FILM: Mardaani
Cast: Rani Mukerji, Tahir Bhasin, Jisshu Sengupta, Anil George
DIRECTOR:Pradeep Sarkar
A stellar cast only adds to this accomplished film’s sense of creative propriety.
Mardaani is a film that makes all the correct noises about child trafficking. And by ‘correct noises’, I do mean the soundtrack, which is among the most evocative provocative and satisfying in recent times.
Normally in Bollywood, when films are done with live sound, the effect is scratchy and at times in inaudible.
Mardaani cleans out the noises and yet retains a high decibel of authenticity in the complementary relationship between sight and sound. This is a film that knows its job.
This, then, is the world of Pradeep Sarkar’s derelict people. Posh pimps and “cool” flesh traders gnawing at the fabric of our society by playing with the lives of the most innocent and vulnerable.
Without the least fuss, director Pradeep Sarkar (so eloquent in his last film outing with Rani in ‘Laaga Chunari Mein Daag’) provides us vivid glimpses into the life of the cop-hero Shivani (Rani).
Rani’s Shivani is a mixture of the feminine and the ‘mardaani’. Displaying exemplary economy of expression, the narrative puts forward Shivani’s very articulate attitude to home and profession through brief, but lucid encounters with various characters.
Towards the end, the film’s elegant pace slackens, sags and almost collapses. But somehow, Sarkar manages to keep the proceedings from getting dragged down by the drama, no matter how unruly they progressively gets.
The narrative is well-stocked with signs of conscientiousness. Human trafficking is evidently not a pretext to assemble a thriller here. Rather, it’s the other way around. Out of the vast expanses of the film’s sensitivities, there emerges a very engaging thriller, replete with sincere efforts to demonstrate the harsh reality of child prostitution into a cinematic currency.
Shockingly, the film’s world of flesh trade is controlled by a cool urbane corporate type of dude named Walt (excellently played by the almost-new actor Tahir Raj Bhasin).
Walt operates his prostitution racket with the blue-toothed precision of a corporate enterprise. He is on his play-station in his free time and lives in a Delhi flat with his evil mom (Mona Ambegaonkar, scarily coquettish). It’s all stunningly normal and urbane.
The film’s biggest triumph lies in showing the murk that resides under gleaming surfaces. Girl children are sold for sexual gratification to men old enough to be their grandparents while the piped music plays soothingly in the background. There is a kind of unassuming veracity in the narration that quickly sucks you in. We are inescapably drawn in to Shivani’s dark and desperate mission.
You can’t come away unaffected by the brutal world that Shivani cracks after a girl she loves goes missing. The cat-and-mouse game between the cop-heroine and Walt is defined by some excellent dialogues. The words which colonize Pradeep Sarkar’s world are constantly more weighty than the casual tones suggest.
Mardaani lays open a world of crime and heartbreak. Scenes of unimaginable torture and humiliation meted out to young girls are placed against the screen heroics of a heroine who is neither Chulbul Pandey nor Singham and in many ways gutsier than both.
Rani Mukerji brings in a level of credibility to the character. Her action scenes are never larger than life. She is not a show-offy cop. And that’s a blessing. “Mardaani” is film that is carpeted with competent actors.
Almost every character, big or small, is played by actors who don’t believe their performances need to scream their skills.
This film believes in what it has to say about the killing of innocence.
“Ravaging the opposition and young girls come easily to me,” leers a politician.
Right. And India is shining. (IANS)
FILM: The Expendables 3
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Antonio Banderas…
DIRECTOR: Patrick Hughes
“Age is only a state of mind” – this statement that I heard in the film, immediately made my mind wander and think about all possible quotes and phrases on ‘age’ to analyse this film.
To be young at heart is one thing and to act your age is another, sums up The Expendables 3.
It is difficult to train old dogs to perform new tricks. Director Patrick Hughes finds himself in a similar situation, with actors who are past their prime offering deliberate histrionics and calculated pauses in this high-voltage action-drama.
Packed with unimaginative cameos and listless violence, the film offers nothing new or exciting to its audience. Like the earlier two films from the same franchise, this one too is about a group of death seeking mercenaries hired to do the CIA’s dirty work.
They are ‘The Expendables’ because nobody would care if they would live or die executing their mission, which is not only dangerous but also a top secret.
The film begins on an intriguing note, when an ammunition firing helicopter with CIA contractor Barney Ross (Sylverster Stallone) and his team, that includes Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren) and Toll Road (Randy Couture) trail a speeding Armoured Prison Transport.
The high-octane drama is to rescue one of Ross’s former colleagues, the knife expert Doc (Wesley Snipes).
Once Doc is carefully secured and introduced to the team, the narration shifts to the coast of Mogadishu in Somalia on a mission to apprehend a notorious arms dealer.
It is during this Somalian raid that they discover that their target is actually Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson), one of The Expendables’ co-founders, who Ross was convinced he’d killed years earlier when Stonebanks went rogue. After the mission goes awry, they abort their attack enabling Stonebanks to escape.
Meanwhile, the CIA handler Max Drummer (Harrison Ford) confronts Ross and gives him one final chance to apprehend Stonebanks.
Convinced that the Mogadishu incident demonstrated that his comrades are past their prime, Ross splits from his team and assembles a new crew with the help of head-hunter Bonaparte (Kelsey Grammer).
He travels all over from Moscow to Las Vegas to Mexico to New York City to recruit a younger, fitter and more tech-savvy team, adding ace sniper Mars (Victor Ortiz), computer hacker Thorn (Glen Powell), martial artist Luna (Ronda Rousey) and former Navy SEAL Smilee (Kellan Lutz) to go after Stonebanks in Bulgaria, where he is hiding with an army of mercenaries.
The outcome is rather obvious.
On the performance front, Antonio Banderas excels as the motor-mouthed wannabe merecenary Galgo. He brings much of the comic relief to the otherwise sagging tale. Mel Gibson is passable and the rest of the cast is deplorable.
Brian Tyler’s background score is good. The song at the end, Neil Young’s “Old Man,” is well amalgamated into the script.
Overall, the screenplay is dull and predictable. It is crammed with either full-on absurd action scenes or with lackluster close-ups with droning dialogues. The speech too lacks punch and passion.
The composite plot does nothing to generate suspense and the film gets to you in a while.
What keeps you hooked is your patience or your fancy craze to see the once glorious A-list action stars perform.
By and large, “The Expendables 3” may appeal only to front benchers who enjoy the adrenaline rush of mindless violence. (IANS)