climax of Alex' troubles- that of revenge, which is just implicit in the original novel. 

It is at this point that the differences between the novel and the film should be mentioned for it is these detours that illustrate just why the source should be more or at least equally essential than the adaptation. 

To begin with, even as 'A Clockwork Orange' does not refrain from depicting almost all of the sexual violence and brutality portrayed in the book, there is a difference in how the author and the director approach the same. Burgess' portrayal of the anarchy is gritty, incisive and grim, with little room for cynical laughter; Kubrick, on the other hand, delivers it as a form of amusement and even, and this is troubling, thrilling entertainment. And this is not just about how the film posits Alex almost as a twisted image of the archetype action hero, especially in his brawl with rival Billyboy, but about how it amplifies the sleaze to an almost gratuitous level. 

The evidence of this is not just the rape scenes that exaggerate the nudity involved to guiltily exciting levels (the film has more scenes of bare breasts and bodies than the book) but also the often-overlooked scene in which Alex seduces two young girls from a record store into engaging into a threesome with him. Kubrick's version is purely an experiment of technique, the scene shot in frenetic sped-up rate so as to bluff the demanding censors and blur the details of the actual activity; in any case, the situation in the film feels positively consensual and even sexually normal. In the novel, however, the same scene is much more macabre, with Alex drugging these girls and forcing them to submit to his own wild sexual impulses, clearly then a case of indirect rape. There is nothing even remotely pleasurable about it in the book while, in the film, the same thing becomes merely a fanciful joke. 

While it is far-fetched to call the director emotionally indifferent, his sympathies in 'A Clockwork Orange' are so single-mindedly with the brash exploits of Alex that the overall emotional heft feels distinctly one-dimensional. Burgess took care to make Alex a more believably world-weary youngster from the start, a slightly skeptical prankster who only comes in his element when listening to his favourite music; he is also more sympathetic towards his parents and even willing, in a genuine way, to improve his wicked ways. The film, on the other hand, revels comfortably in the unabashed nihilism of Alex. Sure, Malcolm McDowell's spectacular, utterly slimy yet searingly honest performance is impossible to fault but Kubrick lets us sympathise with him only after his fate has been dealt out. That, too, is an incredible trope of masterful emotional manipulation. 

But let's not forget the most pivotal difference. 

Most fans of the film, who would have read the novel either before or after watching it, opine that Kubrick did the right thing by excising the controversial 21st chapter from the original British edition of the novel. For novices, I would like to explain that this chapter serves as an epilogue to the happy conclusion of Alex' struggles for sanity and self-respect. In this, Alex is back on the streets as a freewheeling creature of the night as before but he is getting, inevitably, disillusioned and even disgusted by the futility of his activities even after he has been 'cured' of all the side effects of the Ludovico Technique. He even goes to the extent of leaving his new group alone and, on meeting his old mate Pete, who is now married and totally reformed for good, even contemplates marriage and rearing children as an inevitable outcome of growing up. 

For Burgess, this final chapter makes complete sense. And one has to agree because it enriches its cry of protest against behavioural conditioning with a conclusion in which Alex is not forced anymore to be good or responsible but rather he himself makes a conscious choice to leave behind his adolescence. This itself establishes firmly the gist of the story, that goodness and virtue cannot be imposed by force on even the most flawed human soul. 

It also extends on the original meaning of the title superbly. 

'A clockwork orange', as explained by Burgess, is just an old phrase for a person originally full of juice or personality transformed into a soulless clockwork machine and expected to live according to an imposing routine. From what happens to Alex, all that is evident. But in this epilogue, the author tosses his biggest surprise. Alex muses, in one of the most evocative paragraphs of the book, that the wildness and impulse of youth itself makes a human being a clockwork toy without a sense of direction and purpose and that youth serves no purpose if it is spent without being devoted to some artistic or practical initiative. 

Kubrick's justification for the omission of this chapter is a bit of a miscalculation in two ways. Firstly, the director claimed that he had based his script from the American edition, the one that excised totally the final chapter with the publishers complaining to Burgess that it did not just fit into the overall narrative. In his foreword, the author mused that the American reading public wanted a Nixon-style perspective of morality and evil rather than the Kennedy-like opinion that every human being is capable of goodness and initiative if they are not enforced upon him or her. 

Secondly, Kubrick justified the omission by agreeing to the general American opinion that it did not just fit into the narrative. For all his brave insistence of amping up the anarchy and ensuring that Alex remained as wicked as always in the end, he missed up a grand chance to bring in an unexpected dimension of perspective into the narrative. Both the book and film are about the vitality of freedom to choose either good or evil, regardless of the pre-conceived notions of the same laid down by some authority or a society. But for all the marvels of Kubrick's adaptation, it is Burgess' novel that really reveals the infallible truth that a person can be productive, responsible and virtuous and still be happy as long as he or she is not compelled to be a 'clockwork orange' by extremes of both youthful, infantile impulses or by a domineering state.