FILM: Satya 2
CAST: Puneet Singh Ratn, Anaika Soti, Aradhana Gupta, Amriyaan
DIRECTOR: Ram Gopal Varma
Spot the difference. It’s the same in all apparent details. Mumbai’s underworld caught in a compromising position by Ram Gopal Varma (RGV)’s camera prying into the mutilated lives of characters looking so scruffy and aggressive, you wish they would leave aside the bloodbath and just take a ‘bloody’ bath.
Yup, this is ostensibly a very familiar RGV territory. But hang on. There is something very different going on here. Strikingly rich and articulate in production design, Satya 2 is a startling original take on the evolution, collapse and restoration of Mumbai’s underworld in ways that question the economical paradigm of a nation on the brink of damnation.
Yes, we are talking about our country where crime and corruption grow in direct proportion to the apathy of the powers that be. Given the incredible leap in atrocities against the ‘un-empowered ‘(to coin an anti-capitalistic phrase) where does the poorest of the poor go when his daughter gets gang-raped, his wife dies of adulterated medicine and his father cannot get his Rs.500 pension without paying a bribe?
Stop right here. RGV’s film shows a devilish daring. It takes the underworld into confidence to build an anti-corruption empire that would feed the fed up by paralysing the super privileged.
It’s a startling premise, and one that RGV is not able to work out into any tenable blueprint of socio-political reform. But the very fact that he is able to suggest a solution, no matter how implausible, to the current climate of desperate de-escalation of morality, is reason enough to applaud this flawed but riveting drama of the doomed and the dangerous.
Beware of the hopeless. They have nothing to lose except their despair. This is the propelling premise of RGV’s neo-Satya’s plot.
The narration is most of the time taut and tactile as we follow the new millennium Satya’s journey from a village in Rajasthan to the vortex of gangsterism in Mumbai. Ironically, the police, sturdily represented in the film, don’t seem any different in its activities from the underworld.
RGV gives the saga of gangsterism a new spin creating for the underworld genre of cinema an entirely new formula and folklore of survival.
Gone are those crazy camera angles in RGV’s recent films that left us dizzy and disoriented.
Vikas Sharaf’s cinematography captures Mumbai in stunning sepia tones suggesting decadence and rebirth in the same range of vision.
Visually Satya 2 is RGV’s smartest and most eye catching film in years. The shootouts on the streets of Mumbai, which have been done to bludgeoning death in the past, acquire a new life here. The sequence where Satya is shot at in an open cafeteria is specially brilliant in the way the editor cuts to the chase without getting out of breath.
The under-construction buildings, a favourite haunt of filmy gangsters, are shot here with vigorous virility.
So many years after Satya spoke a new cinematic language, RGV is back in form displaying the sparks of brilliance that made the first Satya a trendsetting experience. No relation to the earlier film except the one of Bhai-giri, Satya 2 sneaks slyly into Mumbai’s dark dangerous sinister and ominous underbelly.
RGV’s eye for the migrant’s dismantled soul is unerring and powerful.
The performances range from the reined-in to the embarrassingly over the top.
In the title role, Puneet Singh Ratn’s restrained intensity aids the work’s aura of karmic catastrophe. (IANS)
FILM: Free Birds
Voiceovers by: Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Amy Poehler, George Takei, Colm Meaney, Keith David, Dan Fogler …
DIRECTOR: Jimmy Hayward
Free Birds is an animated, Thanksgiving themed time-travel adventure film.
It is the story of the first Thanksgiving meal from the perspective of the turkeys and their desperate attempt to get the first Turkey, off the thanksgiving menu.
A few days before Thanksgiving, the plot follows Reggie (voiced by Owen Wilson), a smart and inquisitive turkey, who fathoms why he and his buddies are fed so much corn every day.
He warns his brethren that the ‘turkey paradise’ that they long for is in reality their doomsday and “Thanksgiving is the worst nightmare as many of them get slaughtered to land up as the main course meal.”
Miffed with this revelation about their imminent demise, fellow turkeys throw Reggie out of the pen.
But destiny has something else in store for him. He lands up being the annual ritual- “pardoned turkey” after being taken fancy to, by the president’s daughter.
Under her patronage, Reggie leads a luxurious life eating pizzas and watching mushy television shows.
But soon a delusional and gung-ho Jake (voiced by Woody Harrelson), claiming to be the lone-wolf of the TFF (Turkey Freedom Front) kidnaps Reggie and forces him into a mission of travelling back in time to Plymouth Colony in 1621, just before the first Thanksgiving, to keep turkeys off the menu and save his brethren for all eternity.
This, Jake claims was entrusted upon him by the Great Turkey.
With the help of a time machine code name Steve (voiced by George Takei), Reggie and Jake reach their destination.
But when they reach there, they find themselves being hunted by Myles Standish (voiced by Colm Meaney) who is gathering as many turkeys as possible to feed the starving colonist and local Native Americans for their upcoming feast.
It is during this endeavour that Reggie and Jake come in contact with Jenny (voiced by Amy Poehler) and her father Chief Broadbeak (voiced by Keith David) and the four unite with a clear understanding that, “We do not fight. We defend, protect and survive.”
With the possibility of death lurking at the back of the characters’ minds, the film is positively not very lively.
Also, nothing in this complex and convoluted narrative is ever particularly thrilling or funny.
The outrageously blunt dialogues tend to create humour.
The romance that forms between Reggie and Jenny is insipid and uninspired. The over emotional family drama at the end seems forced and worst of all, Free Birds, which starts of by saying “loosely based on historical events”, insensitively further depicts the turkey slayings as a metaphor for the cruelties the Native Americans have suffered.
The voices lent by the star cast suit the characters to perfection.
The animation too is near perfect, given the subject. The visuals too are adequately vibrant.
The lone tree on the cliff is so reminiscent of the bird kingdom of Zambezia, which was released in the first week of August. But unlike in Zambezia, this tree shown in silhouette was withered and wasted.
Director and co-writer Jimmy Hayward’s attempt at Free Birds seems like a cobbled up project in terms of theme, tropes and satire.
The story and characters are mostly conventional and boring. The 3D effects did not add to the charm of the film. However, the film may appeal to the younger audience.
Overall, the film lacks the free spirit of ‘free birds’. (IANS)