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Presenting super fighters young and old
Give ‘em a shot: ‘New Police Story’ (left) is a typical Jackie Chan movie rippling with energy while (right) ‘Detective Naani’ is a summer entertainment for kids.
Give ‘em a shot: ‘New Police Story’ (left) is a typical Jackie Chan movie rippling with energy while (right) ‘Detective Naani’ is a summer entertainment for kids.
With the fresh supply running dry this summer, Bollywood is now relying on canned products! Gathering dust for 15 long years because of a legal tussle between the producers, good old Sambandh has finally made it to the cinemas. Yes, that is the film’s original title on the Censor certificate.
A change of name hasn’t helped its cause as the expiry date is a bit too evident. The product is relevant only for cine historians, reminding us that once upon a time Pooja Bhatt was svelte and Saif Ali Khan took a long time to come out of his Aashiq Awara garb. In fact, here he plays one as director Lawrence D’Souza twists his Saajan story line and asks Saif to get into the shoes of the character that Salman Khan essayed in Saajan.
Saif plays a rich boy whose full-time job is flirtation. His trusted friend (Atul Agnihotri) finds a mate (Pooja Bhatt) for him. When he truly falls in love, he discovers the good friend is not all that good and is actually out to avenge his flirtatious past.
Some peppy numbers by the redoubtable Nadeem-Shravan in the golden voice of the ’90s, Kumar Sanu, do remind us what many of us were hooked to those days but the plot is just too thin to resuscitate interest. In mainstream Bollywood cinema, a playboy hero always has a heart of gold and filmmakers try to glorify that image in the first half and in the climax cover it up as the mistakes of growing up days. Wonder if our heroines ever get that long a rope!
The shot patterns are dated. So is the dialogue. Haven’t we come a long way from those clichéd “B eti to paraya dhan hoti hai….”, “D ost main tere liye jaan de doonga….” days? Days when a piano song in virtually every Bombay movie was a must and hills a favourite haunt to shoot love stories!
Time is a great healer, but in this case it reveals more than it hides. With no mystery element left, it brings out the severe limitations of Pooja and Atul in front of the camera. Interestingly, both now function from behind the scenes. In the case of Saif it’s the other way round. He wasn’t a bad actor more than a decade back. It is just he has got a better frame – has acquired that wow-factor – now to support his acting prowess.
DETECTIVE NAANI (Spice, Noida, and other theatres)English language may not differentiate between grandmothers but Indian languages do. For we know there is something that sets a Naani apart from a Daadi. The liberties that we could take with our Naani, we could never imagine our Daadi to give us that much autonomy! One might be wrong, but the word Naani itself has a ring of smartness about it.
Here is one such super-active Naani who reads English newspapers, baby sits her grandchildren and takes the dog to the park. Nothing so unusual really, but things take a turn when she sees a tense child peeping out of a window in the neighbourhood. Next night she hears a sound and then sees a dead body. The old lady shares her apprehension with the neighbours but no one takes her seriously. She goes to the police but they also give her a cold shoulder. Ultimately she finds support in her grandchildren, some teenage neighbours and an old friend whose binoculars come in handy.
With their help she sets out on her own investigation in such a meticulous manner that even the police get shocked. The inspector who was showing interest in the case just because of her divorced daughter now seriously picks the threads that N aani has discovered. It turns out to be a racket where kids are kidnapped and sold to foreigners.
Director Romilla Mukherjee’s film lacks finesse and loses focus when a teenage love story begins to disrupt the main plot but overall her script has enough twists and turns to hold the kids’ interest.
And the subtext that if you keep your eyes closed to what is happening in your neighbourhood the next number could be yours does ring a bell. You want to know how the clever Naani hoodwinks the hard-core gangsters. Her performers are competent, particularly Ava Mukherjee, a common face in advertisements, as Naani, and Zain Khan as her enterprising grandson.
Keep the expectations low and you have an entertaining break here this weekend, something kids demand almost every other day during holidays.
NEW POLICE STORY (Delite, Delhi, and other theatres)Jackie Chan is one constant which time will find hard to deceive. The aging action star continues to hold his core constituency. His films seldom appeal to the mind but his limitless energy draws you every time he takes stage. Here he is at it again – sliding down the skyscrapers holding burning ropes and of course his trademark karate kicks and lightning quick fist fights.
He does it all with the ease of a master for whom age is just a silly number. When he is around, you never doubt the legitimacy of a stunt, howsoever improbable it might appear.
Playing a police officer all over again in the fifth instalment of the long-running Police Story series, he has an interesting fight at hand this time. He is up against a group of rich, rebellious youth. For them every heist is a game and the police an unwanted obstacle. In fact, for every policeman a member of the group kills, the individual wins points which could be cashed! Chan commits the mistake of taking the spoilt kids as easy opposition and loses some of his trusted lieutenants when he enters their hideout.
Chan bounces back with the support of Nicholas Tse, who has his own axe to grind with the teen gang, and after some well-conceived action sequences manages to nail the young opponents down.
Director Benny Chan keeps us on the edge even when we are aware of the ultimate outcome.
It starts as a typical cat-and-mouse game but when the enemy is shrewd and always on the ball, you do want to see its elimination. There is clever use of kid stuff in the fast-paced fight sequences. The story behind the defiant nature of the youth is sketchy but gives a perspective to the action bonanza.
Go for it, it is rippling with energy.
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