Deep-Fried Death Wish

Bah!

My gameplan for Sunday night was well chalked out. I had somehow coaxed me room-mate, good friend and ganglord Arun to visit our favorite desi movie rental, Mohan 'the Mech' Mallu uncle's realm and rent a brain tenderizer. Anshu accompanied Arun to the rental store while I furiously battled bell peppers, cottage cheese and a motley assortment of veggies armed with only a kitchen knife and hypnotic curry powder. When the duo returned, they brought this movie... 'Karam' (meaning, fate) which our very own Mallu uncle promised to be 'gangster saga with a desi thumka*'. Arun had called me on the phone while picking the movie and uttered some keywords like 'gangster', 'mafia', 'hitman' and 'Priyanka Chopra'. The trick had worked as I had nodded violently and asked him to pick it up. I'd sealed my own fate. By the time the movie had ended, Arun had drooled his intelligence away and suffocated on the couch. I had experienced the penultimate degree of torture far beyond the threshold of human tolerance, a diarrhetic implosion, i reckon. In a nutshell the movie had some splendiferous moments which unfortunately were levelled violently by the incompetent ones in an apparent foul-play attempt.

Now, it's my turn to subject you the reader, to a quasi-similar if not similar whiff of brain tenderizing throes. The protagonist of this movie is a hitman, a cold blooded killer. His hits are cold enough to coagulate the blood of even the sharpest of internet surfers, squatting behind sixty seven foot firewalls with buttplugs in their ports and Nortonne AntiChrist Virus shields. The capo who employs his services and pays him to clip homosapiens is called Captain (played by stage veteran Bharat Dabholkar). As if that were hard. They should've given him a code name, like Captain Eggplant or maybe Perennial Potroast. Captain's favorite past time is dropping bodies like crumbs while buttering his toast. Captain has this gorilla of a human bodyguard who picks up losers and flicks them around like toothpicks. That stuff rhymes! Captain used to lift weights in his prime and now he lifts the sagging blubber under his arms. He has a sharp katana and he practices his samurai skills with the renewed vigor of a five year old who's just found use for a plastic light saber. He uses his tanto and wakazashi to size up unsuspecting carrots. His moves are so funny, its not even funny. All his croonies stand around his palace like a bunch of knuckleheads. He is the kind that spends years practicing maneuvers with a katana and brings a broad sword to the fight! It's like going to see a beautiful waterfall and making your own little contribution in short bursts. No, really. He does in the final battle. A broad sword that looks like a cardboard cut out with a hilt big enough to fit a cleverly disguised wad of delectable chocolate chip cookies.


The heroine, Ms.Chopra's role demands three difficult facial expressions. Smile, cry and samba. Smile is of course, to smile while standing aimlessly next to the hero as he pouts and flexes his biceps while solving calculus papers. Cry she does for two hours in the two hour thirty minutes length of the potboiler. Samba is when she's wearing eye popping tattered pieces of cloth designed by a fashion expert who's been in far too many fist fights. And poetry. She eats, breathes and shits poetry; the crummy shitty kind that is usually camouflaged in short burps and short breathes that follow thirty six hours of tears. Unfortunately, Ms.Chopra doesn't display much talent even when the gorilla of a bodyguard sizes her pinky up to convince the hero that the baddies mean business. John Abraham, as John the contract thriller is very good in his role as a baddie with a good heart.

The camera work, the use of filters and the shot composition is breathe-taking. Sanjay F Gupta's directorial skills have strong shades/influences of Mark Romanek and David Lynch. But may I also add that the take on these directors by our own is subtle and complementary. I think if the plot had more grit and focus on the protaganist's attempts to execute his last contract (clipping five top businessmen) while combating inner demons, the story would've kicked off on a much richer note. Unfortunately, the mushiness is way over line and the movie that starts off as an ice cold serving of 'mercenary chronicles' turns into a 'sticky summer of separation'. Too bad!