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Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Blockbuster of the year
This military science fiction shooter draws key audio-visual motifs from a battery of established grand-daddies in a variety of genres: fantasy (LOTR), military (Saving Private Ryan's shock-and-awe beach bombing and Full Metal Jacket's bunker vernacular and the self-aware-hat-doffing All-Metal exoskeletons), body-moulded extended prosthetic body suit and tentacled mimic aliens (obviously Michael Bay's Transformers) and time- travel fatigue (Groundhog Day and more recently, Source Code) and the resultant mash-up still manages to surprise and entertain for its runtime because of immaculate casting and pincer-sharp focus of slickly shot screenplay.
The trajectory of the main protagonist, a clumsy, blood-fearing military man who's propelled slowly into purposeful action hero really makes the viewer invested in the film at a deeper level. Tom Cruise does not get a note wrong and imbibes even the more difficult fringes of this new action-hero-persona like humour, irony, understated romance and most importantly the fatigue from the incessant time travel completely and makes Cage stand out. The film's other joy is that being designed in the post-feminist set-up, the other gender gets as much ballast as the hero. The heroine (Emily Blunt, fierce!) has gone through everything our hero is going through in front of us. She has entered into a realm of legend and with this bumbling potentially-macho disoriented male entering the scene, it's up to her to train him to a level of ability that makes him safe to be towed along in the final reckoning.
There are close to 200 back-and-forth trips, and with three of them patiently ran-through in the terrific opening, the screenplay milks the rest for fatigue-filled allusions, for slapstick and humour from knowledge and for gravitas and pathos of prescience and pre-sentiment with immaculate ease.
For the final act, we are given rest from the incessant creases of time- travel and launch into a linear blast-it-all resolution. My one gripe is that this supremely well-executed film could have had more transparent politics. It uses the military, engages with the aliens in militaristic fashion, name-drops countries like Britain, France, Russia and China, places the mega-ton rotating Sauron's eye-like "Omega" mother time- setter under the Louvre, mentions THE resistance-free march of Russians and Chinese across the European sub-continent aided by UK and yet, no parallel between this created and the real geo-political universe could be convincingly drawn.
While appreciating and delving into the masterpieces at the Louvre is a sort of time-travel for all viewers, but aliens making it their hub and producing planet-decimating, time-manipulating mimics from beneath this supremely visible man-made landmark seems to be an uncertain choice with unnecessary temporal detail. Also, the ultimate resolution rather than grounded in pure science fiction, like Source Code, is more at home in hokey fantasy that relegated the whole product into fantasy-nerd gamer- boy territory. Which is a pity, because Liman with his team do hold your attention better than any other blockbuster this year. Well worth a watch!
Gulaab Gang (2014)
A must watch
Nothing like a screen-rippingly pitch-perfect morality tale. Soumik sen casts female protagonists: a vigilante group leader Rajjo and a power-hungry politician Sumitra Devi, as the horn-locking leads and delivers a sucker punch. That it has female leads is sensational only when seen in a narrow context of the stars playing them but their character's causes, aspirations and life-paths are more a product of their personalities. Rajjo's fight for social justice and education is as gender independent as Sumitra's power-trip. It's coincidental that Rajjo's fight rehabilitates more women than men as she is working within a society that heaps double the disadvantages on the females. Just like it's coincidental that Sumitra finds herself working within male-dominated party-offices. Not once did I have to sit through lectures against another gender, and that is the film's first victory. The fight here, for justice and Enlightenment of masses goes beyond gender, as it should be.
That Soumik Sen is able to then drop the grid of a massy entertainer on this wonderful post female-empowerment battle of wits and sickles is remarkable. Never does this grid reduce or trivialise the seriousness of the underlying issue, but only scales up the action and renders the vigilante group more intimidating than your standard ground-bound lathi fight. The other frill, the melodic song-breaks, barely last a minute before melting into the background score as the incident-heavy plot progresses. The choreography feels natural and stemming from the camaraderie and everyday work these bunch of self-sufficient ashramites of Rajjo indulge in. There are some other directorial decisions which are masterful: the opening cartoon montage literally spells out the bones of the "story". The point of this movie is both enjoying the how we then see the bones being filled with flesh and blood of this aptly located, arrestingly colour-coded human saga and the message corked within it.
Bolstered by a terrific supporting ensemble (Divya Jagdale, Priyanka Bose, a mellow Tannishta Chatterjee, and all the guys) the two leads stand tall and deliver the goods like only they can. Juhi Chawla, cast against type transforms herself into the vile Sumitra Devi, a person who has fashioned herself as the ultimate political scion. Her self-satisfied smug grin at any opportunity to brow-beat and manipulate is as compelling to watch as her intolerance for Rajjo's popularity. Rajjo brings out the worst in her, to the point that she's compelled to smuggle arms for the ultimate face-off and throw her gloved-hand approach she was found carping about for much her screen time. It's a scene seeing her go down and kudos to the director to build her up to be an intimidating adversary with an unpredictable arsenal of "moves".
Finally, there is Dixit. Being a hardcore fan, I was left underwhelmed by how emotionally contained and restrained her last two screen characters, in Aaja Nachle and Dedh Ishqiya were. She was beguiling in both, but how I ached to see her bare her fangs a bit. She is again a single crusader here, but Sen lets her rip. She nails those dialogues in close-ups, absolutely convinces in action sequences (who wants to watch a CGI overloaded 300 sequel when you see some awesome, well contextualised wire-fights right here!) but what still haunts me, much after the screening's finished, is how she had completely internalised Rajjo's crusade for education. There is this scene where the masterful camera comes down on her as she reads the approval of the funds and the way she hugs that piece of paper, it just summed everything. Another scene sees the camera slowly moving to her hunched with unwiped tears gleaming on her face and an old man sitting with her. This is after a second murder of one of her adopted girls. She packs in incredible amounts of resilience and is a beautiful amalgamation of the likes of Gandhiji, Tolstoy and the real-life Sampat Pal.
In a governance-less land, this story about the reluctant, noble vigilantes with mainstream frills gets under your skin with Dixit as the heart and soul. While self-serious, it never sags, and it's got songs, action and comedy as welcome relief.
Finally it's beautiful to see the industrious and the substance-filled real heroes of the world being championed, than the Dons, Gundays, Rowdy rathores, Rajkumars etc that has become the vogue of late. I sat through the end credits silently cheering for those incredible people who bettered not just their lives, but the world around them. It all starts with education.