Tag Archives: justice

Jolly LLB 2

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Vampire Owl: I know this Jolly fellow. He was so jolly.

Vampire Bat: It is not that Jolly, but this one can be quite jolly too.

Vampire Owl: So, we have a sequel which has another Jolly, who is also a jolly fellow.

Vampire Bat: Yes, instead of Jagdish Tyagi, we have Jagdishwar Mishra. But we call them both Jolly.

Vampire Owl: That explains the change of cast. But then, this won’t be a real sequel.

Vampire Bat: Yes, but this is the second story of a Jolly, and it is just that it is another Jolly.

Vampire Owl: This is rather confusing with two of them being called the same name, despite having different names.

Vampire Bat: Well, this movie actually happens after the first, and we get a mention about the first movie by the character of the judge.

Vampire Owl: It would have still be nice if at least one person of the two was called Jaggu.

Vampire Bat: Well, these humans have a strange way of naming people again and again.

[Gets three cups of special tea with Tiger biscuits].

What is the movie about? :: Jagdishwar Mishra a.k.a. Jolly (Akshay Kumar) is a lawyer who wishes to make it big as a lawyer, but with his chances a long way away, works as an assistant to one of the most famous lawyers of Lucknow, Rizvi Sahab (Ram Gopal Bajaj) at Lucknow. Jolly is not considered as a lawyer who can go the distance, as he is the son of the man hailing from Kanpur who was only an assistant for his whole career, and Jolly himself doesn’t have his own chamber even after trying so hard. A pregnant lady, Hina Siddiqui (Sayani Gupta) spends most of his time in and around court area, trying to convince any of the well-known lawyers to take up the case of his husband. She begs Jolly to make his senior lawyer to accept her case. With the need there to get two lakhs for the final payment of his chamber, Jolly lies to her that the senior lawyer has agreed to take her case, and a sum of two lakhs need to be paid as soon as possible, to which she agrees.

So, what happens next? :: After getting the money from her, Jolly inaugurates his new chamber on the day of Holi in style with his wife Pushpa Pandey (Huma Qureshi) and the rest of his well-wishers. But Hina who finds out about the same, reaches there and creates a scene. Jolly tells her that he intended to return the money after this was done, but she tells him that he should have also rejected her appeal, as everyone else, instead of cheating her – she returns home and commits suicide. Everyone including his own father blames Jolly for causing the death of a pregnant woman. Jolly is unable to sleep or think properly with Hina’s death in his mind. With the help of his friend and lawyer Birbal (Rajiv Gupta), he decides to filed a public interest litigation to get justice for Hina and her husband, something which was to be his biggest challenge in life.

And, what is to follow next in the adventure? :: Jolly understands that the case about Hina’s husband Iqbal Qasim (Manav Kaul) was regarding his fake encounter by Police Inspector Suryaveer Singh (Kumud Mishra) on the very next day after their wedding, which brought him promotion. Iqbal was arrested by the police under the suspicion that he was an Islamic terrorist who reached the place from Jammu and Kashmir, and the same was confirmed later, and he is supposed to have shot a police constable while trying to escape, and the cop had died in the hospital later. The truth though, is that Suryaveer just shot him to make the encounter look more genuine, and by mistake he had ended up dead. Worried that he was going to land in big trouble, Suryaveer then hires his good friend and Lucknow’s best lawyer Pramod Mathur (Annu Kapoor), to take up his case, also paying fifty lakhs for the same. Can Jolly go against all odds to win the case and bring justice?

The defence of Jolly LLB 2 :: It is not that easy to work well with court-room drama movies and make them work, especially as things tend to get dull with the setting at the same place, and people tending to repeat the same thing again and again, but Jolly LLB 2, just like its predecessor, manages to be entertaining in more than one way. Well, the scenes inside the court are the best moments of the movie without doubt. We are so interested in knowing what happens by the end of the movie, that we find it difficult to move from the seat. The movie balances the comic side with the edge of the seat moments really well, and we get to see Akshay Kumar doing an amazing job as the protagonist who struggles to make it big. Saurabh Shukla brings the fun in between, and Sayani Gupta makes a heavy impact even with those lesser number of scenes. Huma Qureshi’s work is limited, but she does fine when she is there.

The claws of flaw :: There is the presence of those unnecessary songs and dance sequences which seem to make hardly any impact. The movie is also not without its ups and downs, and gets to the next level only later in the first half. There should also be questions about the way the truth is brought to light in this one, and you will also feel that some sequences are brought to us in such a way that the purpose is more to take melodrama higher rather than anything else. We feel that the innocence and simplicity of the first movie is not that much there in this one – we know how much that movie had raised the expectations so well. The audience also wonders if all of these, or at least most of these is actually possible inside a court. I am sure that this movie could have had many more interesting moments with some more divergence too. Also Huma Qureshi and Sayani Gupta could have been there for more.

How it finishes :: Jolly LLB 2 can be considered as good a movie as its predecessor when we have a look at it as a whole. Last year, Akshay Kumar had Airlift and Rustom to do the job for him after Baby and Brothers while going back longer, and this year, it is Jolly LLB 2 so far. There is also something to think about with this one, as one wonders how significant is the common man when facing the rich and the influential, for everyone don’t keep getting the saviours in time. Jolly LLB 2 could be the best Bollywood movies of the year for many people, and is sure to be in the top ten for almost everyone who watches movies regularly. There have been similar interesting movies in Malayalam too with Yes Your Honour starring Sreenivasan and the next level of the same was the Suresh Gopi starrer Melvilasom – all these are the kind of movies which could be watched together for some good quality court-room drama.

Release date: 10th February 2017
Running time: 137 minutes
Directed by: Subhash Kapoor
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Huma Qureshi, Sayani Gupta, Annu Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla, Kaustubh Pile, Manav Kaul, Kumud Mishra, Inaamulhaq, Sanjay Mishra, Vinod Nagpal, Brijendra Kala, Avijit Dutt, Rajiv Gupta, Sunil Kumar Palwal, Shubhangi Latkar, Ram Gopal Bajaj

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

Pink

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Vampire Owl: You know, Lady Death was very much interested in this colour.

Vampire Bat: Why is she interested in colours, when she has been colour-blind since her resurrection from the other world?

Vampire Owl: There are just rumours regarding the same, as she was referring to this movie.

Vampire Bat: You mean to say that the news about this movie had reached the land of the dead?

Vampire Owl: Yes, the land of the dead as well as the land of the undead.

Vampire Bat: It is quite an achievement for a human movie.

Vampire Owl: Except for those movies in which vampires are shown to be bad.

Vampire Bat: Almost all of them think that vampires are bad because they don’t understand our culture.

Vampire Owl: They instantly hate anything and everything that they can’t understand.

Vampire Bat: It is quite natural for a race which has fought each other for so long.

[Gets three cups of Ceylon tea with Arrowroot biscuits].

What is the movie about? :: The movie tells the tale of three indepdendent women, Minal Arora (Taapsee Pannu), Falak Ali (Kirti Kulhari) and Andrea Tariang (Andrea Tariang), working hard and self-sufficient, living in South Delhi. While Minal and her family are from Delhi itself, Falak is from Uttar Pradesh and Andrea from Meghalaya. They go through a happy life with their little moments of fun, and care for each other, but things quickly take a twist, with people looking at them in a rather strange way. Their landlord is asked to get the three girls out of his home, and when he doesn’t do the same he is attacked by two young men who reminds him of the same. Andrea sees that she is being stalked by unknown people and Falak ends up losing her job; Minal gets it even worse, as a flashback goes to what had happened a few days ago.

So, what happens next? :: The flashback incident involves Raunak Anand (Raashul Tandon), Vishwajyoti Ghosh (Tushar Pandey) and Rajveer Singh (Angad Bedi) who had met the three girls at a rock concert. Rajveer was hit on the head with a bottle by Minal which left him in a hospital, and that had put his friend Ankit Malhotra (Vijay Verma) on a revenge trail, causing a lot of trouble for the girls. This person who has decided to teach the girls the worst lesson possible, will not stop at anything, as the boys are quite rich and powerful, with influence among politicians as well as the police. Troubled with all which have been going through, the girls still refuse to complaint, but Minal, despite all the warnings about what could happen if she approaches the police, goes to the police station. The result is that she is kidnapped and molested by the men who are after her.

And, what is to follow next in the tale that goes deep? :: Minal is shocked, but doesn’t have the time to think or react, as she is arrested by the police on the very next day, as she is accused of prostitution as well as attempting to murder Rajveer. Andrea and Falak remain rather clueless about what to do in the police station, and at home, they find Deepak Sehgal (Amitabh Bachchan), their neighbor at their door. He helps them and even decides to take up their case, returnning back to his life as a criminal lawyer years later. He had left his job due to declining mental health and also because of his wife Sara (Mamta Shankar) being bed-ridden. In the court, he would have to face Rajveer’s lawyer, a younger and healthier Prashant Mehra (Piyush Mishra) who would go to any length to show his loyalty for the money which received as fees. So, where does the fate of the girls stand?

The defence of Pink :: The movie smartly chooses not show the incidents until the credits show up – it is a nice move to establish the idea that “no means no”, which is rather the one thing that gets the focus because we are there without getting much of an idea about how things really happened. It helps us to come to a viewpoint without taking sides, and it is the smart way to proceed. Pink is the kind of movie that is needed, for it shows how much of a hypocrite the society aspires to be. It has different rules for the boys and the girls, rich and the poor and also for people from one part of the nation and those from some other area. The movie shows how difficult it is to get rid of those prejudices, no matter how smart and educated you are. The movie’s biggest asset in establishing its ideas is Amitabh Bachchan, who is so good that you feel the need to clap again and again – you saw his grief in TE3N already, and this one once again shows the determination in grief that powers his character to become more than what the lawyer has been. The girls are all good, just playing to the need, raising the level so much at some scenes in the court.

The claws of flaw :: The movie before the courtroom drama begins, doesn’t manage to be that interesting, with the whole thing taking so much of time to get going. Maybe things could have been made more tense in the first half to keep one feel the tension. People would also feel not that happy with Amitabh Bachchan being there to save the girls – but you will have to admit that it is him who takes it to the next level as far as performances are concerned. Also, the talk about the girl being from North East, is not taken that much further, maybe because the cultural identity is a little bit less important, just as the fact that the men in question as just too rich an influential – these two things come into the picture and just disappears, but needed better mention here. There is another question which should have been raised in this movie – “Why should anyone drink at all?” It could have been great if the message should have also been against alcohol consumption, rather than having things as okay if everyone is allowed to drink. There is even more that Pink could have achieved, but it chooses to finish with just one message that takes off.

How it finishes :: The big thing about Pink is that, the movie is surely what you call the giant leap – something which has been very much difficult for Bollywood which has been caught in repetitions for such a long time; it might be the only thing that is repeated, with consistency in repetition like no other. Pink not only makes the giant leap, as it also gets to the other end with ease. The movie which was widely appreciated by both the common audience as well as the critics, and had also the National Film Award for Best Film on Other Social Issues – it is good to watch this movie and understand why there is so much appreciation going around. When people say that Pink is the kind of movie that everyone needs to watch, they are surely not wrong. It is the kind of movie that not just Bollywood needs to save its face, but it is also the one that the society needs – it is bigger than what would be the biggest cinematic experience we have for a society which needs its lessons regularly.

PS: There are three movies for this Eid, Role Models, Oru Cinemakkaran and Avarude Raavukal – do check the reviews on the same.

Release date: 16th September 2016
Running time: 136 minutes
Directed by: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Andrea Tariang, Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, Angad Bedi, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Piyush Mishra, Mamata Shankar, Arjun Chakrabarty, Mamta Malik, Dibang, Tushar Pandey, Raashul Tandon

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

Wazir

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wazir (1)

What is it about? :: After a personal tragedy strikes the family of a police officer Danish Ali (Farhan Akhtar) in the form of the death of his daughter in the hands of terrorists, he is blamed for it; separating him from his wife Ruhana Ali (Aditi Rao Hydari). He is later suspended from service as he murders a terrorist who was the only key for the cops to find a minister linked with the terrorist. As he is extremely depressed and thinks about ending his life, he meets Pandit Omkarnath Dhar (Amitabh Bachchan), an old chess master on a wheel chair who used to teach chess to the cop’s daughter. They come across each other again and a friendship is formed between the two. Omkarnath had also lost his daughter only some time ago, and he suspects that a popular politician, Izaad Qureshi (Manav Kaul) is behind the murder even as the police records it as an accident.

So, what happens next in the movie? :: Omkarnath tries to get the attention of the police department, the media and the government. But nothing really happens except for bringing more fury into the mind of the politician and his supporters. This is where the henchman known only by the name Wazir (Neil Nitin Mukesh) comes into the picture. But this person seems to be something more than a henchman, as he stays in the shadows and creates situations of terror for the old man, becoming more like a shadow assassin. Danish is mostly helpless as he is suspended from service, but makes the promise to protect his new best friend and play his part in the battle for justice as if it is his own. Their fates are going to join together and soon, the shadows of darkness which are cast on their lives shall converge. Can Danish stand this big test?

The defence of Wazir :: It always feels good to have a Bollywood movie with an interesting plot especially as there are too many of the flicks which don’t have one at all, and there are movies which asks “why always the same story” and while saying that, it comes with the exact same plot told in a miserable way. This is where Wazir uses its intelligence as well as the strong emotional side to become a better and different movie. I do wonder at times why Bollywood movies and good plots are never friends enough. But if you look here, Wazir shows how to become an interesting emotional thriller bringing the breath of fresh air which makes the beginning of the year a nice one indeed, as there are no mindless flicks floating around anymore. The thrills are present and so is the suspense factor. There is also variety and style in how the whole thing is handled. The action sequences are done in a smart way, no overdoing and no slow-motions; believable as well as exciting.

Claws of flaw :: Even though its short length will save some time, people will want more here. Well, we ask ourselves if this is the kind of protagonist whom we want in the investigative thriller flicks, and there are moments when we will think about having a sequel to complete this movie. The usual Bollywood fans who love the entertainment and masala elements are also going to like this one less too; for there is nothing of such kind in here. Even when I visited the theatre, there was so much less interest for this movie there, but I hope to see it get better in the coming days. The movie surely has some points when it becomes slower, especially as a certain emotional side tries to play its role. The fact that some actors are there for only an extended cameo or special appearance will also put some people into lesser interest for the proceedings. The movie could have done better with the thrills overtaking everything else; no doubt about that – but it works well as it is!

Performers of the soul :: Amitabh Bachchan and Farhan Akhtar makes a highly impressive team here. One man in sorrow has his mind game going strong while the other one is physically fit and has been one of the best police officers of the department – both roles are played with such passion here. The intensity that Farhan Akhtar shows here should be the one thing for which you wouldn’t want to miss this one. Aditi Rao Hydari has a beautiful and at the same time, a happy-transformed-into-sad presence in this movie, and you will feel that even the absence of words speak in favour of her as seen with her expressions. I am pretty sure that she is a lot better than the overrated actresses of the industry. As I turn back the pages, I remember that I had seen her on screen, in the Malayalam movie Prajapathi in which she made her debut as well as in Murder 3; the rest I had missed.

Further performers of the soul :: Neil Nitin Mukesh makes the best out of what he has in this movie, even though it is more of a special appearance. He reminds one of the character “Musafir” in the Malayalam movie The Tiger, who has been an agent and contract killer for the terrorists; but it turns out that even with the essence and soul being the same, the existence is different, and you will know that by the end of the movie with that one final twist – your love for the movie is going to be ultimately decided by that. John Abraham stays strong while doing another special appearance, something which reminds us of him in Madras Cafe; his character will be a reason for us to ask for a sequel to this one – he can always excel in this kind of a role. Manav Kaul as Izaad Qureshi is a really strong presence in this movie. He makes quite a big impact here as the villain who needs to be brought down for the two protagonists.

How it finishes :: Wazir is a movie which begins well as well as ends well. The slowing down in the middle can be forgiven, and the shorter run-time will make sure that you will have an engaging experience with this thriller. Even when viewing it from here, Wazir is no Memories, but it is an engaging journey. The game of chess is also nicely used in parallel with the story-line. It was used not as part of the story-line in the Malayalam movie, the Mohanlal starrer Grandmaster, but here, it comes in as part of the plot; in a smart way of course. You will know better about the relation between life and chess as the movie gets towards the end; one of the protagonists do talk about a few things which relates them much earlier though. The songs are also pretty much okay here. I loved the director’s earlier movie David, and Wazir is the movie which becomes a fine start to the new year, and it is the movie that needs to watched; not those one hundred crore gaining movies, most of which never deserved to be there in the 100-crore club!

[Edit – This review was also later published at: http://kiagia.com/index.php/current-film-releases-movie/1275-wazir-movie-review-2]

Release date: 8th January 2016
Running time: 103 minutes
Directed by: Bejoy Nambiar
Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Farhan Akhtar, Aditi Rao Hydari, John Abraham, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Manav Kaul, Anjum Sharma, Mazel Vyas

wazir

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.