Krrish : Movie Review

Krrish: **

One sole reason why I have stopped watching anything that Sanjay Gupta (Kaante, Khauff, Musafr,Zinda) dishes out is because its all blatantly ripped off Hollywood and makes a pretension for being not so by wrapping it all up with swanky music videos. Rakesh Roshan has now entered the very same frame of film-making where chunks of contemporary Hollywood blockbusters get dumbed down and concocted with absolutely nerve-grating 80s style B-grade over-the-top melodrama. But projecting it as a kiddie fare, he’d again rake in probably triple the amount of moolah he did 3 years back with Koi Mil Gaya. And then make another sequel, that’s a concoction of few more Hollywood films dumbed down. And that’s what essentially Bollywood’s come to. What hurts me even more is that the parts of Krrish that can’t be classified under plagiarism are either braindead, or yawningly predictable or so badly directed and so over-acted that one seriously doubts if Mr Roshan’s completely lost it. Yes, the very same film-maker who gave us well-directed, over-the-top but imminently watchable Khudgarz, Kala Bazaar, and Khoon Bhari Maang takes three years to make this outlandish curry of a film, which ends up tasting of nothing at all.

Case in point the film’s first half. Filled to the brim with generic, implausible Bollywood sequences, not a single one of these catches you by surprise. All the characters mouth typical Bollywood lines, do the usual expressions and you can even predict what background score will play at what time. The same silly manipulation and melodrama that keeps the saas-bahu serials TRPs stable for years–its all here, for us to bear. And by us I mean anyone who’s grown out of it. If you are still of an age running in single digits or still discovering Bollywood or suffer from amnesia or oblivious to the fact that Hollywood exists, you probably would lap this all up and deem it as the next big step in Indian cinema’s new age evolution. An opinion that, I, for my rather unfortunate visits down the local DVD library, can’t hold.

Nor can I rate Krrish higher just to applaud Mr Roshan’s effort to make India’s first superhero. Because our heroes never were anything less than superheroes. Pick up any action flick starring anyone from BigB to Mithun to Sunny Deol–they could bash up, fly, leap, jump and still manage to do cross-city runs after trains in film after film after film. So please stop this empty talk of Krrish taking Bollywood to new levels of film-making. This is old Indian wine in a rusty old barrel pasted with a new label that’s translated word-to-word from a Californian wine bottle.

Any redeeming aspects for me then? Well the SFX isn’t quite as bad or as overdone as I had thought they’d be, the toned-down Minority Report interface (added with some bizarre heart-beat scans as passwords–what the hell was that!) and conflict are palpable and Roshan Jr’s physique and agility does lend a streak of believability to almost every Matrix meets House of Flying Daggers scene. He does perform like there’s no tomorrow but its all quite a waste as all he’s really doing from the first to the last frame is trying to infuse life into horrendously written scenes and dialogues. What pains me more is that he’s one of those rare dynamic actors who are capable of giving immense depth to even the most silent scenes (watch Fiza and Lakshya) but all we get to see him do after 2 years of on-screen sabbatical is a circus routine and loud theatrics. If Johars and Chopras brought about the demise of the performer in Shahrukh, rest assured Hrithik’s creative stab will be from within his home.

The rest of the cast goes about the motions mechanically (yes, Rekha and Naseeruddin Shah are asked to do the weepy granny and evil scientist routine to the last cliche, and both of them oblige) but the one who really deserves a mention in every Krrish review is Priyanka Chopra. The mademoiselle manages to fake her way through every scene she’s in and bore us to death in the process. Granted, its a stinking Bollywood-dame routine with strikingly sudden heart changes, but there’s something called an actor’s instinct. Maybe too much to ask from an erstwhile beauty queen but didn’t anyone see the rushes or what! She really amplifies Krrish’s mediocrity as a film, and her scenes with Hrithik could really give you a frostbite. Move over Celina Jaitley, the new ice maiden is here. The soundtrack’s filled with nice vocals but the tunes are ancient. Maybe to accentuate the pretence of small-town Krrish, the songs are the way they are but for someone who couldn’t take the movie, the ditties are going to bring up all the bad memories of watching them on-screen.

As I said earlier, if masala Bollywood potboilers still set your heart racing, you’ll be in for a treat. I had to gulp down two ibuprofens to get over the headache of this three hour long ordeal.

X-Men Fest!

Finally, a new year resolution I was able to stick to (yes, if resolutions are about having fun, following them is a cakewalk). Amidst the utter chaos and exams, I managed to shell out some time for one of the most popular science fiction movie franchise–The X-Men. And boy, did I have a blast or what! Have tried to pack in a lot in one post but couldn’t help falling for such excellent characters. Yes, I am carried away and if you are ready for some fanship-level indulgence, then Go on… read my gush-a-thon!

X-Men (2000): ****

As an introduction to the homo superior aka mutants, the film rolls off on a rather sombre note as the camera captures a young Polish boy separated from his mother in a Nazi concentration camp. As the boy shouts and stretches for his mother who’s dragged away on the other side of an barbed gate, the gate starts to twist and bend in the direction of boy’s outstretched hand. Conveying the undercurrent of the whole series–discrimination and its repurcussions-couldn’t have been done more effectively.

Cut to the not to distant future and we are introduced to the principals of two mutant groups. One who believes in amiable discussions with humans for social acceptance (Prof X) and the other, who besides not believing in fitting-in with the inferior homo sapiens has a masterplan–to turn every human into a mutant (mutants being the evolution’s answer for gen-next species)–and he’d rather do it with a lot of noise. That’s Magneto for you. Yes, the very same Polish guy who had been victimised as a child in the Nazi world, is out to rewrite history by getting rid of all the discrimination–turning all humans to mutants. Even as a Senator fights in the White House to pass the bill of getting rid of all the mutants.

As the lines are slowly drawn, we are introduced to some brilliantly imagined characters like Rogue (a girl capable of sucking the life-force of anyone she kisses) who then goes on to meet Wolverine (who possesses an adamantium skeleton with inter-knuckle claws that pop out at the mere hint of rage and is almost immortal with his self-healing power), Storm (capable of changing the serenest of skies into a lightning and thunder-filled mess) and Cyclops (a hunk forced to wear goggles to stop the destructive optic blasts from his eyes)

The terrorist side is a little less populated but far more interesting with an aphrodisiacally sensuous blue-skinned diva called Mystique, a growling Sabretooth and a reptilian Toad.

X-men is one helluva joyride thanks to the fights and interactions between all these characters and the two bosses (one super-telepathic and the other a super-magnet). What makes it memorable is how cleverly its edited to be this crisp and smooth thriller that has shockers at every 10 minutes and sequences that tread a very unconventional path all through. You think you can guess how the scene will end but it just won’t. Characters you like will be stabbed, the old hags don’t just do the know-it-all wisdom act but can be horrifyingly testosterone filled and the breakneck pace it all moves in, despite knowing that Mystique can actually morph into anyone, you get surprised everytime she morphs back into her own sleek blue-body-yellow-eyed creature from nowhere.

The menace is unforgiving, the conflict viscerally charging and to top it all–the special effects are some of the sleekest work I have seen from any studio. Sequences like Logan’s raw opening cage-fight, the Senator turned a mutant and then finally melting into absolute water on the operating table, the Toad’s squashing spree, Magneto’s seizing of police’s guns just by flicks of hand and Mystique’s sinister shapeshifting–its fiendishly crazy and yet crazily convincing.

The superb screenplay and direction is complemented by an awesome ensemble of actors. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart such unbridled authority and natural understanding to their characters, you can’t help believing anything they mouth. Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is the one “with issues” and this repressed state of mind is brought about easily by him, just like Halle Berry’s Storm manages to be powerful, yet warm.

As the fable of blatantly obvious superheroes who are forced to live in hibernation for not being the dominant species (the physical mutation tagged to them for lifelong discrimination), its utterly convincing and totally entertaining. One of the best science fiction movies ever!

X2: X-Men United (2003): ***

Time to get in some knots now. With Magneto as captive, the X-Men stand united against an impending attempt to obliterate them all. Or do they? With a recent assassination attempt on the President, it seems all isn’t what it seems as a military scientist named Stryker, out on a venegeance mode, can go to any extent to wipe out mutants from the face of the planet.

Visually and acoustically, X2 races ahead of the prequel with jaw-droppingly brilliant CGI. Where do I start? Be it the teleporting NightCrawler who smokes his way through everywhere, or Magneto drawing the iron from guard’s blood and turning it into prison smashing balls and then floating plates, Wolverine’s smart and raw claw-and-nail fight with Lady DeathStrike–the eye-candy is just goosebump-inducing. And then there are the ever so reliable Magneto and Mystique–who do the menacing act with such conniving cheekiness (watch Mystique rudely showing others the “finger” as she gains control of Stryker’s base or Magneto, as he stops the falling X-Jet “When will these people learn how to fly?”), its just too hard not to have some fun while this race of homo superiors strut their stuff.

It also tries to deal a new facet–acceptance of mutants in their families (or rather a complete lack of it) but to be frank, for a 130 minute wham-bam popcorner–it turns a tad too self-important and long-drawn towards the climax. The finale itself is supremely predictable but thankfully is rendered watchable by the technical finesse. Overall though, amidst the labyrinth of the plot, precious little emerges as far as any theme is concerned.

Don’t get me wrong. X2 has some of the best acting, the visuals, the sounds, the fights, and even a little bit of hitherto unseen sequences, but somehow its a little too generic and been-there-seen-that sci-fi that wouldn’t persuade you to watch it a second time easily. Tidy but rather unaffecting fare.

X3: X-Men-The Last Stand (2006): ****

Time to rejoice! With this rock-solid final X-men movie, I would be surprised if this series wouldn’t go down the annals of celluloid sci-fi as one of the most splendid pieces of film-making. Finally something to compete with the LOTR hat-trick of good cinema. And it surprises me the most on passing this verdict, but in almost every sense of the word, the third X-Men is just as good as the first one. Maybe this stems from the fact that I am no nit-picking purist who would moan about how disrespectful its been to the real comic-book characters or what a grave injustice has been done to this and this character. I haven’t read the comics and the only yardstick I had for this third instalment was its preceding two movies. So, pardon my decidedly shallow judgement… but I was blown away by the visuals and the sheer emotion the film packed, and I can’t help but admit it.

The opening sequence for starters. After a flashback of Prof X and Magneto trying to persuade two parents to enter their supremely gifted mutant girl-Jean (who grows up to be Dr Jean Grey as we know from the last two movies and who breathed her last in X2), you have the camera set on an agitated boy struggling alone in a bathroom in what appears to be scratching his back. His father, outside the bathroom, realising something fishy after not getting answered on the nth knock is about to break in. The boy’s sweating with all the work as the camera rolls onto his hand and we see a blood-stained knife. And as his dad’s about to break in, he quickly shuffles many more knives and scissors into a tray. All bloodstained. Until the dad actually breaks in and we see the boy’s back. 10 ruthless perforations at the back of each shoulder–the holes from which the boy’s white feathers come out. He is a MUTANT. The boy shrieks on having found out (it ripped my heart apart, don’t know about others) and the credits start rolling.

I actually was quite surprised as we were again shown a bereaving Cyclops, not realising that one of the dominant threads of X-Men 3 is Resurrection of the Real Jean. Yes, who would have thought that beneath the calm, moderately telekinetic, underdog of a character is hidden the real Jean–the Phoenix, who might have been tamed by Professor X for years, but is now on the verge of unleashing a destruction that no one has ever witnessed. As if Jean wasn’t enough, a new cure for the mutant gene (instant gene therapy in an inoculation!) has been found by the humans. One prick and the powers of mutants dissolve instantly turning them into a normal human. A normal homo sapien. Clearly getting down from the podium of a homo superior isn’t an idea that catches the fancy of any mutant. Which gives another cause for Magneto to form an army, and by promising her everything Professor X couldn’t, get Jean on his side too. The battle-lines get drawn once again and its Wolverine, still deep in love with Jean, to step up and take one last stand.

What completely bowled me over in X-Men 3 was that it had a heart. And a pretty big one at that. Not for a single moment did I feel that any of the deaths of “good” mutants were rushed. They all are brilliantly conceived, sometimes kept silent to compound the effect, and sometimes so cruelly obvious I wished I could turn my eyes away. Maybe this is what happens when you watch the trilogy back to back in 2 days, but I really found them affecting. And then there was the opening wing-cutting scene of young Angel. Also scenes like Rogue joining the queue to get the cure so that she’s able to touch people and have a relationship or the one where when strapped to the chair for an injection of cure, the way Angel opens his wings and burts out of the glass building into the open sky are classily poignant. In neither of the prequels has the camera captured the pathos of fitting in, hiding their true selves or a mutant’s sense of pride and bliss in just the way he or she is. Magnificiently done.

And then there are the special effects. I am telling you one thing– I can watch this movie at double the ticket price just to watch scenes like Magneto walking down the road and turning everything from cars to lorries to junk by mere flicks and slaps in the air. That one scene… the way Ian McKellen walks with the maroon helmet and the works, the sheer display of power is majestic. Not that the other scenes don’t deserve a billing–every scene where Jean unleashes the beast in her is crackling with energy and the one sequence that everyone’s going to talk about… where Magneto rips a whole bridge off and transports it across to the island is so blatantly made-to-impress that one does really gawk at it. The climax is also a piece de resistance with subtle suggestions of Magneto and Professor X being back to where they were. It does a lot to uplift the mood of heavy-hearted fans like me who didn’t want X-Men to finish so soon.

The dialogues remain as sharp, minimal and intelligent as they have always been. The ensemble cast delivers like a dream come true, and Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen and Halle Berry really are in their element. Kelsey Grammer in the hideous all-blue-and-hair Beast incarnate is a likeable addition. Quite contrary to what I’d read in review after review, the overwhelming number of mutants each with their assorted power really accentuates the entertainment factor, rather than interfering with it.

Overall, I personally feel that the last X-Men has more muscle, more sinew, more tension, more anger, more issue than X2. Its not quite as fiendishly unpredictable as X-Men but its just such an involving and entertaining fare, the only thing I found myself whining about was its rather sharply scissored running time. It isn’t quite as short as to leave you feeling shortchanged, but a 15 or so minutes more would have made me end this without this sentence. Still, 3 Whistles and cheers for Brett Ratner from me!

So, get up, grab some popcorn and catch up with the whole series of X-Men NOW!

Fanaa

A pressing question before you read the review. Do any of you actually see any images in my posts? I insert them through URLs and they show up on some computers and not on others. Please tell me if you can/can't see them to help me decide to a longer, proper method of image posting. Thanks.

Fanaa: * and 1/2

Let's fake one last hug, shall we?

 

This is exactly what happens when an otherwise decent romcom director ventures to handle complex themes of national security, terrorism and physical handicap. The royal mess that he and his braindead script-writer create hurts all the more because Aamir and Kajol are the immediate victims. And its just downright painful for an ardent 90s Bollywood fan like me, watching them lend meaning to utterly spineless characters and B-grade Bollywood sequences.

The real reciever of all the brickbats should be Kunal Kohli, the director. Not a single honest, unseen moment in the whole frig*ing film. Now that's a feat. Neither is there even a remotest sense of plausibility in how the blind girl falls for the first guy she meets in the city (a tour guide who keeps on dropping not-so-subtle hints about having a penchant to bang girls and move on) nor is there any sense of thrill or dread in the army espionage bits. Jumping from one banal filmi sequence to the other, the film reaches a godawfully predictable finale, which is dealt so immaturely and shoddily you really wish you hadn't bothered spending £8 on this crap.

Seems like no critic can gush enough about Kajol's performance, but to be honest, she's woefully miscast. Kunal Kohli is no Prakash Jha or Aditya Chopra who can carve out the quieter nuances of Kads' head-strong wizened persona (remember Dil Kya Kare and DDLJ?) which means she ends up looking very lost mouthing corny dialogues and Urdu shero-shayari. All through the 90s, her contemporaries like Madhuri and Juhi played far more unbelievable characters in the trashiest of movies but with a zing that won us over. Why we loved Kajol back then was for her girl-next-door, urbane, natural charm and wit she lent to all her characters– and that is really where her range as an actor ended (watch K3G or Hamara Dil Aapke Paas Hai for proof). As the still-wet-behind-the-ears town virgin belle, neither has she gone that extra mile to make Zooni Ali Beg stand out from the plethora of characters she's played on-screen already (even Preity-with her cosmopolitan looks-managed to pull off Kashmiri girl characters in Hero and Mission Kashmir far more admirably) nor are there ANY sequences that'd bring out something unseen from her–making her comeback quite forgettable.

She has tried, oh yes she has, but in a film as unbelievable and trashy as this, one needed a far more dynamic actor to transcend the audience's disbelief. Watching her do the typical Bollywood heroine routine in Fanaa is just a bit… boring.

But mark my words, she'd be up there at the Filmfare Best Actress slugging it out with far more accomplished performances and who knows, might even manage to grab some more undeserving trophies.

Aamir's in for an even more lifeless character (something which'd have been lapped up by Anil Kapoor or Sunny Deol 5-6 years back) and it is such an apathetically sketched cut-out that even his Raja Hindustani would anyday be more identifiable. Rishi Kapoor's the only actor with some graph in the character while the rest oblige with their generic Bollywood sidekick/innocuous-hammy child routine. Tabu manages to turn in a below average performance (maybe they gave her the script after she'd signed on the dotted line… its a Yashraj venture after all!)

Granted, the idea wasn't to create something street smart but all the shero-shayari and the self-congratulatory background score after every "sher" that Aamir cracks on the spot makes your nerves grate. Mothers saying goodbyes to their daughters with advice like "tere dil mein meri saanson ko panaah mil jaaye, tere ishq mein meri jaan fanaa ho jaaye" (an answer to what if the blind daughter finds the man she loves) are unintentionally funny.

Unlike what I've read elsewhere, there's no sense of place at all. There isn't a single person except the actors populating the screen for the whole of second half (apparently, to get around this, an excuse of a snow-storm is in place) , its all too isolated and lifeless to transport the viewer to anywhere. Maybe it was a conscious decision to focus on the characters, but who'd give a toss for these done-to-death Bollywood versions of "real" people? I wouldn't and I didn't. The action scenes are probably there for comic relief and sure enough, each of them will have you rolling with laughter. There's also an attempt to comment on the Kashmiris and nuclear missiles which makes even Veer Zaara's in-your-face banter on Hindustan-Pakistan bhai bhai seem intellectual.

If there really is any respite, its for 5 whole minutes of a ditty "Mere Haath Mein". A superb haunting rendition by Sonu-Sunidhi is brought to life by some amazing cinematography and a duskily lit-and-made up Kajol (finally someone manages to shoot her more beautifully than in Suraj Hua Maddham). The song's shot with passion and instinct- two words that sadly can't be used for the rest of the 130 or so running minutes.

Please avoid this de-caffeinated, tasteless concoction of Satya meets Hero meets 80s Bollywood melodrama. Its kitsch of the most inferior variety.
More to come,

Cheers!

Some more film-watching 2006 (4)

Never expected the Match Point review to end up as big as it finally did. Hence this separate post for random films I caught on the big screen in the past month. Hope you enjoy these mini-ops!

When A Stranger Calls (2006): ** and 1/2

Blame it on my impatience. A wait of a mere 30 minutes more and I could have watched the French thriller Hidden (Cache). But my attitude of barging into the cinema and into the screening straightaway meant I ended up with this teenybopper horror-lite. As if the title couldn't be any longer and self-explanatory, its about a high school girl getting harassed by a prank caller (read serial killer) one night when she's baby-sitting at a posh and sprawling riverside mansion.

Its more generic and predictable than the words themselves convey but somehow the formula concocted doesn't end up being an absolute disaster. The menace in the atmosphere is well maintained by clever lighting techniques (stepping into every room switches on the room's lights–works bigtime in chase sequences) and the opening sequence where a lonely woman (living next to a local fun fair) gets called and then killed manages to terrify thanks to inventive camera and sound design. But then these plusses are never quite equalled by a screenplay which is ridden with stupid sequences, characters that behave less logically than kindergarten children and a lead actress that pitches in a consistently pale performance. The end product isn't even a patch on Panic Room but thankfully doesn't bore either.

Silent Hill (2006): **

You can count the pigeon-holes into which the contemporary horror films broadly fall into– Grimy Gore fest (Saw, Hostel, Wolf Creek), Supernatural Thriller (Sixth Sense, Others), Costume-n-Mask Horror Dramas (Ghost Ship, Exorcist, Descent, Evil Dead) and lastly fantasy horror (Constantine, Silent Hill). I normally try to avoid the last group like plague, but somehow landed up watching this.

Though the basic premise in this case–a concerned mother takes her daughter to the demonic place that haunts and possesses the latter while sleepwalking-does elicit some reaction, the actual film simply fails. And there are many reasons for this–first, there's absolutely no warming up to the characters. You have barely found your seat and bang! you see the possessed daughter standing at the edge of a cliff while her mom shouts off in the background. Barely 5 minutes after that, both mom and daughter are on the trip to the godforsaken place called Silent Hill. A crash later… mom finds herself amidst a foggy, snowing with ashes, town of yore replete with dilapadated buildings, empty streets. The daughter's gone but can be heard running. Mom (Rose) follows the sound, and suddenly a loud siren starts firing away. Mom continues walking down the stairs of a huge building and suddenly a huge black mass starts to entangle and numerous blackfleshed screaming children mutants start to materialise.

As the film unfolds, one comes to know that the siren represents the falling of "darkness"–a sign of evil that resides in the limbo land of Silent Hill alongwith the godfearing fanatical Catholics. But how clear the line really is, between the good and evil, is the premise for the remaining film as Rose unearths the dark secrets of the Silent Hill. Problem is, there's too much of such gibberish and it takes itself way too seriously.

The film is filled to brim with conflicts and showdowns between cacophonic characters who, because we don't know about, we just don't care about. Making it all just a pile of nonsense and in the process, boring us to death (a cardinal sin for any film). The only highlights being the two-three sequences of "darkness falling" which sees the otherwise unsuspectingly falling-to-pieces walls and floors transform into a network of blood vessels and inaninmate objects turning into yucky creatures like human sized roaches etc. A flashback sequence done in grainy film about witch-hunting towards the climax is a valiant attempt to unlock this puzzle of a film but just succeeding that is a so-bizarre-it-cracks-you-up vengeance episode of the devil which really makes you wince and wonder how you ended up watching this.

I can fill up paras on how tacky the CGI was but just to summarise my experience–I was laughing my humble a*se off everytime the crafted monsters (a plastic-pyramid headed devil or a team of zombie nurses that go on a twitching frenzy..LOL) came on the screen.

Please don't waste your time and money on this tripe unless you still haven't been spoonfed the message of being judged after death.

Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (2006): ** and 1/2

Though never quite as ambitious as Pixar's or Dreamworks' animated ventures, of late Blue Sky Studios have set about a good account for themselves with gorgeous looking but simple feel-good animations like Ice Age and Robots. Surprisingly enough, Ice Age 2 as a sequel doesn't quite entertain on the same level as Shrek 2 did. Simply because its just more of the same old thing. The principal characters still carry on walking and meeting more silly characters en-route, and a love story and a predictable conflict later its all over and they continue walking happily ever after. Don't get me wrong–it really is an enjoyable fare with two things working bigtime in its favour-Scrat (the acorn-obsessed squirrel who'll go down the annals of animation as the best character ever) and the wit in the dialogues, but one only wishes they hadn't rushed the scriptwriter quite so much as to pen such a wafer-thin, predictable plot that ends up boring us of characters we had come to adore in Ice Age.

Still, I know I am repeating myself (but what the heck), just watching Scrat struggling to keep up with the forever slipping and out-of-reach acorn through half-liquid peaks and half-frozen water bodies will have you rolling in an un-abating laughing fit. This is one amazingly conceptualised character and hopefully, Blue Sky would release the next Ice Age sequel with only 90 minutes of Scrat and his acorn. Now that'd be something!

More Later,

Karan!

Match Point

Match Point (2005): ***

The trophy for the singlemost theme about relationships that’s so over-done on the big and the small screen that there’s just no more to say, has to be presented to extra-marital affairs. Sparks at first sight leading to months of secret courting and sex to normal life getting progressively neglected to the doubting spouse at home to the finale. We know the notes, the moments, hell–even the reactions and dialogues for every character. So what does Woody Allen throw into the mixture to make it just a tad more exotic? The element of luck. Getting caught or going scotfree.

Chris (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), the protagonist and a tennis pro bumps into Chloe (Emily Mortimer), sister of his new student Tom (Matthew Goode). On a dinner night, he gets to meet Tom’s fiance Nola (Scarlett Johansson) who’s a struggling American actress and is absolutely enticed by her charm. But of course, he’s gone way too far with Chloe to turn back and Nola is Tom’s fiance anyway–reason enough for him to take the wedding vows with Chloe and start the job at his in-law’s super-successful company. As luck would have it, no sooner is he married that Tom breaks up with Nola fed up with his mother’s not-so-subtle criticism of Nola’s lack of direction in life. Chris, now somewhat bored of his new life and wife and in no mood to suppress his temptation second time around , kickstarts a steamy extra-marital affair with Nola and within no time has sowed his seed. Now that Nola’s reluctant to go through abortion yet again (remember Tom? Well, basically he had also banged and then left her), things start spiralling out of control as Nola pushes Chris everyday to take the leap and leave Chloe once and for all. Which is when Chris decides to take matters in his hands, rather violently. Watch the film to check out the brilliant climax which’ll have you swearing by Chris’s favourite line– “I’d rather be lucky than good”.

If his directing repertoire is to be believed (haven’t seen any of his previous films), Woody Allen is a thespian when it comes to delivering character-centric cinema. And deliver he definitely does with Match Point where he lets the characters drone casually from one cliche to another and another. Until the unsuspecting climax makes you jump up and take notice (surprisingly, even here, in the film’s most impactful 30-minute finale, the camera and sound would carry on to be as unsuspectingly quiet as in the rest of the movie but the whole sequence is such, it jolts you no matter what). Reading what I’ve just written I definitely have used stronger adjectives than I’d planned to but in such a genteel and lush film, the thriller elements towards the end really come across more shockingly than they’d otherwise be worth. A perfect example of genre-mixing that works.

Till the final shocker though, you have to sit through a surprisingly timeworn romp of an upper middle class British family that believes in leading a high life– watching operas, ordering rather immodestly at the best restaurants, practice shooting and tennis, drive around in Beemers and holiday in the Greek Islands. And yes, speak in a language reminiscent of pre-pre-Victorian era. Seriously, the dialogue of Match Point is either written by someone who’s read all his Dickens and Twains and Eliots so many times he’s lost touch with how people speak in the real 21st century London or someone too desperate to “construct” a prim-n-propah British feel. Either way, it stands out like a sore thumb and is unintentionally funny for the first few minutes (after which your brain just ignores it).

A much larger part though in keeping your attention from wavering is played by the drop-dead sexy Scarlett Johansson who gets to show off some real stuff (anatomically and vocally) and boy, does she rock or what. All my doubts about her acting talent (after watching her sleepwalk through Lost in Translation and Island) have really burned to ashes. And then there’s the good ole charming British ensemble headed by a certain Matthew Goode (playing Tom) who could really teach a thing or two to the leading man in question (Jonathan R.Meyers) about improvisation and voice modulation. Mr Meyers turns in a surprisingly self-conscious performance (or is it his calculating character?) with a rather strange accent and hilarious mannerisms but somewhow manages to pull it together in key sequences and doesn’t, thankfully, hamper the film’s energy.

Overall, an old fashioned caper about extra-marital affairs that’ll leave you with a smile (for all the wrong reasons) with its smartly canned finale.

Quoting from the film: “There are moments in a tennis match where the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, remains in mid-air. With a litte luck, the ball goes over, and you win. Or maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.” Watch it to see if the hero manages to get a match point.
More reviews to follow!