Mission Istanbul Review

Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Sunil Shetty, Zayed Khan, Vivek Oberoi, Shabbir Ahluwalia, Shreya Saran, Nikitin Dheer
Director: Apoorva Lakhia

One of India's most respected journalists, Vikas Sagar (Zayed Khan) receives an offer he cannot refuse from Owais Hussain (Sunil Shetty).

Owais is the head of an Istanbul television news channel. He offers Vikas a very high salary package with all the frills if he accepts a position within his company.

For Vikas, this offer couldn't have come at a better time. He is going through a messy divorce with his wife Anjali (Shriya Saran) and needs to get away from the stress of it all.

So Vikas accepts Hussain's offer whole-heartedly. But little does he know that one decision will change his life forever.

Well settled into his new role, he decides to voice his plans to quit the channel and move on to newer pastures.

But to his surprise, he learns from the Turkish commando, Rizwan Khan (Vivek Oberoi), on how others who quit the television channel got mysteriously killed because they knew too much.

So will this journalist be able to survive the onslaught where others have fallen prey?

Ek The Power Of One Preview

Cast: Bobby Deol, Chunky Pandey, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Nana Patekar, Shreya Saran
Director: Sangeeth Sivan

Nandu (Bobby Deol) is an assassin by profession. Somehow he gets wrongly accused of a politician's murder.

Whilst on the run from the police, he boards a train where he meets Shehar (Pradeep).

Shehar is returning home for the first time after 14 years.

As they converse, Nandu gets to know all about his joint family and the imminent wedding of Shehar's cousin. This is the main reason he is going home for.

The twist comes when the police catches up with Nandu on the train. In the shootout that follows, Shehar accidentally dies.

Deeply shocked by the incident, Nandu goes to Shehar's family home to return his belongings to his grandfather and also break the news of his grandson's death.

But when Nandu arrives at Shehar's family home, he is mistaken for Shehar himself.

With no time to explain what had happened, the family members get him involved with the wedding preparations and celebrations.

Preet (Shriya Saran), the daughter of a family friend becomes fascinated by Nandu. In no time she falls in love with him.

Meanwhile, police inspector Rane (Nana Patekar), is given the responsibility of tracking down the killer and he is close on Nandu's trail.

Will Nandu be able to come out of the crisis unscathed? Will the family come to know about his real identity? What would be the fate of Nandu and Preet's love story? And who is actually the real killer?

Ek - The Power Of One is a Bollywood Masala movie full of family emotions and suspense starring Sunny Deol in the lead role.

Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra, Jaya Bachchan, Kay Kay Menon
Director: Goldie Behl

Drona is a compelling modern tale of one man's journey through the labyrinths of mystic myths and legendary legacies.

As good and evil clash in this contemporary fantasy fable, a fascinating journey unfolds into a world of mythical heroes and malicious magicians with cunning curses.

It is a world, where spells can turn flesh to cold stone.

It is a world full of thrills, magic and adventures.

Directed by Goldie Behl, Drona introduces yet another superhero onto the Bollywood celluloid - Abhishek Bachchan.

According to reports, Drona is going to be even bigger and better in terms of special effects compared with Rakesh Roshan's Krrish.

Dhoom Dhadakka Review

Starring Sammir Dattani, Shama Sikandar, Shaad Randhawa, Arati Chabria, Anupam Khe, Satish Kaushik, Gulshan Grover
Rating: super-atrocious

By the time Sammir Dattani and Shaad Randhawa get into drag, this criminally unfunny comedy has dragged on way past 'bad'-time.

Maybe it's in the air. Everyone uniformly hams through this acutely painful piece of cinematic travesty.

There's so much screaming and ranting across the length and breadth of this outrageous ode to idiocy that you wonder if the producer-director intended to provide earplugs for all those bravehearts who would sit to the end of this slapdash hectic and haphazard comedy of terrors.

No earplugs, what we get are shrill banshee ring-tones of risqué ragas sung at a ear-splitting pitch, and phallic jokes about not a single danda in the cellphone.

Chee chee.

If lately you've been wondering where the Bollywood comedy has been heading here's the answer.

Comedies can't get any baser or brainless than Dhoom Dadakka. The gags make you gag. The items and innuendoes are embarrassing not because they TRY so hard to be vulgar but because they fail miserably to be sexy.

Vulgarity in this comedy of disembodied context depends completely on how many of the characters are crammed in one line of vision in every scene. They all stand making faces and gesticulating as though trying to attract the lifeguard's attention from a sinking boat.

The double meanings flow in unstoppered abundance mostly from the moist painted trembling lips of Deepshikha who keeps referring to the size of 'bada' things every time she spots a male member of the cast in her vicinity.

Yup, as one character winks, size does matter.

Dhoom Dadakka is a jumbo-sized non-event.

Ha ha ho ho. Before you fall of your creaky bed in comic splendour, let's move on to the main 'coarse' in this pickled over-spiced thaali in a hotel that's probably named Romp Teri Giggle Maili..

The two guys, Sammir Dattani and Shaad Randhawa grimace and giggle, roll their eyes and suck in their cheeks to indicate lies buried too deep for jeers.

Add two girls (Chabria and Sikandar) trying so hard to be glamorous it's pathetic, and you get a brew that's more eek than greek.

The characterizations take the cult of one-upmanship down to the level of a nukkad nautanki, what with every actor getting lost in the confusion of their mistaken identities.

In no time at all, the plot suffers from an identity crisis.

Director Shashi Ranjan who earlier made us laugh with his supposedly serious study of marital stress in Dobara, doesn't know whether to indulge tongue-in-cheek comedy of the Hrishikesh Mukherjee variety (Ab ke sajan sawan mein aal lagey aisi filmon mein) or just do the out-and-out no -fools-stops comedy of the David Dhawan-Anees Bazmi variety.

Eventually the confusions that dominate the plot overpower every sense of aesthetic decency.

In the end-game where the entire cast runs around an amusement part looking for amusement, the two heroes get into drag to tease laughter out of an audience that's long since ceased to be entertained or amused and is down to feeling utterly embrassed on behalf of the cast and crew of this weird brew.

In one chase sequence Shaad Randhawa pees copiously on a street of Bangkok.

You get jailed for dirtying the streets of Bangkok. Alas, there are no laws for desecrating the rules of aesthetics in cinema.

Jimmy Movie Review

By Subhash K Jha

Staring Mimoh Chakbraborty, Vivana, Zulfi Syed
Directed by Raj N Sippy
Rating: *

"Do you think I'm a rejected man?" the villain asks repeatedly after his true intentions are exposed at the end of this tediously-assembled pastiche of the crude bad and the ugly.

Don't know about the poor battered psycho who controrts his face like his pants were just bitten off by a colony of ants. But this film sure looks like a collage of rejected footage from a series of canned films that filmmakers made and forgot to go back to.

The characters don't talk in Jimmy, they scream dialogues which we thought had died with Pramod Chakravrty. And matching their screechy decibel of dialogue is the sound of cars skidding screeching and groaning in and out of the frames with the misinformed celerity of a noisy baraat which has lost its way to the bride's home.

Dulhan ache rot ki? You bet! Jimmy takes us into the kingdom of the dangerously damned. And none as damned as the audience which sits to the end to watch Mithun-da's boy dance on glass, in a manner of slipping.

Mimoh doesn't dance, he glides. He doesn't moonwalk, he trapezes through a field of corrupted corn planted by a screenwriter whose mind seems to have stopped working two decades ago.

How else do we explain the crass and clamorous crowd of crippling clichés, like the over-painted weepy mother, the over-painted giggly girlfriend, her over-panting suitor, the hero's rich friend (Zulfi Zayed, in the think-less part), the gaggles of villains schemers screamers and good samaritans all crammed in one line of strained vision which recalls the worst moments of television from the time when Doordarshan ruled the roost.

Mithun Chakraborty's son Mimoh gets a nightmare launch worthy of being canned for good. What were the people behind this film thinking when they decided to put together a film so tacky and tattered at the edges it makes a mockery of poor Mimoh's star aspirations.

Director Raj N Sippy made some engaging wannabe-Hollywood flicks in the 1970s and 80s, all cleverly adapted from American films but never slipshod.

Ironically Jimmy rips off Hindi films from the 1970s including Mithun-da's gyratory Jimmy-hijinks like Disco Dancer and the Bachchan starrer Majboor.

All in vain. The plot is propelled by gallery of grotesque caricatures.

This is cinema at its worst. Gimmicky and overblown with no hope for escape because you want to watch Mithun's boy trying to make his way out of this film with no exits.

Only Rahul Dev seems to blessed with a twist of sobriety in a film that equates outdated mayhem with pavement delights.

Bhootnath Review

Casts: Amitabh Bachchan, Juhi Chawla, Aman Siddiqui, Priyanshu Chatterjee, Satish Shah, Rajpal Yadav
Guest appearance: Shahrukh Khan, Nouhid Sairesi, Ashish Chowdhury, Neena Kulkarni
Music: Vishal Shekhar, Salim Sulaiman
Lyrics: Javed Akhtar
Producer: Ravi Chopra
Director-Writer: Vivek Sharma
Ratings: **1/2

Nath Villa. Night. A couple enters the villa with an intention of spending the night. But unfortunate for them, it’s the house where Kailash Nath (Amitabh Bachchan), oops, the spirit of Kailash Nath enjoys his days and nights in his airy appearance. Predictably enough, the couple, intimidated with Kailash, zooms away from the house.

Next incident. Mr. Sharma (Shah Rukh Khan), a marine driver by profession, comes to Kailash’s den, with his family. He leaves his family behind at the Nath Villa and plods back to join his job.

While residing in the Nath Villa, Mr. Sharma’s wife Anjali (Juhi Chawla) and son Banku (Aman Siddiqui) experiences strange incidents. In the mean time Banku befriends the spirit of Kailash Nath and names him as “Bhootnath”.

Banku’s presence eliminates all the hazardous factors that polluted Bhootnath’s mind against human beings. One day, Anjali comes to know about Bhootnath being the angel in Banku’s life.

At the same time Anjali comes to know from Bhootnath about the painful incident that made him a spirit. So, to let Bhootnath’s spirit free from the bondage with the earth, Sharma family arranges for a shradh, a Hindu tradition that Bhootnath’s son, Priyanshu Chatterjee, avoided in past.

Ultimately, it’s through Banku that Bhootnath gets his desired freedom from the earthly bondage.

But it’s because of Banku’s love for Bhootnath that the amicable ghost leaves Banku with an option of appearing in front of Banku whenever he wishes from the core of his heart.

Even god changes his mind for the sake of true and honest love. This film is not about the triumph of a child but the success of true love and faith.

It’s the second time where Amitabh is posing as a ghost and his look in “Bhootnath”, though unintentionally, reminds of his look of Gabbar Singh in “Ram Gopal Verma Ki Aag”. If that is some bad news, the good part is that his acting always sweeps away the feeling of looking alike.

At the same time his intimidated being with the presence of his son lets audience recap his character in “Baghban”.

Aman Siddiqui has depicted Banku’s character very well. Juhi Chawla and Shah Rukh’s couple still reminds the same freshness that they show in their very first film.

Writer-director Vivek Sharma has proved his prowess in his

job. His beautifully mingled presentation of entertainment and spirit has started a new vogue in Bollywood. If “Bhootnath” is not so well a children film as “Taare Zamin Par” was, it definitely helps spending few hours in the air conditioned theaters while summer is blazing outside.

At last, if not the least, children may well accept the line of Amitabh saying, “Zindegi me jadoo nehi, mehnat se safalta pai jaati hai” (success is all about hard work, not magic). Bingo Bhootnath! - Rajnee Gupta

Jannat Movie Review

Cast: Emran Hashmi, Sonal Chauhan, Samir Kochar, Javed Shaikh, Vishal Malhotra
Director: Kunal Deshmukh
Ratings: ***

More, more, more...The motto of motorised materialism seems to have overtaken contemporary life. Everyone wants the good things in life in the shortest time possible. The acquisitive spirit has seldom been defined with such economy of storytelling as in "Jannat".

Not surprisingly, a lot of Mahesh Bhatt's latest exposition on the excesses of materialism is shot in shopping malls, expensive restaurants and posh stadiums where money flows like unadulterated honey.

And when our hero sees the love of his life staring at a diamond ring he walks into the showroom and breaks the display window.

Get what you want by force and forget those homilies that papa preached at the dinner table about the virtues of honesty. "Honest money means hard work and little reward," says a wry character in "Jannat". He's obviously not read Ayn Rand.

Sanjay Masoom's scathing dialogues scamper across the film's lush skyline to create a language of wannabes who would stop at nothing to get that new villa on the Gold Coast.

Let's then applaud one more moral fable from Bhatt's sensible stable.

"Jannat" tells us to waste not, want 'nought'...By all means covet the zeroes on that pay cheque. But don't forget that if you run after the zeroes your life ends up in the zero zone.

Forty years ago in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's "Satyakam" Dharmendra had refused to succumb to all the temptations of materialism that were strewn in his path to salvation. Lying dying of cancer, he's asked by his wife: "Finally what do you have to say about your life of integrity?"

"I've lived," Dharmendra says at the end of "Satyakam".

Can Emran Hashmi (playing the small-time wheeler dealer who turns into a cricket match-fixer, criminal and moral transgressor) turn around before his gruesome death to say he has lived?

Yes, Arjun (Emran) has loved. At heart "Jannat" is a dark tragic love story. While the girl's innocence and the man's corruptible countenance resembles "Kalyug", the whole dilemma of the beloved being instrumental in destroying the criminal hero echoes "Gangster".

Both "Kalyug" and "Gangster" were superior in content and treatment.

Debutant director Kunal Deshmukh cannot escape the clichés on existentialism that have come to surround Bhatt's cinema...the morally conflicted Shakespeare-meets-James Hadley Chase hero, the independent-minded strong and value-based heroine, the hero's trusted and loyal friend (Purab Kohli in "Woh Lamhe", Shaad Randhawa in "Awaarapan", and now Vishal Malhotra), the ideologue father whose principles are held up to ridicule until the hero discovers the hard way that dad's remedies are the best to deal with ethical ambivalence.

These lingering leitmotifs get a renewed, if not luminous, life in every Bhatt production. But "Jannat" lacks the resonance and staying power of some of Bhatt's earlier films about crime and punishment from "Naam" to "Gangster".

Cleverly and cautiously Deshmukh's film brings in the cricket element, which has audiences ignoring the pitfalls of rejuvenating Bhatt's age-old iconoclasm.

The stock footage of real-life cricket matches are used well and sparingly in the plot. The stress, as ever in Bhatt's saga of our stressful times, is on the clashing colliding crisscross of human relationships.

Emran's father's sequence in his son's luxurious bathroom where he comments on the basket of soaps is a whammer.

But the wheeling dealing in the greenroom and clubs with cricketers of indeterminate nationality behaving like debauched goblins smacks of amteurishness. The murder of the Australian coach turns the Bob Woolmer scandal into a climactic add-on. May his soul rest in peace.

But what stays is the protagonist's passion for money as opposed to his love for Zoya (Sonal Chauhan). The end-game where the engagement ring is juxtaposed against the gun is arresting in more ways than one.

While Emran interprets the over-reaching get-rich-quick schemer's part with a native cunning, one misses that suave and smooth transitions in the character that perhaps a Naseeruddin Shah or even a Shahid Kapoor would bring on the table.

But Emran is charming enough to let the protagonist's journey from a chawl to Cape Town look interesting. He's constantly getting author-backed roles of the angst-ridden social outcast (a garage-sale version of Amitabh Bachchan) which he plays with a fair amount of sensitivity.

Debutant Sonal has much more to do than be the decorative doll she seems equipped to be.

She's the weakest link in the powerplay where the politics of the playing field is extended to an engrossing exposition of greed atonement.

Some of the supporting cast, especially Jawed Shaikh as the cricketing don and Abhimanyu as his silent henchman, come to grips with their characters better than you would expect in a film that has scant space for anyone except the man who would be king.