Love & Friendship is based on the early novella Lady Susan by Jane Austen. She never submitted the epistolary novel for publication, and the movie is actually titled after another early work of Austen’s. Whit Stillman’s adaptation stars Kate Beckinsale as the scandalous widow, Lady Susan, and Chloe Sevigny as her American best friend
There are some verbal zingers in this film that are just delicious, especially when Beckinsale and Sevigny share the screen. The scene stealer, though, is Tom Bennett as the hilariously stupid but incredibly wealthy suitor Sir James Martin. In a twist, Beckinsale’s Lady Susan is pursuing a younger man (Xavier Samuel), and urging her daughter to marry Sir James Martin. Stephen Fry has a delightful cameo as Chloe Sevigny’s husband.
I saw the premiere at Sundance, and I think it will play extremely well on your TV like a great PBS series. But if you’re tiring of superhero fare and are looking for something adult to see in the theater, check out Love & Friendship. Three and a half stars out of five.
My neighbor brought me back a stack of Tamil DVD’s from her trip to Chennai and I’m slowly making my way through them. I was looking for a lighter movie and took a chance on Vettai (The Hunt), a 2012 Tamil action comedy. Arya AND Maddie in a movie together? I’m in! This movie just made me smile for so many reasons.
Vettai establishes the dynamic between the brothers with a scene from their childhood. The older brother is actually timid and scared of everything. When a bully hits him, the two years younger brother comes to the rescue. Their father is a policeman, who then beats the younger son for getting in a fight. He stoically takes the blows silently while the older brother weeps and wails even though not a single blow touches him.
That dynamic continues to the present day. Madhavan who is physically large and imposing plays a very timid adult. He’s scared of violence and confrontation. His younger brother (Arya) is a rowdie, and quick to fight and intimidate anyone who threatens Maddie. Their policeman father suddenly dies, and by family tradition, Madhavan as the oldest son should take his father’s place. Arya convinces Madhavan that he should take their father’s job, the same one that their grandfather held. Maddie tries to get Arya to do it instead, but he has 4 charges against him.
At first Madhavan enjoys the stature his uniform gives him, but he doesn’t know what to do when a young girl is kidnapped by the local goons. He calls his brother Arya, who comes to the rescue.
Never underestimate the powers of disguise in a hoodie or a rain coat!
Madhavan gets the hero accolades, while Arya acts as his secret enforcer behind the scenes.
Interspersed with the action scenes, we have the romantic storyline. Arya meets a very assertive young woman (Sameera Reddy) when he accidentally knocks over her motor scooter. She turns out to be the young woman that their uncle wants to arrange a marriage with for Maddie. It was a nice fake out. Arya then is attracted to the younger shy sister (Amala Paul). The romantic scenes give a lot of comedy and sweetness to the movie, and some nice music numbers. I loved when Sameera’s character forces Arya to change his view of his brother, “Are you the older brother? You don’t even have a job. Don’t you think you should address him with respect?”
Things come to a head when Madhavan is badly beaten by the goon gang. As you can probably guess, Arya teaches him to release his inner lion. Cue training montage and action scenes.
This isn’t the greatest movie in the world, but it was entertaining and I loved the chemistry of Arya and Madhavan together as brothers. Madhavan was really, really great in all the scenes where he is the gentle timid sensitive giant. He has a great comic touch. In his native Tamil, I think he has an even greater comfort in playing comedy. I haven’t seen as many Arya movies. I’ve seen his action film Urumi, and I’ve seen his sweet romantic roles like Raja Rani and Size Zero. He carries most of the water in the romantic scenes in Vettai, and there’s a funny subplot with an NRI that is supposed to marry the sister Arya loves.
Three and a half stars out of five. Nice entertaining light action romantic comedy. Plus Arya and Madhavan dancing together! Who can ask for more than that?
Over the last two days I watched Okkadu, my third Mahesh Babu movie. It’s on Google Play. But in looking for a clip I just discovered the whole thing with subtitles is on Youtube.
I got about 20 minutes in and I realized I was watching the Southern film that Arjun Kapoor’s Hindi Tevar was based on! Kabaddi and all. Okkadu has a better title, because it means “The One” which has several meanings. The girl is the one for the villain (Prakash Raj again!) and Mahesh is the one who can save her and win her heart.
Normally I don’t notice the background score very much in Indian movies, but this one started by riffing off the opening music of West Side Story. I kid you not. It was the Jets and the Sharks all the way complete with snapping fingers and jazzy music. Not a direct copy of the music, but definitely inspired. Totally inspired by, and it made me smile. Watch the first few minutes and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
It’s fascinating to me what they kept the same, and what they changed for the Hindi version. I was one of the few people who actually liked Tevar (because Arjun!) but Okkadu is so much better.
Okkadu was a megahit in 2003 for Mahesh. It was remade in Tamil, and Bengali (both megahits) and then twelve years later as the Hindi Tevar — not so much a hit.
In Okkadu, the young woman Mahesh saves is played by Bhumika Chawla who the same year had almost the same sort of role with Salman in the Hindi film Tere Naam. Swapna (Bhumika) is being forced into marriage with a goon (Prakash Raj) who has killed her brother. Ajay (Mahesh) sees the goon dragging Swapna towards a car as she’s crying. He punches the goon and rescues the girl, not realizing he has just punched the crime boss of the town.
The negative to Bhumika’s role vs Sonakshi Sinha in Tevar, is that Bhumika starts the film very passive, and Sonakshi gets to reject the goon villain with some tevar of her own at first. Bhumika as Swapna is mousy and terrified (but with good reason) and only when she’s kidnapped at the end to be forcefully wed to Prakash does she get some gumption. She tells him, go ahead and force yourself on me but I’ll only have my one, my true husband before my eyes, Ajay (Mahesh). (Much more effective and satisfying than the parallel scene in Tevar).
Prakash Raj as the villiain is way creepier than Manoj Bajpayee because Manoj falls in love with Sonakshi just from seeing her dance one time. Prakash has been waiting for Bhumika to “mature” for it sounds like years so he can marry her against her will. She has reason to be terrified from the get go.
In Okkadu, Mahesh is mid-20’s and still has that boy to man thing going on. The film is really about him becoming a man. In the beginning his boy gang is fighting another boy gang. His whole life is just winning the kabaddi championship. Tevar is the same, but the first fight (also in defense of a harrassed girl), but Arjun fights an adult man. In Okkadu, his fight with the adult goon Prakash feels like his first step to taking on the responsibility of manhood.
(adorable!)
Tevar uses the Taj Mahal as the backdrop, and Arjun’s house in Agra has this whole roof top terrace with a view of the monument. It’s similar in Okkadu, but instead the movie is in Hyderabad and Mahesh’s family rooftop terrace overlooks the Charminar mosque, but it’s much more woven into the plot. At one point he hides Swapna inside one of the minarets, and they escape by running through the crowds coming to afternoon prayer. (In Tevar it’s Holi.)
One thing Tevar is missing is that in Okkadu Prakash Raj (and his politician brother) have this goonda cigar smoking mother who was a RIOT. Her intro scene:
One thing that Tevar did better was the relationship of Arjun’s character and his policeman father. In Okkadu, the father arrests Ajay (Makesh) but it doesn’t feel like it was for his own protection as in Tevar. I didn’t like the father of Ajay, although there were a few funny family scenes. But I loved Arjun’s father in Tevar — you saw where Pintu (Arjun) got his tevar from. Exasperated with him, but ultimately respecting Pintu.
There was one thing I hated about Okkadu – one scene that just infuriated me. Mostly Mahesh was adorable and steadfast. At one point, Swapna (Bhumika) is reluctant to get to the airport and asks to stop for a snack on the way. Ajay turns around and she’s vanished. He finds her and slaps her in a “What were you THINKING?” kind of way, and then she reveals she had just bought him a gift — “Knee caps” (knee pads) for his Kabaddi championship game.
Other than that one off note, I adored the movie. I’m just going to pretend that moment didn’t happen — like I ignore the undressing scene in Baahubali. Ajay does feel major remorse later looking at those knee caps — knee pads. But he doesn’t grovel or apologize.
And while the action scenes are just as gravity defying, somehow they are a little less ridiculous than Arjun being stabbed and slashed by a sword and still getting up to wallop Manoj. Gunasekhar, the writer/director of Okkadu just keeps a fantastic pace to Okkadu, and the action scenes are really well done and inventive. It’s just filmed better and edited better than Boney Kapoor’s Tevar. The songs feel organic to the narrative. There is no shoe-horned item song as in Tevar. I do like the music in Tevar and listen to Superman all the time, but the music numbers in Okkadu have better placement and flow for the most part.
The scene that is absolutely better in Okkadu is their parting at the airport, because Swapna (Bhumika) runs back and proposes to Ajay. “I don’t want to leave. I want YOU.” It’s a fantastic moment.
This is just going to be one of those movies for me, one of my favorites I will rewatch. I mean, West Side Story music!! But mostly Mahesh is awesome.
I was at my local library looking for another film (Dookudu!), when I happened to see that Manjhi: The Mountain Man was in the new release DVD section. Our local movie theater had shown trailers for Manjhi for months, but it never came to the big screen in our town.
I absolutely love the acting of Nawazuddin Siddiqui. He is consistently amazing in every movie I’ve seen him in. Like Irrfan Khan, I’d bet he could make reading the phonebook a dramatic triumph. Since half the movie has Nawaz acting only with himself and railing at his mountain, you need someone of Nawaz’s talents to pull it off.
Manjhi is based on the real life story of Dashrath Manjhi, who really did carve a road through a mountain with just a hammer and a chisel. Dashrath’s wife had died from a fall, and died because it took so long to get her to medical care. After her death Dashrath Manjki vowed to make a road through the mountain to allow for faster medical access for his remote village. He worked at it for twenty-two years. It sounds like a story that is so fantastical that it couldn’t even be real, but it is.
My favorite part of the movie was the first half which has the romantic story of Dashrath and his wife Phalguni (Radhika Apte). Dashrath was born in a caste so low that they were the rat-eaters of the village. There is a tyranical zamindar and his evil son who rule the village with an iron fist. Dashrath runs away from home to escape being forced into lifelong bondage to the zamindar. He returns to the village after some years working in the coal mines.
He falls in love with a village girl, and realizes that she was actually his child bride. I just loved Nawaz and Radhika Apte and their scenes together. Life is hard. The Zamindar and his son are barbaric to the low caste villagers. But Dhashrath and his wife carve out happiness together.
Tragedy strikes when a pregnant Phalguni falls from the mountain while pregnant with their second child. Dhashrath carries her miles and miles to the closest hospital, but it isn’t soon enough to save her. He is left with two children to raise alone, and at this point he goes a bit mad. He vows to the mountain that he will break it.
The second half of the the film shows his struggles chipping away at the mountain all those years. The filmmaker tries to insert some drama here, and it gets a bit metaphysical with visions of his wife talking to him, and soliloquy’s with the mountain. Nawaz tries his best, but the script is not as good here.
Nawaz does not make Dhashrath a saint. This is a man so obsessed that he leaves his children in the care of his drunk father to work on his mountain path.
The film is definitely worth seeing just for Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s performance. Seeing him romance Radhika Apte in the first half of the film makes me anticipate the romantic comedy he’s filming right now even more.
Manjhi: The Mountain Man was not quite as great as I’d hoped it would be, but I give it four stars out of five.
Yesterday, I decided I was totally in the mood for another Mahesh Babu movie. Dookudu had been recommended to me as one of his best, and I tried to find a good copy online. I ended up running to my local library which had a DVD copy. (I love living in an area with a sizeable South Asian community!) My library may not have many Telugu titles, but they have Dookudu!
This poster really shows you what Mahesh in Dookudu is all about. Dookudu was translated as aggression, but also as daring. And you can see Mahesh’s cop character is all about attitude. Mahesh just oozes cool and bravado. He has amazing presence on film, and looks great in all those slow motion action striding towards danger kind of scenes.
But after watching 1: Nenokkadine, I was hoping with another heroine, I’d get a better romantic subplot, and maybe a sweeter side to Mahesh, too. And Dookudu gave that to me in spades. Puppy dog eyed Mahesh!
He’s no Prabhas, who is still my favorite Telugu actor, but he does have that same ability to go from super cool action, to sweetness and comedy.
Dookudu is just a super entertaining mass entertainment movie. The best Telugu films I find really excel at melding together great action, great villains, sweet romance, and comedy all rolled into one. And while 1: Nenokkadine felt like theses different parts of the film did not fit together well, here with Dookudu one flows into the other and the comedy gives you a respite from some pretty intense action and drama.
Dookudu at its heart is a revenge flick. Prakash Raj plays the near saintly politician father of Mahesh (Ajay). After our short intro to Prakash, we see him struck in a horrific car crash leaving young Ajay alone. Cut to present day with adult Ajay, now a cop in Mumbai, with a cool introduction fight scene.
Ajay is on the hunt of Don Nayak played with supreme evilness by Sonu Sood. He’s wearing an ascot for most of the movie, so you know he’s really evil! One nice thing is that with Sonu Sood being 6’2″, Mahesh is also 6’1″ so their final battle truly feels like a fight of equals.
On a quest to find a weak link to Nayak’s empire, Ajay and his team follow Nayak’s brother to Istanbul. There one of Ajay’s team tells him his fortune telling grandma says Ajay is about to meet the love of his life. Ajay mistakes Prashanthi (the adorable Samantha Prabhu) for Nayak’s brother’s girlfriend, so from the beginning we have a hate-to-love romantic subplot. Which is one of my favorite romantic tropes.
Ajay and his team capture Nayak’s brother which leads to the scene on the rooftops of Istanbul on the poster. With Ajay’s foot on the gangster’s throat, gun pointed at his head while negotiating on the phone with Nayak.
After some great Turkey scenery (so pretty!) and adorable romantic scenes with Prashanthi where Ajay continually puts his foot in his mouth, Ajay returns to India. He then gets shocking news. His father is waking up from a 14 year coma! His father did NOT die! Now, here is the part where the film evidently liberally borrows from the German film Goodbye Lenin (which I have not seen). The doctors tell Ajay that his father should be protected from any bad news or distress so that he doesn’t go back into a coma.
So, Ajay has to get back the family home. This is where the comedy uncles come in. Telugu films seem to have a requirement that this guy, Brahmanandam Padma Sri, appear in every single film to provide comic relief. He’s even shoe-horned into Magadheera for absolutely no reason at all. (Thank God Rajamouli didn’t have to include him in Baahubali!)
Usually, I find the comedy uncle bits of Telugu films very annoying and totally unfunny. In films like Darling, you can see Prabhas struggling to not crack up at his antics, and I just don’t get it.
But here, he’s woven into the plot as the current owner of the family mansion, that he rents out as a film set. Ajay convinces him that they want to film a reality show with hidden cameras. It’s all an elaborate ruse so that Ajay’s father (Prakash) will think nothing has changed, and that Ajay has taken his MLA seat and followed in his father’s footsteps. Ajay and his team even produce fake television news shows and newspapers, which is from Goodbye Lenin. A Telugu is now the prime minister of India, etc.! Mahesh is great in all these comedy pieces, posing as a film producer, and a participant in a reality show. His engagement to Prashanthi becomes part of the plan to keep his father happy.
Can you guess who caused his father’s car accident all those years ago? Yeah, like I said, it’s a revenge flick. The ways that Ajay crafts revenge on each person who harmed his father are actually quite clever, while keeping his father in the dark that he is now a cop.
I give Dookudu a solid four stars out of five. Great action, great romance, and great fun. Mahesh is absolutely fantastic in Dookudu, and Samantha Prabhu is great, too. They have wonderful chemistry together. The songs are not exceptional, but pretty good. This one where the lyrics say “My heart is sacrificed on the altar of love”. It’s kind of crazy with the faux Aztek costumes or whatever they are, but so colorful!
Yep. I think I’ve convinced myself writing this up, that I’m going to need to own this one on DVD. Because Mahesh in many colors of wedding finery!
With strong recommendations from my Quora answer, and also Margaret of Don’tCalllItBollywood, I watched the Malayalam 1990 classic film Innale [Yesterday] this weekend. It’s available on ErosNow.com.
Margaret promised a cozy movie to watch, and it was. This classic film gem, by director P. Padmarajan came out in 1990. It stars Shobana as the victim of a bus accident in a pouring rain storm. She is found half dead on a river bank by some villagers who steal her bangles and jewelry before they take her to get help.
When she regains consciousness, she has no memory of her past, or even her name. Sarath, the son of her doctor, is the hospital administrator and he calls her Maya for expediency. She is the sole survivor of the accident, and it is presumed her family died in the accident. She recognizes none of the photographs of the dead. They post her picture in the paper, but only get imposters trying to claim her.
Sarath gives her the a guest cottage on his family property and a maid servant, and even sets her up with a teaching job at the local school. And, he’s falling under young Maya’s spell. At one point, Sarath is driving Maya and the Tracy Chapman song For My Lover was playing on the radio of the car. It took me right back to that time in the late 80’s/early 90’s when she was so popular, and the song choice was particularly poignant.
T’d climb a mountain if I had to
And risk my life so I could have you
You, you, you…
….
For my lover for my lover
I follow my heart
And leave my head to ponder
Deep in this love
No man can shake
Shobana was absolutely luminous in this film. She was the best actor in the whole film, and I was so impressed with her. I’m very much looking forward to seeing her film Manichitrathazhunow, which also stars my second favorite actor of Innale – Suresh Gopi.
Jayaram as Sarath, the young man who falls for the amnesia victim Maya was fine, and sweet. But after the interval we are introduced to Maya’s husband, returned from the US to try to find her.
Suresh Gopi as Dr. Narendran, Maya/Gauri’s bereft husband, had not very much screen time, but he was exceptionally good and has a deep impact. We see his loneliness and grief, and a glimmer of hope that his wife may have survived the bus crash. Through several flashbacks we see how happy he and his wife were in their brief marriage.
This is what Indian cinema does so well. Set up for the audience these dilemmas. We don’t know who to root for, as our heart is tugged both ways. Maya is blissfully happy with Sarath, but we see how happy she was with Dr. Narendran in her past. Suresh Gopi just broke my heart at the end of the film.
It’s like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai with Shahrukh and Salman in that final wedding scene. So much crying!!
Or Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam with Aish, Salman and Ajay. Team Ajay all the way!
I loved Innale, scratchy old film print and all. Four stars out of five. Suresh Gopi co-stars with Shobana in Manichitrathazhu , which makes me look forward to it even more.
When Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy team up, comedy magic happens. Bridesmaids was comedy gold. And they’ve even brought back Rose Byrne as Melissa’s foil in Spy, as Rahna Boyanov.
The fun begins with the opening credits which spoof every James Bond film, both in look and in the music. Melissa plays Susan Cooper, who works in the CIA basement as the the voice in the ear of super spy Bradley Fine, played by Jude Law. The film works so well, because it has great action scenes spiked with incredibly funny laughs. So, Susan is the ultimate Miss MoneyPenny, in love with her Bradley Fine, of course, working as his analyst as well as picking up his dry cleaning. She hears him get shot by Rahna who gloats over killing Fine.
Rahna also boasts that she knows all the identities of the top CIA spies, so Alison Janney, the CIA director takes up Susan Cooper’s offer to go track Rahna down. And this meeting is our introduction to Jason Statham as a hilarious parody of every action hero he’s ever played. “I’ve swallowed enough microchips to shit a computer!” He can’t believe that Alison Janney is sending Susan into the field and not him.
I loved, loved, loved Susan’s relationship with her best friend at work, the hilarious British actress Miranda Hart.
Really, that was one of the key strengths of this movie. All the relationships between the women. Once Susan goes undercover, in one embarrassing cat lady type get up after another, she worms her way into Rahna’s company by claiming to be a bodyguard Rahna’s father hired. And then Susan and Rahna trade insults at each other for the rest of the movie, but in a very affectionate joking way. It was wonderful. (Rahna’s hair is so big it’s almost a credited cast member by itself.)
Of course Jason Statham doesn’t trust Susan to be competent, and follows her, but this again is another brilliant move by writer/directer Paul Feig. Susan is extremely competent. The male spies, one by one, screw up, and she saves the day at every turn. There’s a big twist towards the end that I won’t spoiler. It’s just a wonderful blend of great action with even better comedy. All the actors involved looked like they had just a blast making this movie. Highly recommend. Four out of five stars.
I saw Charlie back in January when it came to one theater in Chicago. My first Malayalam film on the big screen. I give it three and a half stars out of five. But definitely worth a watch if you’re a fan of Parvathy or Dulquer.
This is possibly the most quirky Indian film I’ve seen yet. I didn’t loveCharlie. I’ll admit it. It was like Dulquer Salmaan was the ultimate manic pixie dream guy. That the heroine searches for the whole movie, and doesn’t actually meet until the last five-ten minutes. So, I went in wanting the big romance, and it was — in a way. I appreciate the role reversal, because I’ve seen this movie, and read this book the other way many a time.
She rents a room and the previous tenant has left all his very, very weird artsy stuff. She finds a portion of a graphic novel he drew, and has to find out what happened next. She looks for all the people that he drew in the pictures he left, and asks them about what happened next, and where he is. And she discovers a string of stories of this character do-gooding, and him not being able to stay in one place longer than a day, it seems. But she is also a free spirit — on the run from an arranged marriage to the brother of her brother’s fiance.
I think it was another example of me going in with expectations of Bangalore Days or OK Kanmani, and it is quite a different kettle of fish altogether. It’s a good movie, but not great. Very quirky by Indian movie standards. I felt like we didn’t really get to know Charlie, he really stayed a mystery up until the end. There was one absolutely incredible fantasy song sequence (he left a Polaroid selfie of himself in the apartment) .
The subtitles of the song basically were that he is like a mirage. I enjoyed Dulquer in the pirate get up and the flowing mundu skirt!
One of the final scenes was filmed at some real life festival (Find me in the crowd!) with these two rows of elephants facing each other and enormous crowds. It was a real WOW moment.
Evidently, Charlie’s a big hit in Kerala, and Dhanush has already bought the Tamil remake rights. This is a film I could totally see Ranveer doing if it was remade in Hindi.
Prior to 1: Nenokkadine, my Telugu film watching has pretty much been limited to everything starring Prabhas I could get my hands on (post Baahubali!) and anything by S. S. Rajamouli (Eega, Maghadeera, etc.) I could get my hands on.
1: Nenokkadine (1: Alone) opens with a young boy running through a forest being chased and shot at by gun-toting goons. (I learned later the young boy is lead actor Mahesh Babu’s son.) He runs into a road and into the arms of the police but someone explains it away – “Oh, he has mental problems. He imagines his parents were killed and he’s being chased by the killers.” This is the first of many psych outs in this thriller.
1: Nenokkadine is my first Mahesh Babu film, and from the opening number, I could tell Mahesh is a STAR. He plays Gautham, a rock star.
Mahesh has charisma. He has screen presence. Not the most notable dance talent, at least from what I saw in this movie, but he makes up for that by looking exceptionally cool in all the action scenes. And this movie has a LOT of action scenes.
After the Who Are You rock number above, Gautham thinks he sees one of the killers from his dreams/visions in the audience and runs after him. He believes he ends an elaborate motorcycle chase and fist fight by killing the man. But then – PSYCH – Sameera ( Kriti Sanon, in her debut) has videoed the whole thing, and there wasn’t anyone else there at all! There is no body because he was fighting air.
WTF? From this point, you realize nothing you see can you rely on to be real. Because our hero has mental issues. Is he schizophrenic and seeing hallucinations? My subtitles didn’t tell me, but he has missing brain cells or something on a scan, as a doctor tries to explain to the journalist Sameera in the hospital after the imaginary fight. Why is the doctor telling all this to a journalist? (I really don’t understand health privacy laws in India, I’m just saying.)
Gautham decides to go to Goa for some R&R, but who appears on his yacht but that dogged journalist, Sameera. She then proceeds to Gaslight poor Gautham by approaching him multiple times in the same situations so that he isn’t sure what is real and what is not in their relationship. I read later that this was Kriti’s first film, and I’m sorry, but it shows. Yes, she’s pretty enough, but I was not buying the instant love between the characters. And I really couldn’t get past the plot point that she was milking his mental illness for her own ends. How did Gautham get past that so quickly? Don’t question, it’s luuuurve. I didn’t find her funny, and this was the comic relief segment of the movie. I just didn’t think she had good chemistry with Manesh. Manesh was also not really that charismatic in the rom com portion. I reserve judgement if he can pull that off and will try some other movies of his, hopefully where he is paired with a better co-star actress with some sparkle to her.
(Loved Mahesh in the glasses look, though)
So, at this point, the plot becomes very convoluted. We’re not sure if killers are after Gautham or after Sameera, or both. Gautham is convinced Sameera is in danger, and unfortunately beats up a bunch of her friends who were planning a surprise birthday party.
The action moves to London, and there are some fantastic action set pieces. One really intense scene has Gautham killing someone in a public bathroom because he thinks it’s a hallucination that he just wants to go away. But it was real. There are so many twists and turns, and because of Gautham’s condition, and his loss of childhood memories, we as the audience never know what to believe. I’m not sure the logic of the whole movie really works out if you analyze it afterwards, but it’s an exhilarating roller coaster ride of a movie. I was watching most of it on a plane on my iPad with headphones on, and I probably amused my seatmate by gasping out loud at several points. The ending scenes when Gautham regains his childhood memories were really emotionally touching.
I really liked the catchy soundtrack, too. Just try to get the London Babu item song out of your head. I wish I could find this with subs as the lyrics were pretty funny:
I watched this movie becauses it was recommended over and over on my Quora post about why I love Indian cinema as a Telugu movie to try. Prabhas is still my first love Telugu star, but I will definitely be checking out more Mahesh Babu movies. This guy just oozes cool, like a much taller Jason Statham kind of action guy.
Four stars out of 5. Worth a rentMal! (I rented it on Google Play which had English subs, of a fashion at least.)
I watched Madhavan’s recent boxing movie, Irudhi Suttru (The Snob) in Tamil. It was released and filmed at the same time as the Hindi Salaa Khadoos. I watched it in the original Tamil because that was the version available on Google Play, and I wanted to download it to watch on a flight.
Irudhi Suttru had a woman writer/director, Sudha Kongara, which I don’t think I knew going in. I learned from Wikipedia that she was an assistant director to Mani Ratman for 7 years. Maddy was really good, and it’s so great for him to come back with a dramatic role like this. The newcomer Ritika Singh, the young woman boxer was also great. It got a bit trite in the dialogue in the second half, but was still quite good.
Madhavan’s character Prabhu had been a talented boxer, but his temper and lack of finesse with the politics of the boxing federation has left him sent to the backwater of Chennai to train women boxers. Our introduction to Prabhu has him kicking out a married woman he’s having a sexual affair with out of his bed. We learn that his wife has left him, and he has had a string of these affairs.
After he arrives in Chennai, he watches and assesses the talent of the young women being trained by the local coach (played by Nasser), when he spots the sister of one of the boxers attacking and punching to the ground the boxing judges she feels didn’t give her sister a fair shake.
Prabhu tracks down Madhi at the fish market because he is much more interested in training her, than the sister Luxmi who has been already been training for years. He offeres her money to come train every day with him, to replace the family income she would lose by giving up her day job.
This causes jealousy with the older sister Luxmi, and at one point Luxmi does something that injures Madhi before an important fight. We’ve seen the journey, setbacks and comeback fights in boxing movies before, but here we have a young female boxer who gets a huge crush on her coach, who she calls, “Master.” He shuts that down immediately, not in an unkind way, but a matter of fact, “it happens” kind of way.
The setup first half of the film was very good, but the dialogue in the second half got a bit predictable and trite. The songs were okay, but not outstanding. My favorite was probably this one with the two sisters celebrating having some spending money for once:
I don’t know what to think about the ending. The writer/director left it ambiguous as when the young woman wins her final bout, she runs to her coach and flings herself at him and wraps her arms and legs around him. Is this still just a coach/student relationship? You can view it both ways.
When Prabhu gives up his position in the boxing federation so that she can fight, Madhi says to Prabhu, “Is that not love?”
And then when she jumps in his arms at the end, but he doesn’t initially put his arms around her. I think he awkwardly sort of hugs her back, but it could be left for either interpretation. If you want to think, since she had gone back to always calling him, “Master” that it was just a student/coach relationship, you can think that. If you want to think it had gone beyond, you could read that in, too.
And I don’t know what I want it to be. I guess I lean towards the coach/ student bond.
The one scene that bothered me, was when he thought she threw the national finals fight (when her sister broke her hand) and he throws her to the ground, and then kicks her. I know Prabhu’s supposed to be this volatile character, but the kick really bothered me. The yelling I could deal with, even though he was really harsh. He’s supposed to lose it. A friend told me she viewed it that it showed how he viewed the girl just as he would have a male boxer, and treated her just the same.
I loved that the actress playing Madhi was so athletic. I learned later that she is a MMA star in India, and had never even acted before. I think that was smart of the filmmaker to choose someone so believable in the training and fight sequences. I can’t believe she didn’t know Tamil and learned all those lines phonectically! She was great! Now I’m sort of wondering if she was more natural in the Hindi version of the film. I haven’t seen Mary Kom yet, so I can’t compare this film to Priyanka’s performance.
But Maddy! Oh my gosh, it was great to see Madhavan be a bad ass bad boy at the beginning especially. And then I loved how he was this great coach, and just dealt with her crush — hey, it happens, don’t worry about it, now go put on your track suit and let’s get to work. He is a flawed character. I contrast it to SRK in Chak De! who seemed more saintly than this.
And he looked AMAZING! I wasn’t sure about that whole longish hair and beard when I first saw the trailer, but man, did I love it. He was so big and buff!!
With a plot like this, you can’t help but think a lot about the Clint Eastwood film Million Dollar Baby. Now obviously, Clint Eastwood is a million years old in that film. But it’s also a boxing coach relationship with a young woman, and how intimate and close it is, even if it’s not sexual at all. Maddy wasn’t QUITE old enough to be fatherly. At least not in an Indian film world. (And thank god he didn’t have to kill her in the end!)
I give three and a half stars out of five. Definitely worth a watch.
On a complete side note I feel like I have been seeing the actor Nasser EVERYWHERE recently. He was the Dad in Jeans which I recently watched.
And then he was a supporting coach in Irudhi Suttru
Then he was the villain in the Telugu movie I just watched!
In looking up his name, I discovered he was in Baahubali!! Mind BLOWN.
(Loved Mahesh in the glasses look, though)
Pardesi Reviews 