Movie review- Madras Cafe

John Abraham may not have had a very noticeable career as a Bollywood actor but he is going great guns as a producer. Madras café is his second production venture, and he has chosen his theme and his team well (The first one being Vicky donor’, that did very well for itself).
The movie is about the separatist rebel ethnic Tamils in northern Sri-Lanka and their militant
outfit- the LTTE. Although all the key names have been changed in the movie- LTTE is referred
to as LTF and its chief Prabhakaran as Bhaskaran, the decoy is all too evident. The LTTE as of
now is practically non-existent after the death of Prabhakaran, but the sensitivities involved in
he issue can be gauged from the fact that the TN theatre owners have refused to screen this
movie. Not that the film shows any deviation from the truth, and not that LTTE has been shown
in poor light either. In fact, the movie begins with the portrayal of the sorry state of affairs of the
ethnic Tamils in Sri-Lanka. John Abraham plays an Indian military officer, who is chosen by
RAW to carry out covert operations in Sri-Lanka in an attempt to contain the LTTE by hook or
crook. He works independent of the overt Indian attempt in form of ‘Indian peace keeping
force’- the IPKF- a brain-child of the then prime-minister- Rajiv Gandhi (referred in the movie
only as the prime-minister or the ex-prime-minister). While the IPKF fails in its mission and has
to beat a retreat, John Abraham unearths a plot to assassinate the now ex-prime-minister Rajiv
Gandhi (the movie shows the PM to have had resigned his post following IPKF’s failure,
whereas the truth is that he had lost his post to VP Singh following Congress’s defeat in 1989)
The rest of the story is RAW and John Abraham’s attempts to ambush the LTTE’s plan to
assassinate Rajiv Gandhi, and how they fail to prevent the killing in Sriperambadur.

The most attractive part of the movie is the way in which John has been portrayed as a real
RAW agent. Most of the audience would want to believe that military agents and spies are like
James Bond or agent Vinod- completely infallible, heroic, brave-heart, lady charmers and have
the strength of a hulk who can fight thirty villains at one go. John’s character Vikram is a brave
man, but that is all. He has his weaknesses- he is shown to fail; he is shown to be unable to
protect his wife from being murdered, and finally he is shown to fail to prevent his Prime-mini
ster’s assassination. But despite being all this, he comes across as someone who wins the
heart of the audience. In short, he is the real hero, a real human hero.

The female lead is played by Nargis Fakhri who plays a war correspondent for an international
periodical. She helps John in getting leads into the LTTE cadre. Second female lead is Raashi
Khanna, who plays John’s wife, but frankly there’s not much to her role. All she has to do in the
movie is to lament her husband’s constant absence from home to dangerous assignments.

The other important characters are those of the Bala- the LTTE mole in the Indian agency in Sri-L
anka; Anna Bhaskaran, the LTTE chief, and Siddharth Basu, the RAW chief. The character of
Bala is played by a Prakash Belawadi, and he has done his part very well.

Shoojit Sarcar has been brilliant with his direction, so has been Kamaljeet Negi with his
cinematography.

A wonderful movie and a must watch.
My rating- 3.5 on 5

Movie review- Bhaag Milkha Bhaag

It is said that a book should never be judged by its movie. Likewise, I think a movie should never be judged by its theme. Milkha Singh has always come across to me as the ‘flying sikh’ who won medals for India in Asian games and Commonwealth games, and how he missed by a whisker a medal in 1960 Rome Olympics. Therefore I expected the movie to highlight his triumphs; to tell us about his chief rivals at the games, and how he managed to overcome them to bag the medals. Quite frankly, I was looking for a ‘Chak De India’ kind of flavor in Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. Therefore, I was quite disappointed by the movie. A set of generous media reviews and a decent crowd at the multiplex on a rainy July Monday evening reinforced further my hopes from the film. But not only was the film excruciatingly long, it was boring in most parts, and I found myself looking at the watch waiting for the interval much before it actually happened. I had expected the movie to portray Milkha the ATHLETE and his quest for excellence in the track and field. But alas, the movie is about Milkha the MAN who suffered the pains of the partition (So what, millions others did too, and we have scores of movies on the subject), his struggle for existence post-partition including his knife-wielding days, his days in the army, his love life, his one-night stands, AND also his achievements as a star Indian athlete. The parts that depict his real winnings on the tracks at the international level are run through as a brief documentary somewhere in the dying stages of the three hour long movie, added with a final little-known hurray in which he is shown to defeat an arch-rival Pakistani athlete in Pakistan- a time-tested method of whipping up a patriotic fervor among the audience. But alas, that too somehow failed to leave a mark. The movie, therefore, should be seen as a biography of Milkha the man who happened to be an athlete. The narrative is confusing with the story jumping from Milkha the victim of partition, Milkha the lover, Milkha the army man and Milkha the athlete.

The movie could have been excellent had Milkha’s past as refugee from Pre-partition Multan been kept brief, for example there was no need to show his sister being made furious and noisy love to by her scoundrel husband in a refugee camp tent shared by Milkha and two other unknown boys who wear knowing smirk on their faces as they hear the couple copulate. There was no need to show the gory killing of his family as a fall-out of Partition. There was no need to show a prolonged quest by Milkha for his lady love Sonam Kapoor. In short, many lengthy portions of the movie could have been either done away with completely or could have been shortened.

Most people have been very impressed by the six-pack body that Farhan Akhtar built for his role including his bulging biceps marked with engorged veins and a bulky set of pectorals across his chest. However, there is a technical flaw that all of us seem to overlook. A sprinter does not need a strong upper body. On the contrary, a heavy upper body would impede his run on the tracks and that is why most runners strive to keep themselves skinny and make their leg muscles strong. But we can accept that for the sake of the movie it was essential to show the hero with a six-pack.

Performances have been good. Farhan looks perfect for the job but I would have preferred Ajay Devgan for the role. Sonam Kapoor and other actors did not have much to do though Sonam looked good for a change. However, one is surprised to see Sonam playing a role of a 1950s girl wearing gaudy lipstick and an eye-shadow. Other roles are character roles and the best one is played by Divya Dutta, playing Milkha’s elder sister.

Music by the trio Shankar Ehasaan Loy is good, and the number ‘havan karenge’ is catchy, and has been choreographed beautifully.  Another song that I liked is ‘mera yaar’..

Go and watch the movie only if you are a die-hard fan of Farhan Akhtar.

My rating: 2.5 on 5