The Fighter

Going by the title and the few trailors I had seen, The Fighter looked like another movie based on a sport that has been topic of many great English movies and probably exploited to the core, Boxing; with the evergreen theme of triumph of the underdog. However, once the movie begins you soon realize it’s not only about the brutal sport but more than that about the relationship between 2 brothers, a man fighting with himself and a complex family.

Based on the real life story of welterweight professional boxer Micky Ward and his half brother Dicky Ward who is a ‘crack’ addicted former boxer and also Micky’s trainer/coach, the first thing that strikes you when the movie begins is the use of cameras of probably the same era that the movie is set in which gives it an entirely authentic feel. The movie begins with filming of an HBO documentary on Dicky which he believes is about his career and also shows him coaching his brother Micky who is following in his brother’s footsteps. The problem however is that no matter how much both brothers respect & love each other Dicky can’t overcome his crack addiction and focus on coaching his brother for whom it’s now or never to make it big. When instead of facing his planned opponent Micky is forced by Dicky & his mother (also manager) to fight a boxer 18 pounds heavier, he ends up defeated, humiliated and considers giving up boxing for good. He finds solace in his girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) who pushes him to focus and resume training but without his brother & mother leading to a situation where Dicky gets arrested and Micky, a broken hand. Charlene also gets on the wrong terms with Micky’s family of 7 wacky sisters & mother as obviously for them she is the one breaking up the close knit family - there is actually a fist fight between Charlene and the sisters.

Under the guidance of new coach & manager, Micky resumes his boxing career, but whether he makes it big without his brother is for you to go & see. It is a movie driven by performances, the plot is based on a real story and so obviously is believable but what stands out in the movie is how delicately the close relationships are shown between the characters and their struggles with the same.

Amy Adams as Charlene & Melissa Leo as Micky’s mother are brilliant in their roles and lend a great deal of depth to the characters, especially Melissa who is the MAN of the family sometimes and a vulnerable mother the next. Mark Wahlberg as Micky Ward is good and does a restraint act, his physique clearly shows how hard he has worked for this role. But the show stealer for me is undoubtedly Christian Bale as Dicky Ward. After playing the action man in movies like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Terminator Salvation, etc. I expected Bale to play the central character of Micky Ward but the way he has portrayed Dicky is unbelievably believable. From the first scene itself you can tell that there is something wrong with this guy, it’s all there in his body language - the way he speaks, the constant shifting, the nervousness & even the blank stares. His accent is heavily Irish and also the amount of weight he must have lost showcases how seriously he has taken this challenging role and done complete justice to it. At no point in the movie can you see the ‘Batman’ in Bale and for me that is a true mark of a great actor – the ability to move on from one strong role to another without a hint of the previous character.

The fights are also great and shot like the actual fights. The movie has some great moments, few of these are when Melissa catches Dicky running away after she catches him junking and then breaks down in the car with Dicky. Another scene that gives you the jitters is when the entire Ward family (Dicky in jail, Micky at his home, mother & 7 sisters together) watch the HBO documentary that Dicky believed was about him but turns out to be one on Crack addiction. The climax is humbling and watch out particularly for Bale & Wahlberg – another great moment.

One confession I have is that I still don’t know who ‘The Fighter’ in the movie is, whether it is Mark Wahlberg as the struggling boxer or Christian Bale as the struggling crack addict. Going by the Oscar nominations, it does seem that Bale is the supporting actor and Wahlberg is the lead which is probably a good thing for Bale as I feel he deserves the Oscar for this and being the Best Actor category would have pitted him against Colin Firth who also deserves Oscar for The King’s Speech.

PS – by the time you would have read this, the OSCAR results would be out, but still ALL D BEST, Mr. BALE.

My Rating - 8/10
(Script - 7/10; Direction – 8/10; Performance – 9.5/10; Entertainment - 8/10; Music – 7/10)

Starring: Christian Bale (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Prestige), Mark Wahlberg (Max Payne, The Departed), Amy Adams (Leap Year), Melissa Leo

Director: David O. Russell (Three Kings)

Producer: various

Writer: Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson

Music: Michael Brook (Road, Movie)

7 Khoon Maaf

Expectations!!!

This is what defines, for me, the failure or success of a movie in today’s times. Setting the expectations correctly should be the new success mantra. How many movies in the past few years that were ‘not so bad’ have turned out to be mega disasters at the box office simply because the expectations were sky high due to the names/brands associated with those movies.

7 Khoon Maaf (7KM), based on a short story by Ruskin Bond (Susanna’s Seven Husbands), almost falls in this category. Boasting of names like Naseeruddin Shah, Irrfan Khan, Annu Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Neil Nitin Mukesh, … John Abraham in order of acting abilities and headed by Vishal Bhardwaj as director & music composer; one expected the movie to be a gripping version of the short story authored by one of India’s iconic writers. Adding to this, the fact that Vishal Bhardwaj is one of the very few directors in the world who has made commercially & critically brilliant movies based on some of the best literary pieces in the world – Omkara, Maqbool, apart from these pieces of art, he also has one of the best career defining cult movies for an actor to his credit – Kaminey.

The movie starts with Susanna (Priyanka) shooting herself and the remaining story, like many other recent Hindi movies, is narrated in flashback; in this case by Vivaan Shah (Naseer’s real life youngest son) who plays the role of Arun, a son like figure to Susanna and a witness to most of her life. Susanna is shown as a girl in constant search of true love since her mother died at a young age and in the process getting married 7 times. Her first husband, Neil Nitin Mukesh, is an army Major who loses his leg in battle and starts suspecting his wife. Later when he learns that he may not be able to father a child his frustration results in him blinding his horse keeper in a fight. These events trigger the urge in Susanna & her team of her butler, maid & horse keeper to remove the Major from their path which happens during a panther hunting expedition. Susanna then gets married to a small time musician, Jimmy aka Shamsher (John) whom she happens to meet during the Major’s funeral. They get married and John starts to climb the ladders of success with hit songs which Susanna later finds out are not his, but his earlier band mate’s. What Susanna also learns is that John is cheating on her & a drug addict. She brings him to her house and tries to treat his addiction but soon realizing that it’s all a waste. So she decides to take the ‘only’ way out, kill him.

Her third husband, Musafir (Irrfan Khan), is a poet in Kashmir who is calm, serene & thoughtful but a complete opposite at night when he becomes a woman dominating monster who needs his dose of violence to arouse himself. Susanna bears the violence for few nights, but then decides to end this marriage as well not by leaving him but through murder. The fourth husband turns out to be a Russian spy/double agent who as Susanna later discovers is two timing her which as expected leads to his death by Susanna’s pet snakes. Annu Kapoor, who is earlier shown as the inspector who investigates John’s murder and later as an officer from intelligence bureau investigating the Russian spy’s murder, becomes Susanna’s 5^th husband and soon dies due to an overdose of Viagra, thanks to his wife. Naseeruddin Shah, a brilliant doctor, is the sixth husband who saves Susanna from dying after she tries to commit suicide. One night she is attacked by a masked man who she suspects to be her husband, later when her butler dies by consuming poisoned soup prepared by Naseer, her suspicion is confirmed leading to another murder.

These are the six murders in short, seventh murder & husband is a mystery and I will not reveal it here. Would advise you to go and check it out yourself as the movie certainly deserves a watch; however, the disappointing part for me is the screenplay. It seems like a clear lift & shift of the original short story (which I haven’t read yet) and the entire movie till the last 20 minutes is predictable, straight & unexpectedly BORING, something I would never have associated with a genius called Vishal Bhardwaj. Watching Priyanka in all the different avatars & her husband and their similar stories made me actually remember What’s Your Rashee? Each of the six stories follows similar pattern of love, song, disappointment, hatred & murder. Agreed that this is how the original piece of work may have been, but the screenplay & direction could certainly have added another dimension and keep the audience engaged which is exactly what Vishal had done in his earlier movies.

In terms of performances, Naseeruddin Shah, Irrfan Khan, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Annu Kapoor are their usual reliable self and couldn’t have done anything more in their limited screen time & roles. John, I think probably had the most scope for a performance than any of the husbands, but he could not do a Shahid’s Kaminey here and is just average. Priyanka Chopra was ok, though I think she could have done much better portraying a woman right from the age of 20+ to 50+, but the nuances in body language, etc were missing. Vivaan Shah makes an impressive debut but I did not really like his voice over. Cinematography is very good and fits the dark tone of the movie perfectly. The music by Vishal Bhardwaj is brilliant and gels well with the feel of the movie, the song O mama is a gem and distinctly different from the recent hits, though the background score could have added a lot more to the feel of the movie. One thing to note is the make-up. For some strange reason, the make-up is not consistent, for eg. In the opening scene Vivaan Shah looks really old, but in the next with his wife looks pretty young.

In all, a movie worth watching once, but don’t expect A VISHAL BHARDWAJ film and you won’t be as disappointed. There would be few people who would love this movie as it’s ‘different & Vishal Bhardwaj’s’ but somehow it didn’t click well for me despite being few of the people who actually liked Dhobi Ghat.

PS – I think Aishwarya Rai would have suited Susanna’s role better instead of Priyanka, and NO I am NOT an Aishwarya fan. But she seems to be doing all roles trying hard to seduce people, so this one would fit in well!

My Rating - 6/10
(Script - 5/10; Direction – 6/10; Performance – 6/10; Entertainment - 5/10; Music – 8.5/10)

Starring: Priyanka Chopra (Fashion, Kaminey, Dostana), Naseeruddin Shah (Sparsh, Iqbal, A Wednesday), Irfan Khan (Haasil, The Namesake, Yeh Saali Zindagi), Neil Nitin Mukesh (Johnny Gadar, New York), John Abraham (Jism, Dostana, New York), Annu Kapoor (Tezaab, Hum), Vivaan Shah (Debut)

Director: Vishal Bhardwaj (Kaminey, Omkara, Maqbool)

Producer: Vishal Bhardwaj & Ronnie Screwala

Writer: Vishal Bhardwaj (Ishqiya, Omkara)& Matthew Robins (Bingo, Blood Brothers)

Music: Vishal Bhardwaj (Maachis, Satya, Maqbool)

Yeh Saali Zindagi

Despite being a diehard Salman Khan fan and an Aamir Khan admirer, this movie made me realize that probably the best ‘Khan’ among all could possibly be Irfan Khan. This movie is entirely his and he is well supported by the not so new guy Arunoday Singh and a crackling script which keeps you glued to the screen from start till the end.

This movie marks a clear deviation from the tried and tested formula of most Indian movies; the narration, the pace, the dialogues and the screenplay are the clear winners for me in this movie. From the beginning till the time end credits roll you don’t know what’s going to happen next in the movie. It has 2 parallel tracks of love which don’t cross path till the interval and unlike other movies both the stories are narrated by the respective man of each track. One track has Irfan Khan, who works for Saurabh Shukla and earns him profit in crores but decides to leave him after falling for Chitrangada Singh, however later realizing that he has been cheated. All through the movie, Irfan Khan struggles to come out of his love for Chitrangada and every time you think/pray he has got over her there is a twist. The second track has Arunoday Singh (Kuldeep), a small time goon who is about to be released from jail where he has been working for Bade (Yashpal Sharma) and the corrupt cop Satbeer (Sushant Singh). Kuldeep’ wife Shanti (Aditi Rao - yes, the aunt from Delhi-6) gets a makeover in this movie and as one of my friends mentioned before I saw the film, you keep thinking what exactly did the director tell her about the role when he offered her the same, as most of her screen time is used in fighting and then making up with her husband which does go well with the overall script however.

The movie starts with Arun (Irfan Khan) realizing that he has been shot and the entire movie after that till the climax is in flashback mode. It’s difficult to club this movie into a particular genre but the best I can do is label it as a cult-crime-comedy-thrilller. The way the characters are introduced into the movie is really unique and actually helpful because of the number of characters involved. It does help pace the first half well, which otherwise would have made it really sluggish. The second half is when the two tracks of Irfan Khan & Arunoday Singh intersect and from there on it’s a roller coaster ride with the viewer continuously on his toes trying to guess the how they land up where the movie started.

In terms of performances, I need not mention anything more about Irfan Khan, he is a powerhouse. Arunoday Singh proves in this movie that he didn’t need any ‘quota’ to get into movies, something which his grandfather Arjun Singh promoted strongly for educational institutes, but this guy looks really comfortable and natural as Kuldeep and carries the parallel track almost entirely on his shoulders. Chitrangada Singh has nothing much to do, though I did find her accent a bit strange & irritating. Aditi Rao is fresh and does her job well. The supporting cast led by some of my favorite character actors like Sushant Singh, Saurabh Shukla, Yashpal Sharma, etc. is simply brilliant, they all in fact are provided some great in depth character sketches and are very unlike supporting casts of most Indian movies. Credit for this should entirely goto the director Sudhir Mishra who has also written the screenplay/story and has co-written the dialogues which again are very apt and real (though I did find the abuses a little too many). Another highlight of YSZ are the real locations where most of movie has been shot, they give the authentic feel and add to the dialogues, story and performances tremendously.

In all, a movie worth watching at least once, especially for Irfan Khan and Sudhir Mishra’s genius. The movie has some really good moments with the opening scene and the climax standing out.

My Rating - 8/10
(Script - 8/10; Direction – 9.5/10; Performance – 8/10; Entertainment - 7/10; Music – 7/10)

Starring: Irfan Khan  (Life…in a metro, Haasil, The Namesake), Arunoday Singh (Sikander, Aisha, Mirch), Chitrangada Singh (Hazaron Khwaishein Aisi, Sorry Bhai), Aditi Rao Hydari (Delhi-6) & an awesome support cast

Director: Sudhir Mishra (Hazaron Khwaishein Aisi, Chameli)

Producer: Prakash Jha (Turning 30, Dil Dosti, etc)

Writer: Sudhir Mishra (Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Hazaron Khwaishein Aisi, Dharavi)

Music: Nishat Khan, Abhishek Ray