Rock the Kasbah

Cast: Bill Murray, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, Danny McBride, Scott Caan, Bruce Willis
Rated: 4/10
Well, Afghanistan is a breeding ground for all kinds of nefarious activities, including a slew of meaningless Hollywood films on subjects as divorced from Taliban as, say, music. An out-of-work, virtually vegetating old music composer and a talent manager who has nothing much to do in life except con bad but rich singers into signing launch contracts in America suddenly gets this offer to go to Afghanistan on a music tour.
Even he, despite his utmost desperation for money, sees this as a crazy, non-workable idea but accepts nevertheless for reasons best shown to one and all. Though pregnant with possibilities, nothing much happens in the film which shows over the top sequences on this musician’s journey into the heart of the torn land with characters as inexplicable as the mercenary Bruce Willis who sports his AK-47 like a lollipop and utters dialogues as if in a daze, possibly wondering how and why he would accept this flat role in which there is neither action nor dialogue.
The waste is all comprehensive despite the hunt of a Pashtoon belle who has to fight her radicalised anti-woman society to reach the final of a song reality show and win it even as everyone bays for her blood. Actually, no one does and that makes the film even more incongruous despite it being apparently inspired by the singing and dancing exploits of a real woman who fought the odds to win the Afghan Star reality show in the midst of an imploding Afghanistan. Bill Murray tries to do his bit as the talent hunter but much like the landscape, looks lost, barren and without any soul — and that’s despite the exotic partner (Kate Hudson) he scoops out from a pool party in the middle of nowhere. 
Source: The Sunday Pioneer, October 25, 2015

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