Dum Maaro Dum – Lots of Smoke, too little Fire

This week’s latest Bollywood release is Dum Maaro Dum. The movie is a big film releasing after a long while and was eagerly looked forward to with its chartbusting song, cutting-edge promos and a drug-mafia story set in exotic Goa locales starring Abhishek Bachchan in a tough cop role out to clean the drug infested, mafia driven underworld of Goa.The film also stars Rana Daggubatti, Bipasha Basu, Pratiek and Aditya Pancholi amongst many others.

The film is set in Goa and here Goa is shown in a very different light from what we are used to seeing. Director Rohan Sippy has shown a realistic view of Goa unlike the fictitious view we get in past films. Goa shown here is neither the sweet romantic Goa of ‘Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa’ or the south bombayish view of Goa as in ‘Dil Chahta Hai’. Goa’s underbelly is exposed, its drug trade, local life and sun-kissed atmosphere is thoroughly captured. Beach, beautiful women, booze and drugs they form the identity of Goa.

The first half of the film is real breezy and sets up back-stories of various characters very nicely. The movie moves at a feverish pace and sets up the meeting of all its leads at the Goa airport, almost reminder of ‘Yuvaa’ in which 3 stories collide on a Kolkata bridge. The movie also tends to remind one of gritty cop drama ‘Sarfarosh’ to an extent. The thriller is very well written by Sridhar Raghavan, at least the first half,  however in the 2nd half of the film the writing goes a bit haywire.

The movie is about Police trying to clean up Goa from the clutches of  local and international Mafias acting in various parts of Goa, ruling their various fiefdoms with the power of drug money. Abhishek Bachchan with ‘nothing to lose’ cop is the fearless cop out to topple mafia lord Aditya Pancholi’s world. Prateik is the teenager with dreams and hope and love but caught in the mafia trap, he represents what Goa was before the drug money came in, soft, hopeful, dreamy, lazy and romantic. Rana Daggubatti who has lost his past girlfriend Bipasha Basu to the greed and lure of drug money is initially a mute spectator to the sorry tale the youth gone haywire. He later gets into the act along with ACP Kamath in the hunt for the master drug-pin Micheal Barbossa. Rana represents the Goa of today which has seen it all and continues to be see the same story unfold yet again and again. The second half of the film slightly disappoints as the suspense when revealed isn’t a big shocker but almost expected and almost all the twists can easily be predicted by the viewer. The film could have been much better if the second half was handled in a better way.

Abhishek Bachchan as Inspector Vishnu Kamath lives up to his role and how much ever his critics hate him, one has to agree that slightly crooked and touch cop acts suits him very well. Abhishek is a star who everybody loves to hate and dislike partly for no fault of his, partly due to the expectations people had in him and also partly due to his lazy selection of roles. But he lives upto the role here although he needed a much better conclusion to his role in the end. Slightly disappointing to see him not in focus at the end. Telugu star Rana Daggubatti as the local Goan singer Joki has a nice presence and easy on the eye to look but has similar expressions throughout. He does have a nice role too and by the end he becomes the central figure to the story.  Bipasha Basu as the girl gone the wrong path is okay and is almost a predictable act. Aditya Pancholi is nice as the Mafia boss Biscuta and he is seen on screen after a while. Prateik as the teenage is okay and his love story with Anaita Nair looks cute, but he quickly needs to re-invent himself or else he’ll be doing this same kind of roles all the time. Also he needs to do something about his squeaky voice !! Deepika Padukone in the much hyped and publicized ‘Dum Maaro Dum’ remix song looks drugged out, which of course suits the look of the song. Govind Namdeo and Muzzamil as cops are wonderful.

Technically the film is  excellent and is very well shot and edited. The entire look of the film is superb and suits the mood and story of the film. The background score is catchy and the songs are nice. The film is smartly shot and some of the scenes are indeed dark but overall Goa is shown in a different light altogether. The concept and core idea is nice but script and screenplay goes wrong in the later portion and the ending doesn’t satisfy you completely with several loose ends. It could have been a huge bonfire in the making but leaves us only with lots of smoke.

Dum Maaro Dum is certainly a one time watch.

My Ratings –  7/10 –  Entertaining watch. Not great but good enough.

Thayn Thayn – Kickass rap song

Here’s the new rap song from the upcoming film’ Dum Maaro Dum’.

The song is called ‘Thayn Thayn’ and features Abhishek Bachchan in his ACP Kamath avatar from the film, rapping in his succesful ‘Bluffmaster’ style. Preetam has scored the music.

Abhishek had a super succesful R&B song sung by him in his previous Rohan Sippy directed Bluffmaster and to bear the same results he has sung this rap song mainly for the film promotion. Very nice beat and rhythm to hear.

Watch it…

Dum Maaro Dum – Title Track

Here’s the much awaited song ‘ Dum Maarao Dum’ from the upcoming film titled the same. The song is actually called ‘Mit Jaaye Ghum’ and features Deepika Padukone and is set to a remixed version of the original classic tune. The song was released during the India – South Africa game in the ongoing World Cup Cricket at Nagpur

The song set in a smoke filled bar, looks okeyish and Deepika looks hot enough to be called ‘item girl’ now. Hopefully it will do what it is meant to and draw the audience in the movie hall.

Here it is..

Dum Maaro Dum – Killer Promo

A film whose title is ‘Dum Maaro Dum’ set in Goa, dealing with drug trade … What a tribute to the legendary song  from Dev Anand’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna !!

It  stars Abhishek Bachchan as cool Narcotics Cop. The movie also stars Bipasha Basu, Prateik and Telugu star Rana Daggubatti. The movie produced by Sippy films and Fox is directed by Rohan Sippy with story by Shridhar Raghavan and Music by Preetam. The movie releases 22nd April 2011

Here’s the first look, it looks classy and that background score is full of ‘dum’

Aakrosh – Something’s Burning

Aakrosh stars Ajay Devgn and Akshaye Khanna 2 CBI officers sent to a small village in Bihar to investigate mysterious disappearance and possible murders of 3 Young Delhi men. Investigating possibly a case of caste related murders the 2 cops encounter corrupt local police, corrupt politicians and a village largely divided by caste.

The movie directed by Priyadarshan has all the right intentions. The film reflects the condition of ‘inner’ India we generally do not get to see but just hear about in television channels and read about them in newspapers. It also bears resemblance to ‘Khap’ murders in Haryana which recently shocked the nation. The film has all the right intentions,  a serious enough topic and decent acting from the leads. But the film has one major flaw and that is that it is a frame-by-frame copy of Hollywood film ‘Mississippi Burning’ starring Gene Hackman and William Defoe. The problems between black and white in rural southern America is replaced here by divide between upper and lower castes. The Ku Klux Klan is replaced by Shool Sena and burning Trishuls replace burning crosses and you have a perfectly valid Indian Bollywood film.

Of course, being a Bollywood film it has more flaws then you can count. The love story track involving Bipasha Basu is absolutely needless and somehow Bollywood always manages a space  for unwanted ‘item numbers’ involcing Sameera Reddy. The film is also way too long and is never ending. Some of the portions are also inspired from other Bollywood films including one scene straight out of ‘Mirch Masala’ starring Naseeruddin Shah.

Ajay Devgn looks convincing as the hot headed officer and Akshay Khanna hams a bit as the logical one. There are far too many action scenes and chases sequences and stunts in this serious topic based film diluting its impact. Some of the stunts like Ajay riding on top of the car and jumping from one tree to other and sliding under a  moving express train and park-our type chase are totally misfit in this kind of film. Akshaye Khanna has horrible wig and Paresh Rawal as corrupt Bihari cop is nice and has done an out an out negative role after a long time. Bipasha Basu as Presh Rawal’s wife cannot much act and looks unconvincing. The entire issue of caste based divide in Indian Society is such a serious issue but it seems to have been trivialized a bit and the makers have made an action film out of it.

You can watch this film as it has the right intentions but couldnt the makers have made a serious film on serious topic like this more imaginatively and without copying the Hollywood film so blatantly ?

My Ratings –  5/10 –  Watch it for the serious issue