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Thursday, October 10, 2024
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BOLLYWOOD ONCE UPON A TIME IN MUMBAI DOBAARA
EDITOR'S PICK
How do I put this politely? This is arguably one of the
most awful, ill-timed gangster dramas with most performances so loud and
unassimilated that these characters could easily be contestants in a Eid special
segment of Comedy Circus where the theme is 'Gangsta Rap'.
Such utter crap, and done with heartbreaking seriousness. It takes some doing to
wrap up such a time-worn love triangle into a pretence of modern storytelling.
Milan Luthria has never been a great filmmaker. At least his earlier films like
"Kachche Dhaage" and "Dirty Picture" had some interesting
conflicts between characters who are driven by a desire for revenge but are
frustrated in their malevolence by their love for the very same people they want
to hate.
The problem with "...Dobaara" is that the two main characters who love
each other to death are people we have met over and over again. Most notably in
Ram Gopal Varma's "Company" where Ajay Devgn and Viveik Oberoi played
gangster and protege with great conviction and ballsy velocity.
The subsequent spinoffs have gotten seriously diluted.
This one is a sequel to Luthria's not-so-engaging film where Ajay Devgn's
imposing personality had made the pale and sometime unintentionally funny
proceedings bearable.
Except for Sonakshi Sinha playing a starlet who talks too hard and too much and
gets the male protagonists (who need to be spanked for playing with guns when
their IQ level suggests video games would be more apt) into a serious conflict
merely because she's too dumb to see they both love her,"...Dobaara"
has no redeeming qualities.
Akshay Kumar as a Dawood doppelgang(st)er is a laugh. His dialogues meant to
show his mastery over the hoary art of rhetorics, come out sounding like wimpy
words of wacked-out wisdom picked up from messages in Chinese cookies, if not
from forwarded sms messages.
I don't know who wrote the hideously bloated dialogues of this film. And I don't
want to know. I'd just like to suggest to the dialogue writer to go easy on the
bumper-sticker wisdom next time. You can't make the hero look heroic by spilling
tacky wisdom all over the frames in the hope that audiences would applaud the
bombastic words without thinking about their relevance.
This film wallows in a kind of imbecilic irreverence where the protagonists seem
bold brave, sexy and even brazen but are actually cardboard versions of the
triangular lovers in Raj Kapoor's "Sangam" and Vinod Kumar's
"Mere Huzoor". But at least love triangles of the past were honest
about their melodramatic intentions. "...Dobaara" cloaks its outdated
radical ideas in a rumbustious display of trendiness.
One of the 'jokes' that ties Sonakshi's character to her lover-boy Imran Khan is
his misuse of the word 'intercourse'. The film uses the word over and over again
like a school boy that has just found a non-punishable way to say 'sex' in the
classroom.
A flavour of flagrant criminality is created through back-projected nostalgia,
like an archival cricket match 'fixed' by the all-powerful underworld don.
Fleets of black and yellow Fiat cars ply up and down Mumbai's streets in a show
of periodicity. A wanton woman (Sophie Chowdhary, in a seductive cameo) cheats
on her unsuspecting husband, making out with the dreaded don in backroom at
noisy party.
You can almost smell the cheap perfume and the discount-rated champagne trying
to pass as the genuine stuff in Shoaib's party. This guy thinks he is menacing.
He is actually a joke. And if the real Dawood is anything like the way he is
portrayed here we have nothing to fear except his cheesy dialogue-baazi.
Where in all this self-defeating noise and activity is the of slippery
sinisterness on the streets of Mumbai? The gangster-villain (Akshay insists he
is a villain, and who are we to argue with a guy who keeps smashing up furniture
and appliances every time he doesn't get his way?) and his cronies appear to
have walked out of 'loin' Ajit den in the 1970s, not quite sure which way they
are supposed to head in the present day milieu of such awe-inspiring gangster
epics as Luc Besson's "Taken" and Amit Kumar's "Monsoon
Shootout".
This one comes too late, and except for a skillfully-shot train robbery sequence
featuring Imran Khan at the start, it has too little to offer in the way action
and adventure.
The stunts appear stunted. Except for Sonakshi who plays the self-seeking
starlet with earnest airheadedness, Pritobash Tripathy who plays Imran's
sidekick with misplaced sincerity and Sonali Bhendre who delivers the only
truthfully-worded monologue in this verbally-cramped drama, the other
performances are all of the watch-me-ham variety.
And really, what this film has done to the Mohd Rafi Qawwalli "Tayyab ali
pyar ka dushman" would make Manmohan Desai wince if he was alive.
Dobaara done. Please please, no third helping.
Trailer launch of film Once Upon a Time in Mumbai Dobaara Stills