127 Hours

127 Hours isn’t an easy film to explain and it’s surely not an easy watch as well but the true story of Aaron Ralston who cut his own arm that was stuck under a boulder with all its unsettling imagery is hard film to take your eyes off. Danny Boyle’s follow-up to Slumdog Millionaire is unequivocally one of the most disconcerting films you’d ever watch but don’t let that stop you from experiencing a great cinematic achievement.

Aaron Ralston (James Franco), a mountain climber, takes off to the heart of the Grand Canyon all alone and gets stuck under a boulder. Ralston spends a grueling 127 hours with the huge boulder resting on his right arm before resorting to an unimaginable measure of cutting his arm in order to survive.

The great thing about a filmmaker like Danny Boyle is the ease with which he moves from film to film. Keeping his repertoire in mind it’s not hard to understand why Boyle would choose a subject like 127 Hours. Most of Boyle’s characters are people who’d be happy to stay away from the spotlight but when forced into a corner they find great resilience in themselves. In that sense Aaron Ralston and Danny Boyle are a match made in heaven and Boyle seizes the opportunity to film one of the greatest modern day stories of human willpower with both hands.

Based on Ralston’s book Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Boyle collaborates with Oscar winning screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) on the screenplay, which superbly manages to convey the million emotions that Ralston goes through in those 127 hours. The loneliness, the attempts to free himself, the physical and the emotion weariness, the hallucinations and the desolation are all there and the script never lets go of the tempo. Even though there’s absolutely no sense of suspense attached to the proceedings as we all know that Aaron will get stuck and will ultimately survive, 127 Hours keeps you riveted to the screen. This is largely due to the unflinching career defining performance by James Franco. Occupying most of the screen time a la Tom Hanks in Castaway but only better, Franco becomes Ralston and you just can’t look away. It’s never an easy task for an actor to be by one’s self but Franco ensures that you don’t really miss anyone else.

127 Hours isn’t your regular survival of the will kind of tale. Rather it’s a gut wrenching and extremely tough act to take in. Boyle never shies away from the visceral and puts you right in the heart of the Grand Canyon where Ralston was stuck. Anthony Dod Mantle’s visually stunning and hyper-kinetic camerawork coupled with an evocative sound design transmit Ralston’s state of mind and AR Rahman’s Oscar nominated score takes it to the next level. Much like Ralston’s summation of his relationship with the boulder that traps him, 127 Hours marvelously culminates in the final moments where Rolston severs his stuck arm. The highly graphic and disturbing images are elevated thanks to Franco’s acting, Dod Mantle’s brilliant camerawork and Rahman’s string arrangement in the climatic version of ‘Liberation’.

Danny Boyle applies numerous techniques like split-screens, flashbacks, zooms and crazy camera angles to convey Ralston’s story but at the heart of it the protagonist’s sheer will to survive overshadows everything else. Franco’s tour de force portrayal is the focal point of the film and the actor never lets down. Watch it for sure.

Rating: 4 out 5

Cast: James Franco

Screenplay by: Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy based on Aaron Ralston’s Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

Directed by: Danny Boyle

Image: www.iwatchstuff.com

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Dil To Baccha Hai Ji

Dil To Baccha Hai Ji (DTBHJ) isn’t a typical ‘Madhur Bhandarkar’ film. No, it’s not bereft of cardboard cutouts masquerading as characters, insensitive portrayals, cheap jokes or jarring background score threatening to tear your eardrums every time something dramatic needs to conveyed; DTBHJ is a full loaded Bhandarkar film and yet it’s different for finally we have a Madhur Bhandarkar film that will not win any National Award!

Following its tagline ‘Love Grows, Men Don’t’ DTBHJ is about three men who believe they have found the love of their boring lives but as life isn’t a bed of roses our boys will learn that true love will come their way but only at the end of the film. In his late 30’s and recently divorced, Naren (Ajay Devgn) shifts back into his parents’ house and takes up paying guests in the form of Abhay or Aby (Emraan Hashmi), a local Lothario of a gym instructor who beds everything that moves and Milind (Omi Vaidya), a proud virgin who believes in saving himself for that one perfect woman and that one perfect night. The tiresome threesome end up meeting the objects of their affection- a young secretary, June Pinto (Shazahn Padamsee), a trophy wife Anushka Narang (Tisca Chopra, ravishing!) and an RJ who desperately wants to become actor Gungun (Shraddha Das) and go through the motions of love. Naren tries hard to fit into the 22 year old June’s friend circle, Aby gets goodies from sugar mama Anushka but ends up falling for her step-daughter Nikki (Shruti Hassan) and Milind is only too happy to run to the cleaners as Gungun uses him for everything from getting drinks in a pub to getting a new portfolio clicked. After much deliberation the three inch closer to winning over their women but things don’t go as planned and in the end the three are left high and dry only to bump into the real ‘true’ loves of their lives.

DTBHJ ushers in a Bandarkar v 2.0 simply because this isn’t a dreary tale that the multi National Award winning director has been long associated with. This is a bright and happy film and thanks to Priya Suhas’s decent production design and Ravi Walia’s neat camerawork DTBHJ even manages to look up-market. And yet DTBHJ is as tacky as most Bhandarkar films end up being.

Replete with crude jokes about homosexuality, aging, caricatured portrayals of just about everyone and insensitive things like a stray dog named Kasab as the mutt was found at VT Station and is a terror, DTBHJ might be funny at places but on the whole is rather tasteless. Like most Bhandarkar films DTBHJ features a characters as flat as a three day old cola, shoddy writing with loads of expository dialogues that contain the entire story of some other film and rather strange characterizations- a Radio Jockey whose broke as hell, a business tycoon who looks like a lost child, a Goan granny who talks like some cheap gangster, etc.

Many actors believe that a role in a Madhur Bhandarkar film suddenly puts you in a different league and while this isn’t a ‘typical’ Bhandarkar film no one takes their job seriously. Don’t blame them for how different can you play a Hindi film playboy or how challenging can it be to play a business tycoon who mouths inanities like ‘ There’s an economic forum in Geneva….we must go there together….we all will go, great we will go next week’ without even bothering to make the obligatory ‘dramatic’ pauses? Devgn puts in a decent effort and at places he’s even fun to watch but Hashmi, a victim of his own ‘serial kisser’ image looks like a buffoon rolling his eyes and smiling his impish smile. Omi Vaidya’s strange accent was perhaps fun in 3 Idiots but here it’s annoying and so is the poor poetry he bores us with. Even if Bhandarkar reserves his most insensitive jokes for women in his films, they always have a bigger presence in them but here barring Tisca Chopra, who looks better than everyone else put together, no one else makes a mark. Das is shabby but Padamsee and Hassan are passable. As far as acting goes my pick of the ladies was Naren’s lady lawyer- a character called Sunanda Pradhan; hilarious to say the least.

Bhandarkar wastes much of the screen time with absolutely mindless actions and half-way into the film just as you think what the hell is DTBHJ all about he introduces Nikki and makes Aby fall for her in a desperate bid to infuse some semblance of a story. Towards the end Bhandarkar rather conveniently just sums up everything as if he’s on speed mode or maybe the release date of the film was staring him in the face. There are some amusing moments and DTBHJ might be Bhandarkar’s idea of a fun film but you know sometimes the twain just don’t meet.

Rating: 2/5

Cast: Ajay Devgn, Emraan Hashmi, Omi Vaidya, Shruti Hassan, Sharaddha Das, Shazahn Padamsee and Tisca Chopra

Written by: Madhur Bhandarkar, Neeraj Udhwani and Anil Pandey

Directed by: Madhur Bhandarkar

Image: www.isongz.com

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Fair Game

What happens when one day fine day everyone gets to know that you are a spy? Based on the true story of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative whose cover was blown by the White House, Fair Game doesn’t really go in for the shock and awe but never falls short of engaging.

Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) is a CIA operative who balances covert operations across the world along with a very healthy suburban family life that is picture perfect with two kids and a husband. With the White House hell bent on attacking Iraq on the basis of the intel about its weapons of mass destruction, Plame gets her husband, Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), a former ambassador to an African nation, to go to Niger to investigate if the reports of a sale of yellow cake uranium to Iraq are true. Wilson concludes that such a sale never took place and even writes an article for the New York Times stating how the White House manipulated information to justify the attack on Iraq. The White House makes its move by not only revealing Plame’s identity but discredits Wilson’s claim by suggesting that he was compelled by his wife to tarnish the President. Plame and Wilson don’t see eye to eye on how to deal with the situation and while Plame wants to remain quite Wilson decides to fight for what is right. Finally Plame chooses to come clean with her story.

For a film whose premise is pretty basic the first half hour or so of Fair Game doesn’t really make any sense. Characters talk the talk and walk the walk in a very staccato manner without really adding anything substantial to the plot but some where along the way Fair Game suddenly makes sense. Once you catch on the film grips you and Doug Liman never really loses the tension or even the pace. What starts off a political thriller soon changes gears and becomes a taut drama when Wilson’s actions isolate Plame and even threaten their marriage.

Fair Game is blessed with a very convincing Naomi Watts at the center of it all. Her Plame never goes overboard and is so believable that at times she doesn’t really do anything that an actor would be inspired to; rather she plays Plame almost like routine. You realize how wonderfully restrained Watts is when in the final minutes of the film Doug Liman cuts to the real Plame’s C-Span testimony as the end-credits play. This reviewer has, much to his own chagrin, in the past has found Penn to be a very boring actor to say the least. Barring Carlito’s Way and Mystic River and maybe U-Turn to some extent no matter what character Penn embodies he comes across as someone who seems to tease the audience for no real reason. But this time around Penn keeps his emotions under check and even though he relies on the very conspicuous lines on his forehead to convey myriad emotions, Penn packs in a very credible performance.

Doug Liman’s trademark of realistic and almost documentary like execution that added great resonance to the Bourne series is at play here as well. Liberal use of handheld camera and the heady mix of politics with family drama keep you riveted to Fair Game even though it never really transcends to evoke a similar agitated reaction from the viewer that the actors portray. Fair Game seizes you but that’s largely thanks to Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.

Rating: 3/5

Cast: Naomi Watts, Sean Penn

Screenplay by: Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth based on the books by Joseph Wilson (The Politics of Truth) and Valerie Plame (Fair Game)

Directed by: Doug Liman

This review originally appeared in Buzz in Town

Image: www.wikipedia.com

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