Please forgive me… I really, really wanted to like this film. The trailer looked kickarse and I kept putting off watching the film until I could sit down for the entire 146 minutes and immerse myself in the Indian gun culture. So I put it off and off and finally had two and a half hours in a row to enjoy it. In it went and I sat back with sound up ready for a full metal assault from the princes of Bollywood.
I might as well still be waiting.
Imagine, if you will, a bunch of Indian filmmakers sitting about wondering what’s so great about Hollywood movies and why they make so much money. Guns, crime, cool one-liners, scantily clad women, violence, dance sequences, strip clubs, drug use, chases, bad guys… well, the list stops around there. See how I slipped dance sequences into there? Same thing the director did.
Honest to God, within the first 25 minutes there are two dance numbers! This was supposed to be a gritty Indian interpretation of Reservoir Dogs,not Moulin Rouge! Not Chicago!
Defeated, my shoulders slumped, and I was suddenly trapped in a burning building for the next two hours.
We all know the story of Reservoir Dogs by now, don’t we? Six seemingly perfect strangers meet to commit the perfect crime before disappearing into the ether, never able to rat one another out should they be caught. Except one among them is an undercover cop who instigates trouble from within and with cops suddenly all over them, they turn on each other to find the snitch.
"I’ll get them damn Indians…" |
It was just past the first hour when the crime finally occurred and it lasted for the best 20 minutes of the film. Then it was back to the mundane for the rest with overblown and lengthy ‘tense’ bits, needless scene setting and vast empty deserts where literally nothing is happening! Plus, every action film camera trick cliché ever invented has been applied here. Witness six men walking abreast in slow motion/fast motion/slow motion or trimmed fat from scenes of a guy getting into a car. He’s near the car, suddenly at the door, suddenly inside closing the door. Plus those white flashes connected with flashbacks.
Overall, this is way, way, way too long. Some ruthless editing is seriously needed for this film. There are subplots of little interest, interminably long moments between one guy saying something and the other replying and the Mexican standoff near the end - cheesus, how many angles of it do we need to realise what’s happening? Four guys with guns in each hand pointing them at each other. Pretty simple to figure out. Do we need 14 takes on it?
I’m sorry, perhaps I’m being needlessly harsh, but this film was a real letdown. Too long, too empty and too clichéd.
No doubt someone’s already firing up their email to launch an assault on me, to tell me ‘All Bollywood films are like that, duh!’
I’d be willing to try out a couple more to make sure, but if this is the cream, well…
It’s a little sad to see how hard they’ve tried to emulate an American film. That horrid yellow filter they use whenever shooting in downtown Los Angeles has been employed to the max here. Every time the characters are outdoors it’s blaze yellow/gold. The filter I’m talking about can be seen in films like Bad Boys and Beverly Hills Cop, if you’re unsure about what I mean. Anyway, it’s turned up to Mag 10 here, so you can’t miss it. And on the same thought, it’s such a shame they’ve made an Indian based film but set it in LA. That blows. Don’t they have crime in India?
There are some nice time lapse shots of the city though which I really liked, and in the indoor scenes the colour is alright. Flesh tones are fine, blacks are natural but shadow detail is shithouse. Some compression woes raise their heads, as in the internal stairwell at 19:32-47. Reel changes are heartbreakingly apparent at 19:17-21 and 36:45-47, due to the increasing film artefacts, the wobbly vision and the big, fat reel markers (that Brad Pitt calls ‘cigarette burns’ in Fight Club) on the screen. There are more – these are just the first two. On a similar note, the layer change is noticeable at 80:09 due to an overly sluggish black screen transition between scenes. Overall, fairly disappointing.
First of all I was dismayed to see an action extravaganza in just Dolby Digital stereo, but as the film progresses it has little to do and so stereo proves sufficient. There is plenty of cool Indian music that I really enjoyed throughout, even including the first and second surprise musical numbers that I watched, jaw agape. (Again, maybe all Bollywood films are like this, duh). Whenever the action or tense bits are ramping up, that huge music the blockbusters use gets a good run with the escalating horns and hammered kettle drums. Unfortunately though, it hots up sometimes even when dudes are just walking across the street or jogging casually up a staircase.
Dialogue slips in and out of English and Indian, sometimes mid-sentence, and to the film’s credit the subtitles are always quick to appear. These, it would seem, are burned into the original print as they wobble about a bit throughout the film. Plus, they aren’t even an option should you speak Indian - they’re just on. Sound effects are appropriately clichéd with all sorts of extra ‘cool’ noise dropped in. You know, those whooshes and stuff they stick behind everything in the big films. Man brushes teeth; WOOOOSH!
Man gets shot in crotch; WOOOSH!
Man turns head to look at pretty sparrow in a tree; WOOOOOOOSSSSHH!
There is no sound effect like that in life, so what’s it doing here? Trying to make life sound cooler than it is?