Back to Bollywood

Posted by Sari

After doing some metablogging in Finnish, lets get back to really important things like Bollywood movies. Tarja and I had our Bollywood night last Friday, and on the menu there was a double feature consisting of Fiza and One 2 Ka 4.

Fiza was Hrithrik Roshan's second film and as different from his debute Kaho Naa... Pyar Hai as possible. (I have previously described KNPH I think accuratly as worlds best rich-girl-meets-poor-boy-desert-island-rockstar-action-police-comedy-drama-hindimusical-
not-happening-in-Switzerland.) Fiza is a story of a Muslim family where the son, Aman, disapears during the early 1990s riots in Mumbai. After years of wondering what happened to Aman, his sister Fiza decides to try to track him down. She finds him from an unspecified border region where he has joined an extremist group after sort of accidentally killing three people in the riots. Fiza manages to persuade Aman to return to Mumbai, but he finds it difficult to fit in after all the extremist activities. When two evil Hindu layabouts turn him in and taunt his mom and sis, he grabs a gun from the policemen, shoots the taunters and goes back to the terrorists. His mother then commits suicide, Aman is chosen to assassinate two political leaders, and when police is about to catch him after the successfull assasination, asks Fiza to shoot him. Which she does.

Jolly, isn't it? As is traditional in hindi cinema, there is plenty of blood and violence mixed with a number of songs and dances. Especially noteworthy is Aman's training montage where he does kung-fu like moves and lifts weights to music in order to train for his mission as an assassin. 'Cause you need to be able to do spectacular leaps and jumps in order to shoot someone with a rifle from the window of a building... It just has to be seen to be believed. Hritrik is his very muscley self, Karishma Kapoor is fine as Fiza and Jaya Bachchan does again steal the show as yet another all-suffering mother. But somehow I prefer the other Hritrik as terrorist movie, Mission Kashmir. And believe or not, this gem is yours to rent from the nearest FilmTown! Or at least in the one at Pitäjänmäki. Mission Kashmir is not quite as depressingly bloody as Fiza, has one of my favourite musical numbers (Preity Zinta singing about bumblebees), Jackie Schroff as a totally over the top fanatic, and Sanjay Dutt's sympathetic performance as a policeman who adopts a child whose parents he has killed. Besides Fiza has only knives and rifles, whereas Mission Kashmir is all about bombs and missiles. Bigger is gotta be better, right :-)

After being depressed by Fiza, we went for comedy/detective-story/melodrama One 2 Ka 4 starring Sharukh Khan as a detective whose partner is single parent of four, Jackie Schroff. This was all about overblown comedy, Miami Vice-like colours and lots of broken glass until about one third into the movie Jackie Schroff is killed by a traitor in the department and Sharukh tries to find out what has happened and take care of the four now orphaned kids. Awww. The best thing in the movie? The scenes where the Police Special Branch is called to a crime scene and about twenty well-muscled desi men wearing sleaveless undershirts charge through the city on their mopeds. Close second is the female lead Juhi Chawla who does her babbling airhead/undercover cop thing quite convincingly. The rest? Not so much.

Comments

[Tarja]

I'm still suffering from Kal Ho Naa Ho addiction, and I really must get my own copy of the movie to obsess over :). Still, I am going to get a second hand copy of Chalte Chalte from Huuto.net pretty soon.

"Especially noteworthy is Aman's training montage where he does kung-fu like moves and lifts weights to music in order to train for his mission as an assassin."

This is, of course, included to attract more female audience to the movie theatres, despite the film's subject matter, just so they can ogle Hrithik's good looks and muscles :). He did, after all, create mass hysteria with Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai.

BTW, Mission Kashmir is widely available for rental in Finland, though I suspect some viewers have had quite a shock expecting a pure action movie, and instead got a Bollywood action movie with songs and dances instead. I think MK is more "fun" and has great songs, as your said, but IMO Fiza is a more thoughtful exploration of the subject matter.

"lots of broken glass" in One 2 Ka Four:
What is it with these guys and broken glass??? I think at every even remotely action oriented BW film has at least one fight (often more) where somebody is thrown/kicked/punched/whatever through a glass wall.

Sari, do you want a copy of this year's Filmfare Awards after I've downloaded them (if the files are not enormous)? Several people have reported that SRK and Saif were hilarious as hosts (and spoke mostly English, so it would even be sort of understandable).