Desi Train

Hero No. 1 flies down from the air onto the train. Background music… bang bang bang… The wind plays wonders with his Greek Godly hair. He is brazen bronze head to toe. Get up get up from your seats and bow as he gives a pose on the roof of the train to fashion photographers.

Hero No. 2 flies from the shore on his motor cycle and lands on the boat. The bad guys growl and frown. Mama didn’t serve them breakfast hash browns. They stick guns on Hero No. 2’s head and just stay there. Quick Click click click. Hero No. 2 goes into some odd dialogue baazi, that makes some grandpa sitting next to you, hide into grandma’s pallu.

Hero No. 3 comes flying out from underwater, stands on his water scooter and bang bang bang - he goes, as he strikes a pose mid air. The technicians of Waterworld both the movie and the show at Universal Studios park, must be scratching their brains on this stunt.

Next Hero No. 2 and Hero No. 3 stand next to each other and the camera zooms in on them as they strike a pose of shooting the bad guys.

Heroine No. 1 strikes a pose as she shoots the targets walks out and out of the blue salutes the Senior officer who has been standing there for ages waiting to blurt out his two lines of dialogue.

Heroine No. 2 strikes a pose as she comes in flying from the air into this chamber to pickup this ancient sword.

Hero No. 1 and Heroine No. 2 now have a battle of words. As they do that… You got it… they strike a pose.

And then each one of those models sorry actors has to look cool, is cool, breathes cool and wants to do cool things. So when they talk, the dialogues are stone cold. Brrr… et ej not cool.

I am in all awe of the screenwriter Vijay Krishna Acharya who accomplished such a difficult task of taking around 150 fashion photos of all Dhoom 2’s actors and writing a screenplay around it. And under Aditya Chopra’s tutelage has invented a new kind of screenplay. One that contains the portfolio of the film’s actors all striking a pose… and then with great pain he has to spoil the pictures by scribbling some dialogues over each of those pictures…

I don’t see Aditya Chopra being very happy as he saw Shri Vijay Krishna Acharya spoiling the 150 pictures by scribbling dialogues over them. If Chopra had it his way Dhoom 2 would be a motion picture of still photography where the 150 pics are held together and the right edge is quickly flicked through to give the impression of motion… in a picture.

There is this age old notion that many (if not most) people with eye popping physical beauty are actually “dumb”. Dhoom 2 stamps it’s signature on this notion… for the scenes have never looked so pretty, the actors so mindblowing handsome, the locales ever so gorgeous and an iota of intelligence - so absolutely invisible from the first to the sixteenth reel.

Of course no pretensions are made about it. This is an escapist cinema. You are all for it. But if you have a hero and heroine talking to each other in a basket ball court, as if artificiality is the new buzz word in town… then you gotta stand up and ask Aditya Chopra… are you really the one who made Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge?

Usually the stand taken by many… actually most of the filmmakers is - “You should keep your brains at home to watch our movies”

How long are they going to hide behind this statement?

I don’t want to think and use logic for each and every movie. Of course in most of the movies I would simply like to sit back, relax and be entertained.

But there is a difference between “Not using brains” to “View” a movie AND “Not using brains” to “MAKE” a movie.

Which means - You are not making a movie to suck me in. Why? Because you left your goddamn brains at home while writing and then making this movie… which leads to such bizzare ideas where Maharashtra Police has taken over the security from Brazil Police in Brazil. Please don’t ask… why… or What the fuck?

Sadly the later part is true in the case of Dhoom 2, where the entire focus is to make the actors look like Gods and yes… strike poses or make GRAND entries or exits in each and every scene.

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D 2 is an overdose of empty headed splendor and grandeur at it’s worst… if you don’t check yourself from being sucked into it’s mind boggling emptiness. If Chopra and Sanjay Gadhvi the director, had it their way, dialogue writers will be banned from Bollywood in the next few years. Stories will revolve around stunts, crashes, parachute jumps, wire stunt plays and ofcourse models… who enter in a scene with a background music that makes you lose your hair faster and upsets your stomach at cheetah speed.

But not all is lost in this Dumb 2. The opening sequence of the train is beautifully shot though I cannot say the same for the heist. Again, it’s clear that the team had stills of images in their head as to how they would go about it. And that’s what happens… The hero is shown in striking poses whether he has to sand board or stand on the roof of the train as he betters his poses.

The whole fight sequence on the train has a very deodorized, sanitized execution. It’s still in first gear. Whether it be the falling off the train or landing the punches.

But the second chase is where the team hits the mark all with Hritik being chased on the streets of Bombay and Abhishek in the helicopter. Of course you’ll enjoy this scene if you can let go of resisting to accept a cop in a helicopter shooting at a criminal on the busy streets of Bombay.

The conversation between Hritik and Abhishek where they reveal their true identities to each other is another scene where for some strange reason, D 2’s team ends up hitting it close to the bull’s eye.

As for the rest, really either the actors don’t talk or whenever they open their mouths it seems to put, Rameshwar S. Bhagat - the editor of the movie, to sleep.

The few times the team of D 2 tries using it’s head, they end up making scenes look really bizzare. Were they trying to beat the world record in plastic artificiality?

Watch the Russian Roulete scene - but stay close to the exit inorder to prevent your brains turning into mashed potatoes over the way the direction and actors in the scene execute it.

That is it. Dang 2 is all about poses and models who have more curves on their bodies than the roads to the Himalayas.

There is no place for straight lines in this one. Be it the physical body or straight thinking.

Bipasha and Aishwarya are used as pinup dolls with the sole intention to get dicks hard in the theater. Mission accomplished.

Aishwarya, not only hams but may as well have created a new negative acting term - “Jams” - jams is a process where as an actor starts emoting, expressing or talking in a scene and in the very first five seconds jams the brains of the viewer who goes “WHAT THE FUCK IS SHE DOING? or WHY THE FUCK IS SHE TALKING IN THIS MANNER?” - and while the down in dumps viewer is still struggling to find the answer to the question, stuck in a time warp… the actor has completed the scene and moved on to the next.

Jams - a state where your brains get locked and jammed in a scene and you come out of that state only a few minutes or unfortunately only a few hours later.

Uday Chopra is supposed to be the fun track in here. He isn’t there yet.

Abhishek Bachchan needs to go back and re-memorize his acting basics. This is outrageous. At times he does try his best, but he can’t help but sink with the terrible dialogues and the terrible scenes written for him.

In the end it’s Hritik Roshan who tries his best to rise above this moronic coconut headed script. And he succeeds fairly well. Here is one actor who tries his best to make the unbelievable look absolutely believable and ridiculous look fairly digestable. Clearly receiving the most attention in this movie, Roshan does not fail. Without him, this Dhoom would be so lost and goom.

C Plus. Not only do you not need brains but some 50 odd lashes on your behind to make you accept this prettily posing Broom called Dhoom.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 24th, 2006 at 10:59 am
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