Death of 2 Words - Tashan the Review

Cut 1 – A big time company in the easterly Silicon city. IT folks working hard throughout the year, and finally getting the award for best annual project of ‘07. The prize money was to be spent on something ravishing to make it a memorable event. The young and enthusiastic in the team plan for a combo deal of movie + dinner for 100 odd member team. They initially plan for Krazy4, and then give it a thought to wait for another 2 weeks to watch the most awaited movie of the year. The movie is supposed to be shown only at the single screen theatres and not the multiplexes. Our lads do a herculean task in snatching the tickets to watch the 1st day 2nd show and booking 4 rows in an uptime Pune theatre. The stage is all set for the Giga event.

Cut 2 – Just before the start of the movie I throw myself into one of the chairs and I am about to start getting a proud feeling of facilitating this event. Amit and Makarand are sitting alongside me in the theatre. The man behind the projector is generous, doesn’t spend too much of time and starts beaming the titles without showing any trailers. And immediately a sound echoes in both my ears “It’s a flop!!!” - Courtesy Amit and Makarand. I thought it’s their STYLE (Wait… before stumbling, please get to know the meaning of the once widely used English word “style” from your parents). I was pretty sure that the YR banner, the Great Writer, foursome Super Stars (together worth around 25 crores), and the musician duo of Vishal Shekhar would definitely be a rock-solid entertainer. Like an avid movie geek as always, I put all my senses to watch the movie.

Cut 3 - A decent looking retro convertible red Mercedes traversing through the snow deserts of Ladakh appears on the screen. My mind registers the number on car’s front number plate which reads “UGR …”. And then during the course while watching the movie when I try hard registering something in my mind, the harder it became as my brain started getting duped because of the …….. insignificant, irritating, irrelevant, mad use of the word Tashan and so is the act as well. Next 2+ hours everyone in the theatre was bolted to their chairs so as to find a single moment to cash-on their hard earned money. For me it was a mammoth 25 Grand just on the movie tickets! And I could see all of it going for a waste. The crowd was cheerful though and it find it’s ways to “enjoy” the movie (by clapping and hooting during the romantic, comic, tragic and action scenes). Well there’s nothing to write about it, at least nothing good. But what’s provoking me to write is the same 25 Grand J. This is also the first movie I watched after a gap of 3 weeks J!!! (I’ve been watching movies on DVDs every single weekend for last whatever months. And I was expecting a real big one this time after the prolonged gap.)

Cut nnnn - So it’s a story about a super-urban dude working in a call center -Saif, an itsy-bitsy-revengeful girl-disguised-behind-cute-face- Kareena, a wannabe-English-speaking-big- Mumbai-Don - Anil, and a suburban-small-time-thug - Akshay Kumar. We should show this movie to the people in the 1st world (I don’t know whether such a word exists, it’s an opposite of the 3rd world). Saif (Jimmy Cliff) who is a FTE J in a call center + part-time English language teacher, roams around Mumbai flaunting his ultra-modern cruiser bike which must be as costly as a “D” segment car in India. Same is the case with his lavish condominium. (Insane I’m, who do not understand about director’s “Creative Liberty”) But wait… if we show this to the “firangs” we’ll loose all the forthcoming off-shoring jobs which are already diminishing rapidly. (I’ll leave that to Kiran Karnik of Nasscom, Chopras, and CEO’s of Offshoring companies.) Saif’s character must have been intended to be carved out as a simpleton, but he can not provide justice and gives a lot more glamour to the character unnecessarily.

Kareena works as Anil Kapoor’s personal secretary. Anil Kapoor (Bhaiiyyaji) wants to become a fluent English speaker to impress his fellow businessman. Well Anil hails from Kanpur and carries heavy Kanpurriyya accent. Kareena introduces Saif (as her own secret plan J) to Anil as his English teacher. The initial scenes of Anil learning English have come up very well and reincarnation of the famous “Diwar” monologue (“Khush to bahut hoge tum…”) would be one of the best scenes Anil must have delivered till date. The linguistic and phonetic variations create a lot of interest initially, but then overshadow the character and the movie as well. We have seen such characters in “My Fair Lady”, “Chup ke Chup ke (Dharmndra), Goal Maal (Utpal Dutt) and none of these appeared to be doing linguistic circus as in Tashan.

Akshay’s entry is probably the other best part of the movie. It reminded me of one of my favorite Hindi movie “Jaane Bhi Do Yaron”. But pretty soon our friend Vijay Krishna Acharya makes a worst mockery of the legendary mythological sequence from the masterpiece. Akshay appears to be the coolest dude in the movie and has actually portrayed it close to the character - A small time thug in Kanpur and aspiring to be a #1 shooter in the Mumbai underworld. But again Acharya does the trick and dilutes the role along the length of the movie.

Acharya couldn’t repeat the success of Dhoom(s) in terms of weaving the storey. The script and direction is simply horrible. Though he creates some waves sporadically with the dialogues. When the same number plate of the red Mercedes appears in the movie one more time it reads something like “MH 03…” (which should have been UGR…). By this time I already have lost the interest and the winning feeling of catching the continuity related flaws in the film.

Music doesn’t appear to be entirely of Vishal-Shekhar (They must have off-loaded the same to small time music cookie-cutters in Ulhasnagar). One of the songs – “Dil Hara” is audible, but that’s lost due to the ill-coordinated choreography and visual effects. It has a flavor of Indian folk song and is shot on the backdrops of seashore in Greece. That fusion doesn’t go well at all. “Dil Dance Mare” is another one which is a cheap entertainer. The background music and voice overs eat up most of the dialogues.

Some of the scenes are visual treats but it’s not because of any particular camera angle, or frame, or light effects, but merely because of the beautiful locations in Ladakh, Greece, Rajasthan and Kerala.

Fight sequences are more of a comedy including the one inside a fort in Rajasthan, where Saif kareena and Akshay all start gunning their AK47, revolvers and 303 look alike without ever seen those. Akshay mimics Keanu Reeves of Matrix which in fact reminds me of ninja series movies such as “shadow less snake” or “monkey less shadow”, or “shadow’s shadow” etc. The super-stretched fight sequence towards the climax is a lifetime tribute to the action heroes such as Mithun and Rajani, and directors such as Ramu (Aag fame) and David Dhawan.

While coming out of theatre I had a tale to narrate to my younger one “Once upon a time there lived 2 words, “Tashan” and “Style” which were vanished on 28th April 2008………………………”

I literally had to cover my face while entering the dinning hall. Half an hour after the movie I could see that the team has already started enjoying the food. The restaurateur was eligible for a hefty tip which he got in the end, as the food really salvaged the situation - elevating the mood of 100 odd loosers.

Well for me NOW it’s time to go to sleep and dream about Acharya being whacked by Sr. and Jr. Chopra’s, Chopra’s being whacked by distributors, Anil who is giving his first and the last impressions together, Akshay reciting Hanuman Chalisa and Tulsi Ramayana every morning and enacting Ram in the Ramleela pandals somewhere in North this Dushera, so as to pay homage to the Almighty. Also Twinkle divorcing him for doing all the manly Kanpurriya and sachin-making-pad adjustments-on-the-cricket-pitch, kind of acts on the screen. Kareena going on pilgrimage to Haridwar to do rituals of the movie, Saif obviously following Kareena but in the midst changing tracks and going after “marina” (whoever…what’s in the name anyways?). And then I’m getting out of the bed next day having a great feeling of giving ways to my frustration, writing this review after spending 7 some hours over last 8 days.

Regards, Yogesh Dixit