Rajneeti

My brother told me that Rajneeti was a mix of the Mahabharata and The Godfather - I decided to see the movie for myself to see how good or bad of a job they had done - and the verdict - not too bad at all. It was a tad too long but kept me engrossed for the most part except that I still cannot quite believe that politics in India is such a dirty business... that may be my naive side talking. I mean I have no illusions that politics is this super clean world but in this movie they take it to the next level - people killing people in cold blood with no remorse at all, barter of personal relationships in the name of politics... basically anything goes - the end justifies the means.

The plot definitely borrows heavily from the Mahabharata with the daughter of a major political figure getting pregnant through a brief affair. In efforts to cover up the scandal, her brother takes the baby and abandons him - the baby grows to be Ajay Devgan whose foster father coincidentally works for his biological mother's family as a driver (Kunti and Karna anyone?) Arjun Rampal and Ranbir play brothers - half brothers of Ajay Devgan (whose character is named Suraj) in the movie who ends up on the opposite side of the political play with their cousin played by Manoj Bajpai. It borrows from The Godfather with the younger son (Ranbir's Samar) who initially is far removed from the family's world of politics and ends up slowly becoming the main player and the brains behind the party despite his older brother being the face of the party. Katrina plays a family friend's daughter Indu, madly in love with Samar. However Samar has a girlfriend in the US and only agrees to marry her to have her father finance their party - her father however wants her to marry the older son because he will be CM. For whatever reason she agrees to the match and marries the older son. It is soon revealed to the family that Samar has a girlfriend and she comes to live with him in India.

As Samar is drawn deeper into the world of lies, cover-ups and deceit that is politics Sarah insists on leaving because she cannot bear to raise her as-yet unborn baby in that environment. Samar decides to leave with her but a bomb sets off (ostensibly set by Suraj and their cousin) and she and the older brother end up dead. Samar is once again required to step up to the task of running the party and the family ends up anointing Indu as the candidate for CM. A lot of blood and gore later, the movie ends with Indu becoming Chief Minister and Samar deciding to go back to the US leaving behind the murky world of politics.

On the whole, the movie was pretty decent but I found it a tad too long and all this without the usual unnecessary songs that usually make up a typical Hindi movie. Some of the scenes in the movie were unintentionally hilarious - there is a scene in the hospital where Samar's uncle ends up having a heart attack and they are trying to use the defibrillator and it is just hilarious - I have watched enough ER and Grey's Anatomy to know at least how the process should look and this movie did it no justice at all. The nurse just barely touched the paddles to him. An added bonus was that I watched the movie with the sub-titles on and the translation was atrocious. I honestly believe that reading the sub-titles is more entertaining than the movie these days.

All the characters do a decent job overall - I liked Katrina Kaif better in this movie than all her movies with Akshay Kumar. Ranbir Kapoor did a good job as usual. It's now expected of him. Arjun Rampal is getting much better as an actor... he is finally leaving behind his modeling days and his non-actor label :) Manoj Bajpai and Ajay Devgan were good too. There was nobody in the main cast that let their characters down.

I would say this is a DVD watch because you can forward through a few scenes rather than sitting through the whole thing. Some scenes are very violent but what is a hindi movie without some masala...

A Tale of 2 movies

And 2 very different movies at that!! The hubby and I clearly have too much time on our hands - we took in 2 movies on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was District 9 and Sunday was Wake Up Sid. Completely different movies and genres but both kind of enjoyable. Wake Up Sid was more enjoyable for me versus District 9 - but let me not get ahead of myself.

We were all set to watch Wake Up Sid on Saturday but we heard mixed reviews so, at the last minute, we decided to switch to District 9 - the hubby has been wanting to see this movie ever since it released so needless to say he was very happy. The movie, we discovered, was running in just 1 theater in the vicinity - in Mountain View - so we get to the Century Cinemas and end up sitting in this row of seats with very very little legroom - and I mean very little - so while I watched the movie, my primary concern was to save my knees from the seat in front of me every time the woman pushed her seat back or stretched. When the movie began, my first thought was that it was very much like 'The Office' - as in the camerawork and mode of shooting were very realistic - like someone was given a video camera and told to go interview a few people. The movie is set in Johannesburg and has a very interesting plot line - it's about aliens stranded here on earth in South Africa, in an area called District 9. Their integration into society is not very smooth and a decision is made to evict them from District 9 and move them into District 10 - away from the city and more confined as such. There are some twists and turns and the person in charge of the eviction ends up empathizing and identifying with the aliens. I'll say no more so as not give away the plot. The movie is clearly an "indie" science fiction movie - it appears to be made on a shoestring budget. I was engaged throughout the movie (while not trying to protect my legs from the afore-mentioned seating situation) and it was a pretty interesting concept - I would recommend it for sci-fi lovers looking for something that is not the run-of-the-mill alien/predator situations.

Come Sunday, we met up with friends for brunch and heard that Wake Up Sid was indeed a decent movie so we decided to check it out for ourselves. The theater was pretty packed (and this is a mainstream theater that predominantly plays western flicks - so it's been very pleasant to note that big desi movies are also making their debut here - we had Kaminey, Love Aaj Kal and What's Your Rashee showing here in recent times) so we were glad we made it in plenty of time to get good seats. The movie was super-enjoyable and a great first-time directorial effort by Aayan Mukherjee - Ranbir Kapoor is yet to make a bad decision as far as movies go after the debacle of Saawariya. The movie belongs to him. Konkona Sen does a great job - am glad the girl is able to showcase her talent in more and more mainstream movies. The movie is about an aimless spoilt brat finding his path in life. While the story-line is not anything new, the treatment of the subject matter is dealt with in a very realistic manner - there are no melodramatic scenes and no over the top acting by anyone in the movie (okay maybe Supriya Pathak's character as the mom and her relationship with Sid was a little too contrived but in the grand scheme of things it can be overlooked). It's refreshing to see new blood in Bollywood that can shoulder a movie and bring it to success - I mean frankly, I was a little tired of seeing the same old faces on the big screen - the Khans and Hrithik are too old to play 20-something 30-something characters so to see this new generation of heroes and heroines making it in the big bad world of Bollywood has been invigorating. The soundtrack is nice - loved iktara especially - good music by Shankar Ehsaan Loy. I would recommend it to people that enjoyed flicks like Dil Chahta Hai, Rock On and Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na.

Now to prepare for my week ahead - as someone once said "Yeh Sunday ke baad Monday kyon hota hai?" (translation for my non-Hindi speaking readers and I'm not sure that I am doing justice to the line and the sentiment it conveys - Why is it that we have a Monday always following Sunday?)