'D-Day' Movie Review

‘D-Day’ Movie Review- Tanmay Dubey

 

Starring :- Rishi Kapoor, Irrfan, Arjun Rampal, Huma Kureshi, Shruti Hassan

Director:- Nikhil Advani

 

Last week our hearts fell for a true story (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag) and this week our hearts will fall for a story that we so wish to be true!

A huge wedding reception is thrown in a lavish 5 start hotel in Pakistan, it’s the marriage between the son of ‘you know who’ or India’s terrorist No. 1 with Pakistan’s famous ex-cricketer’s daughter. The man also known as Bhai is responsible for the infamous Mumbai blasts and other series of terror attacks in India. He faces an assassination attempt, the assassins are four in number, but who are they? Are they Indian RAW agents? Is this operation sanctioned by Indian Government? Will they succeed in their mission? Or embrace an unknown death.

      Director Nikhil Advani brings a very taut, extremely well narrated and a very hollywoodishly (what a fresh change from his past films!) treated story of four Indian agents who go to Pakistan for a counter attack on Bhai. These characters are more humane than purely heroic. They are not dead on emotions and not only are they super heroic in nature; they breathe pain and fight their respective internal dilemmas while on duty. They cry for their loved ones and take revenge. But the thing which drives them is the ‘love for their country’. Their courage is the outcome of victory over their weaknesses.

      The film stands out in performance of the cast, be it ever superb Irrfan, vastly improving Huma Khan, Arjun Rampal as a dude with death staring out of his eyes , Shruti Hassan as a vulnerable prostitute and Mr. Rishi Kapoor as ‘you know who’. The plot is very good (although it has its loopholes) but overall it manages to hook the audience with brilliance in narrative which is also supported very well by good cinematography. Sufi songs like Damadaum, Alvida and Murshid khele holi has great depth in them and you tap the foot every time they are played. 

The film is well researched in the way spies talk to each other and send messages. The production values of the film might not be brilliant but this film is a mix of character driven and plot driven than anything else.

Kudos to Nikhil Advani for bringing a very fresh and new concept in Bollywood.

Enjoy the espionage!!

 

Score Stack Up:-

+ ive:-  Good Music, good story and brilliant performances.

-  ive:-  Slight low on comic offering.

 

 

Box Office, Paisa Vasool Rating:- 3 out of 5

Tanmay's Rating : 3.1 out of 5

 

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Scores Classifications- 

(5)  Very Good, Must Watch 

(4)   Good, Should Watch 

(3)   Not Bad;

(2)  One Time Watch; 

(1)  On your own risk;  

 

   

‘Pacific Rim’ Review- Tanmay Dubey

 

 

Starring:- Charlie Hunnam, Edris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Dey

Director:-  Gullermo del Toro

 

It’s the 2020s, and the Earth is under attack by Kaiju, colossal monsters (cross bred between a dinosaur and a creature two times of Godzilla!) they have emerged from a portal on the ocean floor. To combat the monsters, humanity unites to create the Jaegers: gigantic humanoid machines (a cross bread of ‘Transformers’ and director’s imagination reportedly from Francisco Goya’s famous painting The Colossus,) each controlled by two pilots whose minds are joined by a neural bridge. There is an ongoing war between humanity and these gigantic monsters. The story follows Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), a washed-up Jaeger pilot called out of retirement and teamed with rookie pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kukichi) in a last-ditch effort to defeat the Kaiju.

                   What begins then is a bang-bang, steel hammering into skull, story with one of the most stunning visuals in the recent past from Hollywood. While fighting the kaiju, humans realize that they are mutating and learning the tricks of the trade. Two crazy scientists then comes up with a bingo idea where the nuclear weapon has to be positioned at the center of the Kaiju world and the bridge from where they travel to Earth will be broken. (Heard this before?).

              While the movie does not offer anything new from a pure concept point of view-I mean how many times have you seen in the doomsday movies- Earth is battling for its survival and the entire humanity teams up to fight this evil and comes out victorious  but what it does offer is mind boggling action scenes. The director after reportedly pumping in a whopping 190 million US dollar has treated Pacific Rim as an earnest, colorful adventure story, with an incredibly airy and light feel, in contrast to the super-brooding, super-dark, cynical movie. The director has focused on big, beautiful, sophisticated visuals and action that would satisfy an adult audience and kids similarly. 

 

^{ENJOY  THE SOUND OF IRON BREAKING INTO SKULL ……..}

 

Score Stack Up:-

+ ive:-  Great Action and Visuals, Good Screenplay.

-  ive:-  may get a feeling that one has seen this scenario before.

 

Box Office, Paisa Vasool Rating:- 3 out of 5

Tanmay's Rating : 3 out of 5

 

 

 

 

Scores Classifications- 

(5)  Very Good, Must Watch 

(4)   Good, Should Watch 

(3)   Not Bad;

(2)  One Time Watch; 

(1)  On your own risk;  

 

‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag Review- Tanmay Dubey

 

Starring :- Farhan Akhtar, Sonam Kapoor, Pawan Malhotra, Divya Dutta

Director:- Rakesh Omprakah Mehra

 

Once upon a time there was a Sikh, who did not used to run but fly. He was ‘The Flying Sikh’. He made his country proud, not only once but in number of occasions like Olympics, Asian games, Common Wealth Games and was a proud national record holder. But his share of success does not came just like that, he had his share of failures too, his battles with demons of past life, his hard work, dedication and his tapasya  to reach his aim.

            Rakesh Omprakash Mehra and Farhan Akhtar do a brilliant and near flawless job of  recreating the biopic of Milkha Singh. The challenge while making such a film is that the director do not have the leverage of creating larger than life problems and then using cinematic freedom to make the hero come out of that. The story teller has to be within boundaries of the real life incidents and a lot depends on the performance, screenplay, cinematography, ROM gets full marks for successfully connecting different bogies in this train.

         The story in the film flows like a quite river tracing the present life of now world famous Milkha singh who refuses to go to Pakistan as he fears that his feet would freeze facing the ghosts of his past when during the partition his entire family was massacred. In between, as the river flows it has some ‘rapids’ too where the flashes from his past life is shown. Some would object to the length of the film but guess every scene be it, during his childhood, drinking ghee while doing pushups , song and dance in Australia, his wins in different runs across the world was needed to sketch the depth of the character of Milkha Singh, the kind of person he was, who would take any challenge.

      The cinematography is brilliant too, the slow-motion scenes during his runs, camera hovering on small details like the blood stained patti flowing during run,  camera focusing on barbed wire when the Indian contingent enters Pakistan, Scene involving Farhan’s transformation transpires great cinematic thematic.

      Lastly an amazing and out of the skin performance by Farhan Akhtar getting into the character; The guy deserves standing ovation. Its very good to see Bollywood relying more and more on telling the real life stories than formula ridden masala pot boilers. The song ‘launda’ is too good and one falls for the cuteness of Farhan. The support cast of Divya Dutta, Pawan Malhotra is very good. Baddie prakashraaj has a good role. ‘Papa’ Yograaj singh makes his debut in mainstream hindi cinema and is impressive. The lady love played by Sonam kapoor does not have much to do.

Loved the part where the director Rakesh Omprakash Mehra turns up as a pilot and says I am the pilot who is driving the plane J ! (so very true!) Songs like Koyla Kaala and Bhaag Milkha are great too.  

All in all this is a great weekend dose of adrenaline! Enjoy the run J !

 

Score Stack Up:-

+ ive:-  Good Screenplay and tremendous performances

-  ive:-  Little slow


Tanmay's Rating : 4 out of 5

 

 

Scores Classifications- 

(5)  Very Good, Must Watch 

(4)   Good, Should Watch 

(3)   Not Bad;

(2)  One Time Watch; 

(1)  On your own risk;  

 

Lootera- Movie Review

 

Starring :- Ranveer Singh, Sonakshi Sinha

Director:- Vikramaditya Motwane

 

So guys, this is the time to open up that familiar old story book from the book shelf whose slight yellow pages whiffs of a sweet smell and intoxicate you in the beauty of the story.

Set in 1950’s, the government has abolished zameendari, and in a faraway land of Manikpur one old zameendar babu lives with his chulbuli and beautiful daughter  Pakhi ( Sonakshi Sinha- she is simply brilliant in her act both as a lively daughter in first half and complete opposite second half). A young, charming and soft-spoken archeologist Varun Shrivastava (Ranveer Singh in a very controlled act) wants to dig up the area around a 500 year old temple (owned by the Zameendar) which hosts a gold idol and supposedly a lost civilization. The young man ends up digging hole in Pakhi’s heart and before they could get married the father daughter duo realizes that he has dug a hole in their pocket encapsulating all the khajana and idol.

The story then moves to the cold Dalhousie (which acts almost like a character in the love story which by then turns into a cold and gloomy affair between the protagonists) The life of Pakhi and Varun takes a complete circle to get complete. The second half is more touching than the first (I am not going to reveal any further!)

What stands out best in this film is its brilliant and nearly flawless treatment by the director Vikramaditya Motwane (his earlier ‘Udaan’ was also critics’ delight) the narration of the story gives you time to get sunk into the period drama and you fell in love with the simplicity of old times (loved the way Ranbeer shaves keeping a balti upside down and a small mirror on top of it! J ).

Every detail of the movie is nicely carved out, be the use of old film songs, virtually zero background score- sync sound is the technical term for it! you can actually hear birds chirping and wind flowing use of old cars, dialogues with a period touch in them. Every detail adds to the cinematic brilliance. Adapted by short story ‘the last leaf’ by O’ Henry the director, screenwriter and musicians does a tremendous job by creating such an emotionally touching, beautiful, and a lovely masterpiece.

Special praise for Sonakshi Sinha who gets to showcase her acting skills good job lady!

All in all this film is pure artistic chef-d'oeuvre (let me make it simple…..a nice poetry with violin and piano playing in the backgroundJ !)  

 

 

Score Stack Up:-

+ ive:-  Good Music, good story and brilliant performances.

-  ive:-  slight low on comic offering.

 

 

Box Office, Paisa Vasool Rating:- 3.5 out of 5

Tanmay's Rating : 4 out of 5

 

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Scores Classifications- 

(5)  Very Good, Must Watch 

(4)   Good, Should Watch 

(3)   Not Bad;

(2)  One Time Watch; 

(1)  On your own risk;