D-Day: Gripper of a different kind

D-Day
Starring: Arjun Rampal, Rishi Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Shruti Haasan, Huma Quereshi
Rated: 7/10
D-Day is a surprisingly gripping movie despite it being one among the many in the latest rush for RA&W flicks in Bollywood. Director Nikhil Advani’s agents, however, are under toned, fierce and yet believably human.
While you can count the number of sentences a very gaunt Arjun Rampal utters in the entire film, Irrfaan’s wide-eyed, mostly opened-mouthed, emotional appeal is not something that could have been ignored or, for that matter, tagged as out of place in this fast-paced D-drama unfolding across the border.
The film is good because it has a lot of moments, be them emerging from a rundown kotha of a scarred yet beautiful prostitute played by Shruti Haasan, or the familial bonding of Irrfan’s two-bit family. As flesh to considered rawness, such sentiment seems apt in an operation meant to bring back the falsely named Dawood Ibrahim back to India, alive.
Not just the chase, which falls many a time before reaching the Kutch border, but also the politics around India’s external Intelligence agency, has been well-depicted.
As for Dawood, played by a regenerated Rishi Kapoor who has started to enjoy the “bad element” in his histrionic repertoire, is nuanced but not entirely befitting. The irritating pink-red shades which cover a major part of his face all through the movie hide the intensity that Kapoor showed in his cameo inAgneepath (remake). Nikhil, on the other hand, has preferred to show him as a happy go lucky but very clever India-loving-in-a-twisted-way gangster who lives on nostalgia, megalomania and authority but comes across as an about to retire desperado in love with his own bigness of being. Kapoor could have done better had he been fleshed out more.
But that’s a side story. The real meat in the film comes from its pace, its no-nonsense storyline, its well-clipped editing and the enticing shades that the cinematographer puts in to bring alive all kinds of locales in crowded Lahore, Karachi and Sindh. Not to forget Huma Quereshi who carries on with her real-time work in all gusto, this time as Zoya.
On the whole, D-Day is a good scorer which is about Rampal coming of age, Irrfaan further honing his brand of acting and director Nikhil Advani finally emerging from a heap of failures.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, 21 July, 2013

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nil Battey Sannata: Endearing, real and simple

Cast :  Swara Bhaskar, Ratna Pathak Shah, Pankaj Tripathi Rated :  8/10 Nil Battey Sannata is a confusing title but an endearing, simple, gentle and real film. Besides, the title confuses only till Swara Bhaskar as Chanda explains it to you with endearing simplicity much ahead in the movie. It literally means zero understanding and zero marks — in her and her daughter’s case, in Mathematics. But this one is not just about the mind-boggling numbers that have become the bane of students and parents alike. It is about the maths, algebra and geometry of life itself — an equation that director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari puts on the blackboard in an engaging, simplified format. Nil Battey Sannata  is a film sitting on a very real firmament, a very you-and-me story about the in-your-face problems that everyone encounters. In here, it is about misrani  (cook) Chanda and her full of life but anti-studies daughter Apeksha Sahay’s daily churn. Thankfully, it is not the drudg...
Read more

Criminal: Arresting memory transplant

Cast : Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds, Jordi Mollà Rated : 6/10 Big names, big imagination and good execution make this memory transplant thriller a good one to be with, especially with Kevin Costner doing a pretty good job with a character he has never played – that of an emotionless, incarcerated, brutal killer in whose brain a do-good, wife and daughter loving dead CIA’s agent’s (Ryan Reynolds) remembrances are inserted for a trail that is important for the organisation. The underdone role has been handled well by Costner, much like a successful experiment. As he gets acquainted with emotions of love, caring and affection that have been alien to him, he starts turning from a monster to a human being but the director does well to not completely erase his original personality. So, there is a mix and match, there is brutal violence as also gentle gestures, like battering a man to death in a car hijack and saving a hair brush for the little one. The f...
Read more

Aiyyaa: Aiyyo Rani, how could you?

Aiyyaa Starring: Rani Mukherjee, Prithviraj Sukumaran At: PVR & others Rated: 4/10 Romances are often tagged to be illogical affairs of the heart, sometimes unviable and a lot of times unsustainable. Aiyya falls into this category without a care in the world. So, if you go looking to making some sense of this very strangely strung love story, you will be questioning many things, including the sanity of such a venture, especially when it is Rani Mukherjee who is at the helm. Aiyya is not about anything really. It has a very convoluted storyline, the execution of which is equally skewed. Nothing makes sense in this one – neither the over-the-top Maharashtrian family of Rani which has a grandmother whizzing past every camera angle, yelling into the high heavens and baring her shocking teeth in gold, nor the impunity with which Rani’s father smokes four cigarettes in one time, making a mockery of the Censor Board and its stern warning that cigarette smoking is injurious to h...
Read more