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Reviews
The Murderer: Hamilton Palace (2011)
The epitome of cringe content.
This movie is so bad, it's borderline good! A thriller that ends up giving you more laughs than suspense and thrill. If you're somebody who loves watching cringe content for entertainment then this is your jam!
The main character 'Rocky' played by Mimoh Chakraborty is only short of being a Demigod of sorts. He is a superstar singer, guitarist, dancer, has physics defying superhuman level fighting abilities and every single girl around can't help but check him out with lustful eyes. To be fair however, this is true for most mainstream Bollywood 'heroes'. Nevertheless, 'Rocky' seems to be one better than all the other heroes of Bollywood. Even though it is shown that Rocky is a womaniser who doesn't spare the chance to flirt with every girl he sees, whenever a girl tries to get physical with him, he immediately shies away saying "I don't like all this". Rather hilarious to watch.
The acting by most of the cast members is so horrid, it's comical. A bizarre intro that is basically a slideshow of all the different wonders of the world with some irrelevant narration that eventually has got nothing to do with the movie itself, a script that is pleasantly cringeworthy and the props department that thinks they can pass off a cricket sized ball as a golf ball, an obvious mannequin as a dead body, so on and so forth, add all the more entertainment to the package.
Although the release year of the movie shows 2011, the cinematography, sets, cars and props used in the movie make it seem a little older than that. Probably closer to the early to mid 2000's. The movie starts off with a scene set in August 2006 which makes me wonder if the movie was actually shot back in 2005-06 and only released much later in 2011 because it definitely has more of a 2005 vibe than a 2011 one as mentioned. In fact, I wonder why the opening scene displayed a date (15th August 2006) in the first place because dates seems to have absolutely no relevance to the plot of the film whatsoever.
All in all, if you're somebody who loves watching those cringeworthy tik tok videos and are looking for 2 hours of entertainment without having to pay too much attention or tax your brain then add this movie to your watchlist without giving it a second thought.
Dhamaka (2021)
A thriller with suspence that fades away as the movie progresses. Mediocre acting. A reimagined 'A Wednesday' of sorts; not in a good way.
A distraught common man who feels wronged by the government and the system, holds the city to ransom against the threat of detonating bombs. Plotline sounds familiar? Well that's because we've watched the same basic plot 13 years ago in 'A Wednesday'. Although this movie is supposed to be a remake of the South Korean movie 'Terror Live', you definitely see the parallels it shares with 'A Wednesday'. Only, this one's comparatively over-the-top as the terrorist/caller actually goes ahead and detonates a bunch of bombs and also, this one has the added element of the corruption and immorality of the media playing the mediator between the distraught common man and the corrupt government/system.
The plot line of the movie starts off fairly good and pulls you in. However, as the story progresses, the suspence sort of fades away as everything starts becoming very predictable. I also personally felt that the identity of the perpetrator becomes fairly obvious two thirds of the way into the movie, much before the movie itself makes the 'big reveal' at the end. To add to it, the plot line was ridden with quite a few plot holes that I won't get into as I'd like to keep this review spoiler-free.
The acting ranges from average all the way down to horrendous. The only grounded performance in the whole movie in my humble opinion was delivered by Vikas Kumar in his short appearance as the Anti-Terrosism officer Praveen Kamath. Kartik Aaryan's performance as reporter Arjun Pathak was mediocre at best; very animated at times where the scene wasn't really asking for it which hampered the believability of the character. Amruta Subhash playing Arjun's boss and Vishwajeet Pradhan playing the politician were both quite frankly horrid; both their expressions and dialogue delivery over-exaggerated most of the time which made it painful to watch.
The CGI (which the movie has quite a bit of) ranges from above average in some scenes to very good in the others, considering this is a Bollywood movie.
Overall, I'd say this movie is a decent watch if you have time to kill. It's certainly not something you'd want to add to your bucketlist of must watch movies. Though the suspence in this thriller is not anything you'd write home about, it does have enough life to see you through till the end.
Nizhal (2021)
A treat for thriller enthusiasts.
The plotline of this thriller is a rather unconventional one; but very enjoyably so. As the movie progresses, the plot thickens with constant twists and turns that'll keep you gripped and guessing till the very end. Since the movie builds up a good amount of suspense, I was worried that the climax of the movie will fail to deliver like most movies that start off strong and end flat. But to my surprise, the climax was rather satisfactory, albeit slightly over the top (no pun intended). On close scrutiny, you'll start noticing that a lot of the nuances in the plotline seem to very conveniently fall in place; however if you choose to overlook these minor practicality issues (which you should in my humble opinion), you are sure to enjoy this oddball thriller. Most of the cast put up a pretty decent performance; however, the performances of Kunchacko Boban as John Baby and Rony David as Rajan were truly exceptional and stood out from the rest. To add to that, great cinematography (albeit with average CGI), great sound design, great direction and a very good pace make this movie a definite WATCH.