Movie : Fight Club

“Ladies & Gentlemen, welcome to Indian cinema of the 80’s”. The same plot (or the lack of it), the same latka-jhatkas (although Amrita Arora is slightly bolder than Aruna Irani) and the same predictable ending (the good guys beat the bad guys in a final fight).  So what if we are almost a quarter century ahead in time and several notches ahead in quality and content. Here is a movie that serves old wine in a new bottle! I would have loved to give a brief plot description of the movie: tragedy is there is no plot to speak of in this flick! There is a lot of skin show (babes and hunks galore) and a lot of senseless violence but if you are looking for a unifying thread which some people call a story, sorry sir!

Since it is the duty of a conscientious reviewer to make his reader aware of what they are in for, here is what I vaguely remember happens in the movie amidst a lot of gore, bone breaking and horribly misplaced songs. A bunch of friends in Mumbai hit on a megaplan called the FightClub whereby they organize fights for a price for people who always wanted to kill each other but didn’t know how! Now if you thought that was weird, you are in for a real treat. One of the dudes’ uncle runs a club in Delhi and gets killed over a dispute as the baddies want to take-over the club and use it for drug peddling. His uncle dead, the dude decides to fight it out and revive the club and all his friends leave their respective families for good old ‘dosti’. Surprisingly, one of the foes of this band of boys (Sohail Khan) also joins their club as a bouncer even though he hates Zayed Khan. Ok, ok, logic is not exactly the hallmark of the movie.

Then there are a bunch of baddies: Rahul Dev (who Rahul Dev? the villain opposite Sunny paaji in the movie Champion… Champion who? ok … fuh-get it), Ashmit Patel (whose movies may have bombed but his MMS is already in the all time hall of fame), Yash Tonk (who plays someone in all of Ekta Kapoor’s serials and movies I am told) and Suniel Shhetty (I hope this is the numerologically correct spelling). They serve the general purpose of being beaten up and eventually being killed.

The bimbos in the film (Amrita, Diya and Neha) do not have a role to play in the movie and the only reason why any self-respecting actress would do such a role is only due to some serious financial crisis! The boys (Dino, Sohail, Ashish, Riteish & Zayed) hog the limelight or airtime through the movie. None of them, however, have the screen presence to hold the audiences for more than 4.5 seconds!

The biggest achievement of the film, however, is the universal appeal and impact that it has on audiences.  Sample this: An excruciating  45 minutes into the movie, some song featuring Zayed and Diya starts playing: there is an exodus from the theatre as just about every irritated soul in the hall leaves for the loo, to smoke or just to get some fresh air! Inane dialogues draw groans from the crowd as if a thousand teeth are being pulled out simultaneously and you know the film has managed to uniformly irritate everyone around you!

If you can still muster up the courage to watch the movie after reading this review, you must join the Armed Forces!!

Watchability Rating : 1/5

Movie : Aksar

Aksar: Decent script, hit music, horrendous execution!

The basic plot of Aksar is not all that bad: a millionaire who wants to divorce his ‘hottie’ wife hires a womanizer photographer to seduce her so that she falls in love with the photographer and leaves him. Things go as planned and the photographer successfully beds the millionaire’s wife. However, things go awry when the wife still refuses to divorce the millionaire as she is the 50% owner of his wealth and the photographer smitten by the rich temptress decides to stay on by breaking the deal he had with the millionaire husband. Things reach a point when each of the characters in this queer triangle are playing their wicked games and it is difficult to judge who the ultimate villain is. The climax of the movie packs a suspense revelation which is predictable yet interesting.

Add to this, the super-hit music of Himesh Reshammiya. There are few movies in the recent past having 4-5 songs which are chart-toppers and are being played in every disco and every taxi! The songs are well-interspersed throughout the movie and despite the fact that sometimes they seem to pop out of nowhere, you can pardon the director given their popularity.

Where the movie fails is the most pathetic execution of the script by actors and technicians alike. Sample this: according to me, the 3 best acting performances in Aksar are by the following (in descending order of brilliance):

1) The stress-ball that Dino Morea keeps playing with
2) Victoria Mansion in Manchester, UK (the house where Dino Morea stays)
3) Himesh Reshammiya in the cameo performance in the song Mohabbat Ki…

What about Emraan Hashmi, Dino Morea, Udita Goswami or Tara Sharma (yeah, she also has a short role in the film) – you might ask? Well, they are there but remain so stone-faced throughout the movie that they put the walls of the palatial mansion in which the movie has been shot to shame. Emraan Hashmi may be the serial kisser of Bollywood but he can’t act for nuts. Udita Goswami maybe one of the hottest models in the Indian fashion circuit today but she’s got to realize that a hot bod does not a successful actress make. Otherwise, Pamela Anderson would have had a dozen Academy Awards to her credit! Dino Morea is slightly better than Emraan and Udita but only slightly better.

Anant Mahadevan (the director) fails to captivate the audience and were it not for the songs (which yours truly quite likes), the movie would have probably become intolerable. Watch this one only if someone else is paying and you really don’t have too much to do!


Watchability Rating: 2/5