Agneepath Redux

I must be the only person of my generation that has not watched the original Agneepath starring Amitabh Bachchan. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised with this new version of the movie directed by Karan Malhotra and produced by Karan Johar, because it kept me engrossed despite belonging to the gory "action" genre.

Hrithik Roshan plays Vijay Deenanath Chauhan, son of teacher Deenanath Chauhan from the small town of Mandwa. Sanjay Dutt plays Kancha Cheena who frames Vijay's father (since the teacher was the only one who stood between Kancha and his plans to take over the village of Mandwa) and gets him falsely accused of rape and hangs him in front of the entire village and Vijay. Vijay and his pregnant mother (played by Zarina Wahab) leave Mandwa to come to Mumbai and Vijay has his first brush with the Mumbai underworld. He curries favour with Lala and joins his gang much to the dismay of his mother. Every move Vijay makes brings him closer to Kancha and avenging his father's murder.

First, I am completely blown away by Hrithik Roshan's performance (although he does look old in this movie). After a long long time, for the duration of the movie, I actually forgot that this is Hrithik Roshan the superstar. He is completely convincing as the angry young man, wronged by the system and driven by the sole aim of avenging his father. I thought the director Karan Malhotra did a great job (yes yes - I am going to watch the original one soon - its top on my must-watch list). Priyanka Chopra did not have much to do as Kaali, Vijay's love interest in the film - they did have a few cute scenes together. I thought all the supporting actors played their roles well. Zarina Wahab looks pretty good for her age. Rishi Kapoor was fabulous in his role. If I have one complaint with the movie, its basically that I don't understand why Kancha asks Vijay to kill Gaitonde when he could do it himself considering the vast army of henchmen at his command. And, in the interest of full disclosure, the movie did drag a bit in the middle. I enjoyed a well-made Hindi movie after a long time. I wish filmmakers paid more attention to their scripts. Good script + good acting = Good movie

All in all, it was good Friday entertainment - am glad hubby persuaded me to watch this flick. And more importantly, our little chotu, very kindly, slept soundly and allowed us to watch the movie with no interruptions.

What's your rashee - what was Ashu thinking?

Despite all the bad reviews (or maybe because of them) regarding What's your rashee a few friends and I were curious to see the movie - we bullied our respective spouses into agreeing to watch the flick - Blue being their choice clearly (not sure that Blue is a better movie but that is another review). And boy did we regret it!! 3 hours of my life that I am not going to get back (and it was 3 hours only because we watched all the songs and some of the scenes in fast forward mode).

The movie starts with an astrologer predicting that the younger son of a Gujrati family will get married by the 20th of that month. The older son has borrowed money from a few shady characters and is in over his head when the family hears that their wealthy grandfather will turn over his entire property to the younger son upon his wedding. This is a further impetus for the family to pressurize their son to come to India and opt for an arranged marriage. The boy (played by Harman Baweja) agrees to meet 12 different girls (all played by Priyanka) but from each sign of the zodiac and choose his life partner from among one of them. The story then progresses with Priyanka Chopra essaying each of the 12 different roles. The biggest letdown is the completely weak storyline and non-existent script. That is then compounded by all the background noise in the form of unnecessary background stories of how much in debt the older brother is, the matchmaker uncle who is also cheating on his wife and the million songs. While the songs are certainly very pleasant and hummable there are just way too many of them thereby prolonging a very weak and flimsy plot.

I wonder if Ashutosh realized in the middle of making this movie just how bad it was going to be and had no other option but to finish it despite his misgivings. I cannot believe that this was made by the same director who gave us Lagaan and Swades. The portrayals of the 12 different zodiacs is very cliched and some of the characters are reduced to downright caricatures. Harman is okay. The good thing is that he no longer seems to be trying to ape Hrithik Roshan (a la Love Story 2050). Must say, the future is not looking too bright for Mr. Baweja. Priyanka is okay as well. I remember watching an interview with her where they were talking about how she has still not come across the role of a lifetime - similar to what Pakeezah was for Meena Kumari or Umrao Jaan was for Rekha - and sadly if she was pinning her hopes on this movie, this is definitely not it.

So the verdict (if it is not already crystal clear from the paragraphs up above), give this movie a miss unless you really have nothing else to do with 4 hours of your time.