Life in a Metro - Bittersweet

Actually you never give up longing for love, and you don't have to be living in a big city to wish for love.  Small town or big, people are always looking for love.  The characters you find in this film walk among us; you will run into anytime, anyplace.. looking for a kiosk to buy cigarettes, flipping through a magazine in the doctor's waiting room, sitting by you on the bus, living in your neighborhood, your home, your skin.

That is the trump card of the movie.  The characters are real, the dialogue is what we call  ’sadharan bol chal ki bhasha’, (un-grandiose).    The center piece is undoubtably, Shilpa Shetty.  This is so unlike the item girl she was reduced to by the formula filmmakers.  I hope she gets some good roles hereafter.

The movie takes you through the lives of four women, Shikha, Shruti, Neha and Shivani.  Shikha (Shilpa Shetty) is at a loose end with a husband who no longer loves her. Shruti (Konkona Sen) is looking for a life partner, Neha (Kangana Ranaut) is filling the void in her life with a sugar daddy, Shivani (Nafisa Ali) gets a bonus in shape of an old boyfriend homing in, 40 years too late.  The movie takes us through the wrong and right turns the women take.  Among the men  there is Ranjeet (KayKay), husband to Shikha and sugar daddy to Neha, his secretary.  Amol (Dharmendra) who had dumped Shivani years ago, because he wanted to get ahead in life.  Rahul (Sharman Joshi) works in Ranjeet's call center and  adores Neha,  Akash (Shiney) who bumps into Shikha on a bus and gets friendly with her, and Monty (Irfan Khan) who pops up too often in the life of Shruti to be ignored.

The director wastes the minimum possible footage to sketch the characters quickly.  As the titles roll, we get quick sketches of where all the lead characters are in their lives.  As the songs play, we get an overview of what the characters are doing at the moment. This allows you to grasp the story in a jiffy.  The product placement is also quickly dispensed with (Radio Mirchi and Shaadi.com) so that we may get on with the story.  The peppy dialogues, the faultless delivery, the clever use of voice-overs, keep the movie moving at a smart pace and audience rofl -ing so the proceedings don't get too morose.


The movie makes you think, and realise that everyone is looking for love and that to keep your heart and mind open is more important.  Shivani did not let a past grudge stop her from meeting Amol, and shared some lovely moments with him.  Shruti learns to look beyond the ordinary-ness of Monty and love him for being a friend (that gregarious whale -- he is lovable).  Neha learns to appreciate the sweet adoration of Sharman.





The movie is worth a watch for many reasons,  one of them being the band that sings about the current angst of the characters among the pavements and rooftops of Mumbai.  The songs are all lovely.  They sound good after the three years that have passed since the films release.


I end got a bit melodramatic for Konkona and Ifran, but they carried it off very well, I must say.  All other stories were wrapped up well.

Bravery goes Awry

The movie starts nicely, with Rahul Bose bungee jumping. Then cuts to him at a party, uselessly explaining the excitement of the jump to a housewife. Now why was he trying to talk to an auntie at his friend's engagement party. And why does an engagement party have precisely four young people against a horde of older ones?

This goes on throughout the movie, one good scene pitted against another quite useless one.

Story :

Javed Khan (Deepak Dobriyal) is an army officer accused of killing his senior officer at point blank range. He has not attempted to escape, nor said anything in self-defence. Major Akash (Javed Jaffery) is the prosecution cousel at the courtmartial of Javed. It is supposed to be an open and shut case, and they cant find a defence lawyer, so Akash arranges for his friend Major Siddhant (Rahul Bose) to step in. As the location is Srinagar, Siddhant treats it as a fun posting and makes plans accordingly. Kaavya Shastri (Minissha Lamba) is posted in Srinagar as the rookie reporter of Dainik Bhaskar. (Oh really ! do national newspapers send a rookie to a place like Srinagar, and that too a woman?) Anyhow, Kaavya pretends to be Siddhant's cousin to gain entry into the forbidden army territory and get some scoops on the Javed Khan story. She shakes up Siddhant and gets him into trouble for talking to reporters.

However, the offshoot of this encounter is that Siddhant gets serious about the business at hand which is bad news for Brig. Rudra Pratap Singh (Kay Kay Menon), who seems to be involved in all this.

Other things

The movie is based on A Few Good Men that starred Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore. I thought it had been indianised well, bringing in the angle of an army officer disillusioned by the false encounters and muslim haters.

Good Scenes

The Kavya-Sidhant encounter was very well done. He is blabbering away trying to impress a pretty girl, while she is cool and collected, and delivers her punch at the end. I could see the movie again just to watch this scene.

The initial Brigadier-Sidhant scenes were very well handled too. Kay Kay is perfect as ever, as a Brigadier full of grandiloqence, cowing a Major to near silence. Rahul Bose is perfect too, as a man cowed down by a senior officer. During the second encounter - there was a great dialogue built around a single malt whiskey and the word 'nice'. Again, a scene I could watch again.

However !

The climax was just not able to live up to all the buildup. The evidence is too sketchy and not convincing enough, and was not been elobrated enough. A couple of quick scenes, and the movie is over. Deepak Dobriyal is an amazing actor, but he was made to stare fixedly ahead most times. There were stock shots of Rahul Bose walking about the Army area, and sitting in the court room looking around which were repeated. And even a lay person like me could figure out these were stock shots. The movie was so well written in parts, that you feel bad at the portions that did not work, because of shoddy writing. It is like a good promise gone bad. Well, maybe Samar Khan will improve and come up with something better soon.

Performances

This is definately a plus point in this movie. Rahul Bose, Kay Kay, Javed Jaffery, Deepak Dobriyal, Minissha Lamba, and the pretty girl who plays Javed Jaffery's fiance, are all good actors. Rahul Bose is cute too ! He looks good in a uniform. Javed looks a tad old for the role, but acts well. He even gets to dance a bit (too little). Minissha wears lovely salwar kameez and churidars here. I even stole one dress idea from this, a printed salwar with a plain kameez. She was good as the feisty journalist on a ramshackle scooter. Amrita Rao has a small role, which she does ok with.

The cinematography is pleasing. The songs, just a couple, are sweet.
Nothing wrong with seeing the movie, its quite wholesome on the whole.