Posted by: vijay on: December 4, 2009
Cast : Naomie Harris and Rain
Director : James McTeigue
Running Time : 1 Hour 35 minutes
Rating : 3 out of 4
Release Date : November 27th 2009
All movies have promos (trailers, websites, posters, interviews) leading up to the release. Of these, very few actually keep the expectations set. Ninja Assassin is one such movie, and for that alone, I rate this movie at a very high level.
The story you already know. Raizo (Rain) is the world’s deadliest assassin, but has choose to quit his clan. A Ninja clan is not like your movie rental club membership that you can just leave. The clan is pissed and wants to get rid of him. Rain, of course wants to get rid of the clan, because he does not approve of what they do. This is the setup which lends itself for some very well choreographed fight sequences, and that is all this movie is about.
I just gave away the plot, with no spoiler warning. Well, if you are watching for the plot, then shame on you. The movie plays straight with most of the cool things we have heard of ninjas (despite few traces of Highly Visible Ninja). They walk in shadows, and become visible only when they chose to. The are smart enough to turn off the lights before they enter any place. They can climb buildings with ease and use cool weapons. The fight scenes themselves are superb (for example, averting mook chivalry trope, the Ninja will not attack the hero one at a time, but rather all of them attack at once). McTeigue blends live action with CGI blood and limbs(when they are seperated from their owners, ofcourse!) perfectly. You know you are not looking at the real thing, but most of the stunts seem to have been done for real with CGI used only for the gory content. I loved the opening assassination of an entire drug gang, the chase on the streets of Berlin, the escape sequence and of course the climatic big battle.
Rain is perfect as Raizo. He was looking like some kid in “Speed Racer”, but he has definitely grown the beard here. It takes a lot of effort to pull-off some of the displayed stunts, and the effort put in by Rain, McTeigue and the entire movie team is there to see. Though it is a McTeigue movie, you cannot help noticing (as in V for Vendetta which was also directed by McTeigue) some influence of the Wachowski brothers. There are no bullet time scenes but the Rainy scenes (long straight drops of water with high contrast between the water and the dark background) looks exactly how it was in Matrix Revolutions. It looked cool then and it still does. If you’ve got 90 minutes to spare, this movie is definitely worth it, if only for its pure belief in action and nothing else.
Posted by: vijay on: December 4, 2009
Cast : Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike
Director : Jonathan Mostow
Running Time : 80 minutes
Rating : 3 out of 4
Release Date : September 25, 2009
Today, everybody has an online presence, sometimes multiple online personalities. You got Facebook and Orkut and even Second Life where you could actually live out an actual second life! What might happen if technology improved to such an extent that you could have real avatars which will do everything you always want to do. This movie, answers that question.
Just like how resumes are faked when applying for a job, in the movie, you could have your avatar be and do whatever you want. You could be some fat guy who is living in the basement or an ageing aunty. No problem, just pay for an avatar or surrogate which is in its 20s with the perfect figure and just chill. This means, almost everybody you see in the movie is as hot as the hottest model on the internet. Every female has the perfect cleavage and great ass. Yeah, since the surrogates are manufactured by metal skeleton over rubber skin, you can jump out of a running bus, fight a lion and actually rip off your arm to throw at someone! Hell, the army in the movie uses surrogates where in soldiers are sitting safe and sound in what looks like a huge LAN party hall, while battling enemies in far of land through quickly replaceable surrogates.
It is a perfect world. However, things change when a surrogate is killed (which is nothing to worry about) but his operator also gets killed (which is something to worry about). Enter Tom Greer and Jennifer Peters (Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell), FBI Agents on the case. One thing leads to another, and eventually ending up with a shocking revelation.
I have already seen enough robot action this year. Terminator Salvation and Transformers 2, which pretty much implies that any action scene (and, there are a few) in this movie is going to fall flat and it does. Just like the movie I Robot, in this movie as well the future is just like today, except for Robots. In a future where you have fully functioning robots, you are still using keys to open doors? The movie has some cool effects and the premise is built upon very nicely and makes you ask a number of moral questions (like any other sci-fi tales). Already so many of us communicate with our friends digitally. Will we end up talking to our friends only digitally? You can have video sex through web cam. Will it replace real sex? On weekends one many never leave the comforts of their living room, preferring do things from their arm chair. Will you ever end up never leaving your living room?
Posted by: vijay on: December 4, 2009
De Dana Dan (2009)
Cast : Katrina Kaif, Sameera Reddy, Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty,and Paresh Rawal
Director : Priyadarshan
Running Time : 2 Hour 40 minutes
Rating : 0 out of 4
Release Date : 27 November 2009
A month ago, there was this other movie, “All the Best”. It had a decent cast, filled with lots of characters, Deux ex machina ending, cleavages, long legs and so on. Now we have this movie, which similar attributes. The difference between “All the Best” and this is that the former was a funny comedy while the latter is just a over-budgeted crap filled with shit.
I am new to this whole Bollywood movie watching experience but I have got to say, trailers/promos of Hindi movies always lie. I would put the blame for most of the movie on my low sense of humor. However, if the whole audience is also not laughing for the entire course of the movie (probably wondering why they paid to see this bore and mulling over if they paid their monthly bills) it can’t be just my lack of sense of humor.
Priyadarshan gets it wrong on so many counts. He assumes, adding more and more characters with not much home work on character development can give laughs. This is in stark contrast to “All the Best”, where each character had his own share of eccentricities to justify their presence in the movie. In this movie, you could remove Sunil, Sameera and even Katrina’s role and still the movie would still be the same and may be better because of the shorter length. Director saab also thinks having actors who are known for being comedic (Paresh Rawal, Johny Lewer and a host of other reputed comedians) being in the movie is enough to get laughs out of them. These performers need solid material to act. (Cable Guy has the rubber face Jim Carry but still is not that funny). Paresh Rawal and Johny Lever compensate for the lack of funny lines by over acting, which backfires big time and the blame lies solely on Priyadarshan.
Then, there are these awful and ill-timed songs. They are there so that you can stare at Katrina’s Legs because she won’t show cleavage. There is also Sunil Shetty. Here is one actor, who last 15 years is sporting the same look, same dialogue delivery, same outfits and same character. I could just cut his scenes from one movie and edit it into another movie, and the average movie goer would never notice the difference. Then there is Akshay Kumar. It does not help that his character spends a good amount of time off-screen stuck in a cabinet.
What robs the 1 star rating I wanted to give this movie, is taken away by very poor product placements. All the outdoor scenes are filmed with “Symantec” ad running in the background on a big screen TV. Sunil Shetty works for “First Flight” Courier company and hence spends half the movie running around wearing only “First Flight” uniform and driving First Flight Van. It gets worse. At one point, these two bumblers (that is their role in the movie, and I am not being sarcastic) decide to catch this dog. Guess what is printed on the box that with which they are trying to catch the dog? “First Flight”, of course! There are numerous other product placements but I lost count. I don’t know much about marketing, but I understand that movie producers have to look at all options to maximize the returns on their budget, but for that, you need to know how to do it. If done right, product placements will enhance the image of the product as well as the movie.
I really wish there was something good, I could write about this movie. Had high hopes for it because of the Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Paresh Rawal and Priyadarshan combo. Naa. The movie is a dud.. But, there is light at the end of every tunnel. The next installment of the Hera Pheri is being worked on. I will not lose faith, yet.
Posted by: vijay on: November 26, 2009
Cast : Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Vivek Oberoi and Om Puri
Director : Rensil D’Silva
Running Time : 2 Hours 40 minutes
Rating : 1 out of 4.
Release Date : November 20th 2009.
The movie is really long. I mean, really really long. So long that I did not even care what happened after the intermission. The movie is also very boring. I kept asking myself through out the movie, is it boring because it is long or is it long because it is boring? I have no clue, but I did managed to stay awake.
The movie is a very serious commentary on global terrorism and it shows both sides of the story (the terrorist and their victims). However, just like “London Dreams” a good idea is (once again) ruined by Bollywood masala.
To begin with, the promos were very misleading. The tagline for the movie (because every movie should have a tagline, whether it needs one or not) is “Some Love Stories Have Blood On Them”. It is misleading because the love story in the movie is wrapped up in like 10 minutes, with the ‘happy’ couple settling down in a nice small house and in a cushy neighborhood. So, what is all this love story non-sense. Then, the second thing is the trailer. The trailer makes it seem like the movie is some kind of action filled mega movie. My god, was I disappointed! The trailer keeps hinting at some kind of a face off between Vivek Oberai’s Riyaz and Saif Ali Khan’s Ehsaan. Nope.
While the intention of having something to say about terrorism is definitely there, Mr. D’Silva tries to add
a) Romance (loves story gets over in like 10 minutes)
b) Suspense (instead of making my heart beat faster due to excitement these scenes made me sleep). There is the ‘BIG’ reveal of Ehsaan being a terrorist which comes about 50 minutes into the movie. Which does not make sense because anybody who has seen the trailer for the movie or even the posters already know that Ehsaan is the terrorist. So, why even bother with the big reveal. Should we blame the marketing department or the director?
c) Some hot sex action (for all its worth, the famed topless scene of Kareena is just 8 seconds of her being backless.) Come on man, if you really want to do something show some boob press at least!
d) Action (well, there is none)
Then there is the drawn out climatic scene, which has so many plot holes, which I would not list out because of the serious issue the movie is trying to deal with it here. Anyway, the movie is boring and long and long and boring and long and boring and long…
Posted by: vijay on: November 26, 2009
Cast : Does it matter?
Director : Roland Emmerich
Running Time : 2 Hours and 30 minutes
Rating : 4 out of 4
Release Date : November 13th 2009
I have no idea who coined this term but I will use it here anyway. This movie is THE BEST DISASTER PORN ever! Emmerich is the dude when it comes to exploding stuff (though not as good as Michael Bay), especially when it comes to hailing destruction on Cities and Earth.
Of course, the movie has a story to tell. The Earth is going to end in 2012 (the movie takes place in 2012) and one everyday common man, some how manages to save his and his family’s life from it. That is it. However, I don’t even care as to what is the story is or its characters. The trailer for the movie was awesome and I walked in expecting large scale destruction of earth and that is what I got!
Destruction sequence 1 : The main guy is riding his Limo (of all cars!) across this city and he manages to win the race against an amazing recreation of Earthquake.
Destruction sequence 2 : The main guy is now on a plane and the plane as to escape being destroyed by some fireballs (How did they come and where? I don’t care. It just looked awesome) Then there was this huge Display of Nuke-type explosion as well, which was just amazing.
Destruction sequence 3 : The main guy is now on a much bigger plane and it has to escape (water or smoke or something). It was awesome.
Destruction sequence 4 : The main guy has to pull out some kind of stuck tool from huge gears. Awesome underwater sequence.
Destruction sequence 5 : The main guy is now part of Huge “Arks” and due to a malfunction the doors of the Ark is not closing. All kind of bad things happen and we are treated a mammoth scale tsunami and crashing into the Himalayas. Hurray! The arks themselves, god how were the special effects for that even created. Amazing. Just amazing.
In between all the destruction, you have some small talk about seismic plates, earth’s magnetic field exchanging its poles, family values and so on. Anyway, if 2012 End-of- the-world does happen, now I know how its going to look. I also know that since I am neither working for the government nor have 1 billion in Euros, I will not be rescued. I better make that special trip to Hyderabad before the year 2012 then!
