Tashan

I won't call myself a pro, or even anywhere close to a pro when it comes to movies, though I am an absolute freak. I tend to watch movies for what they are.. and am very happy to say more often than necessary that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and how good a thing it is that I am entitled to mine. Generally,I am not a huge fan of Hindi movies. They often lack originality and tend to get overtly pretentious, as in, always pretending very hard to be what they are not. SADLY enough audiences of Hindi movies are so foiled and shaped by now, to this sad sad story, that when a movie actually is what it says it is and hits them in the face with it, THEY TAKE OFFENCE! TASHAN is exactly what it says it is..The style..the look...the formula! It is a movie that has every clichéd formula ever invented solely in Bollywood. The traitor and villainous Antagonist, murdering the true kingpin and taking care of the King pin's orphan with bad intentions of course, armed with clichéd dialogue,Horrible accent, and inferiority complex too. The Beautiful babe who is a slippery vixen with revenge on mind and seduction as a second nature.

The "Accha" guy, who is straight as an arrow, "izzat bachanay wala", hard on the outside, soft and mushy on the inside and yes an exceptionally good fighter bulletproof unless in love. Then the outsider who is unknowing of the ways of the crime-world, lured into the middle of the whole thing only to understand that the whole game stands on his shoulders. The Bachpan ki mohabbat, the heroine ki "chaalbaazi", the villain ki "neeyat kharabi"..the goons , the guns, the knives. The whole frigging formula!

Someone said before me that the movie is ahead of its time..it surely is, people still believe in all of real films that invented these formulas to not find them funny when they are mocked so loudly.

Performances are super bollywood class! Anil Kapoor is perfect. Akshay Outdoes himself. Saif is truly jazzy and Kareena is the perfect femme fatale, she is perfectly wearing the skin of her character as is everyone else. She looks lovely, though I like her better with her original body size. The locations, the cinematography everything is great except some flaws in the special effects section, but dare I say that that is also more like staying in character of Bollywood films..ALWAYS LESS THAN CONVINCING SPECIAL EFFECTS. Music is delicious as well as very original. The best thing in the end I would say for sure is the TASHAN of it all that ties it together nicely. For me it Turned out to be really fun. For a neutral watcher Tashan is all that it says it is...please read the tag-line, grab some popcorn and enjoy this true bollywood joyride of a stylish spoof. Its Amar Akbar Anthony meets Racey Dhoom...and all that came in between.

Summer season is here when the choices in the cinemas are limited to what's the hottest movie of the week, given 99.9% of the screens dedicated to screening it. OK, so I may exaggerate on the percentage, but you get my drift. Besides stuff from Hollywood, Bollywood too have their own share of highly anticipated blockbusters, and from some of the trailers shown, I'm hyped to watch them too. Tashan was billed as one of THE most highly anticipated for 2008, but I was quite surprised at the lower than low turnout at the cinemas. When I watched Jodha Akbar, it was a full house, but it wasn't for Tashan.

After watching it, I knew why. It was entertaining, but it was fundamentally weak. Just like it's literal English title, which means "Style", Tashan is all style, but little substance. Not that it doesn't have the usual star power, but scenes felt forced, and some bordered on a tad ridiculous, even for Bollywood standards I must say. Which is quite surprising given that Tashan is directed and written by Vijay Krishna Acharya, who wrote Dhoom and Dhoom 2, both of which I enjoyed tremendously.

In his rookie directorial outing with Tashan, while you can't fault his direction, you'd probably scratch your head over the plot, which was clunky at best. It tried to force too many things into the story, though credit be given where it allowed you some avenue to question character motivation, but that came a little too late, and only toward the finale, which left you guessing for just a moment before it latched into full blown action mimicking many a Thai action movie, with Hong Kong's wirework and Hollywood's ludicrous firearms and gunplay with zero recoil. And in a bid to include everything including the kitchen sink, you have an assortment of vehicles appearing, and the one that took the cake, in a Dhoom 2 homage, was the jetski boat in the middle of nowhere.

At best, Tashan can be enjoyed as unintentional comedy, and this is attributed to how the cast hammed up with their characters. Saif Ali Khan plays Jimmy Cliff, a call center executive who gives English tuition, only as a platform for fishing out new girlfriend material. His playboy ways gets junked aside when he meets with Pooja Singh (Kareena Kapoor), who's not exactly who she seems, the meek and sweet natured hottie. She engages Jimmy's services for her boss, mobster Bhaiyyaji (Anil Kapoor), who probably gets most of the laughs as he speaks broken English and phrases must like how an ah-beng does it. And to complete the quartet, Akshay Kumar plays Bachchan Pandey, an illiterate gangster for hire who got engaged by Bhaiyyaji to hunt down Jimmy and Pooja when they escape with money stolen from Bahiyyaji's business.

So begins a road trip of sorts, with friends who turned enemies, and enemies whom you know will become friends as the road trip wears on. Jimmy Cliff is probably the most implausible of all, because he goes from zero to hero, executing moves that would shame Rambo, in absolutely no time, which is quite out of character. Kareena Kapoor amps up the sex factor as she uses her charms to guile both men, and has plenty of opportunity to do so given the much touted bikini scenes, and other costumes that boast of plunging necklines or hemlines way above the knee. Every character has a backstory created, and I thought Akshay Kumar's Bachchan Pandey was probably the best, the most touching and the most fun of the lot, even though his character seemed a lot like a non-green Incredible Hulk with his gravity-defying leaps and power packing punches. His wounds also heal automatically, which impressively puts Wolverine to shame. And the best part is his theme song, which is damn alpha-male and played in ra-ra mode each time he takes on adversaries.

But sad to say, that's the only tune that is memorable, something that cheers "Bachchan- Pandey-Bachchan-Pandey". For most Bollywood movies I watch, I will usually be able to, despite the obvious language gaps, emerge from screenings humming a tune or two. I wasn't able to do that after Tashan, because the songs unfortunately just weren't catchy at all. Usually the song/dance routine works well into the storyline without any necessity to bring the characters out of the current scene or location. That I enjoy, versus plucking them out and plonking them into extreme settings high atop a mountain, or atop jagged rocks on the beach front.

Tashan probably didn't take itself too seriously, but coming from Vijay Krishna Acharya's story, you probably wanted something a little more decent rather than the ridiculous, and for continuity to be a little more careful as well. Billed as a blockbuster, now I can start to understand why the crowds have already shunned this one. Despite Akshay Kumr stealing the show, Tashan could have been better on the whole.

If there was any doubt after Dhoom 2 that Yash Raj films was in a steep downward spiral, that has now been removed. Tashan is as low as it can get. IMDb does not allow rating lower than 1 - otherwise I suspect this one would be in the negative column.

The story/plot - the threadbare plot boasts of a couple of twists that are laughable, and in fact it is all ishtyle (if you think tacky is the new ishtyle) and lacks any substance whatsoever. If there ever was supposed to be any connection between the events unfolding on screen (why eggzactly was Bhaiyyaji learning Einglis?), it was unclear and to tell you the truth I did not care! The dialogs were nightmarish - even Bhiayyaji's Hinglish became painful and incoherent as Anil Kapoor valiantly tried to stay in the mode.

The acting - oh well, who cares, it was all about ishtyle anyway. So let us just discuss that. Bhaiyyji (Anil Kapoor) had a certain ishtyle as the villain of old tradishun, Akki was the usual Ishtyle of the tasteless Tradishun (that was actually the only effective ishtyle in this film), Saif had the pathetic Ishtyle of a "cool dude" who sports a droopy mustache (now how many cool dudes can do that?), and Kareena had the size zero figure ishtyle - sadly the size zero removed all the b (as in booty) from her assets - minus boobs and butt she was almost androgynous. Oh, I should mention that none of these Ishtylish folks actually acted.

The music was ONLY thing that was worth mention in this film. Songs are catchy, and the picturization of Dil Dance Maare was interesting. For the rest - the story was unhappily chugging along when BOOM there was an unconnected song and dance routine.

The last 20 minutes took the film to a new nadir, unimaginable depths of dross. I HOPE AND PRAY THAT THIS FILM BOMBS. I have nothing against the studio or the cast (in fact I quite like Saif and Kareena), but if this film works then action movies will never be the same again and I will have to stop watching Hindi cinema that is action oriented. Seems a bit harsh but my mind is still reeling from the fact that hundreds of men with machine guns could not take out 3 people, these hundreds miraculously lost their guns, then there was hand to hand combat of the martial arts kind, there was a flame thrower, and it all culminated in a very big water hose and a jet ski doing a dry run! I thought Hritik's shooting out of the gutter act was bad and now I have been proved so completely wrong.

Trashun is one pathetic piece of trash that needs to be swept out and sent to a landfill immediately. I CANNOT BELIEVE I WROTE THAT!!!

I had the good fortune to view this one again on DVD - I humbly wish to revise my opinion.

We have a film that is truly unique in concept, shows small time people realistically, and even does a pretty good job of showing their ambitions and yearning to be "superior" - just like Jarj Bus! There is the excitement of a heist or sorts, chases galore, a pretend romance, and a real one that started during childhood (Devdas anyone?), a baddie villain, and cop who is sort of villainous, and lots and lots of action. Add to this the fact that we have one of the best roles ever done by a major superstar - yes Akshay Kumar. Kya entry Thi Aur Kya finish! We have a heroine who looks great and is full of guts and gumption - she will avenge the wrongs done to her family and she needs no one to help her do that, and she will put scruples aside just like a man! We have 3 lead men and the most amazingly different item song in Dil Dance Maare. What went wrong? My initial take on the film was that it was complete Bakwaas (watching films online does NOT help). But it was still strangely attractive to me and I broke down and got the DVD. Wah Bhai Wah. Music rocks, Akshay delivers his life's best acting, Kareena looks yummy (except in that size zero bikini), Saif is adequate. Anil Kapoor is one negative - he speaks Bhaiyya speak well early on, but gets totally incoherent as the film proceeds, and I think the audience was not ready for the spoof filled action sequences.

This is one film that deserves a look - for Akshay, for Kareena, for Dil Dance Maare, and Falak Tak (magical moments on screen) and for the streets of Kanpur and Akshay's entry. The best performance by any lead actor this year. You can fast forward Chaliya and Dil Haara but the rest is very very watchable. I hope the makers do not take the film's failure as a huge negative signal - Tashan was ahead of its time and will end up as a cult film of sorts.

What worked:

• music and background score; it's one of Vishal-Shekhar's best albums so far. The songs are beautiful, shot beautifully but the problem is they have got very little to do with the narrative and flow of the movie.
• ensemble cast; it's a good mix of characters. Bachhan Pandey is the only character that stood in the movie, which isn't great but relatively better than other characters.

What did not work:

• everything else; the action scenes are horrible though the set design is impressive. The screenplay is poor so is the execution. The makers could have choreographed the action scenes better which would make it a better watch. We have to say it's a missed opportunity, a few ones that could have defined the genre in the industry. The narrative is poor and questionable. Cinematography is okay. We expected much more from the movie considering a great cast. Their role could have been written and executed properly. Sadly, the movie is full of plot holes and loopholes, and we can question the authenticity and the reasoning behind many scenes in the movie. On conclusion, poor direction.

Loose your sensibility at home. 'Tashan' will never make any sense. The main ingredient: 'The Tashan the Ishtyle' is what matters the most, and that's what impresses the most about the movie. The threadbare story line need not be mentioned, it just won't be questioned by its audience. The things that would be questioned would be that whether the characters were stylish and whether the movie had the looks. Well, these questions are already been put to rest by me.

All the four characters were stylish in there own sense, but none were stylish and credible than Akshay's 'Bachchan Pandey'. His is the character that brings the movie to life after the lifeless early exchanges of the other three protagonists Anil's Hinglish 'Bhaiyyaji', Saif's English guru 'Jimmy Cliff' and Kareena's hot and smart 'Pooja Singh'. Akshay's 'Desi' goon character's quirky presence and Kareena's hot looks are the ones that keep the movie from falling flat. Apart from them Saif and Anil do not have any screen presence to hold on to there weekly written characters. The very Ishtyle songs fail to impress other than the title track. Much of the movie is forgettable other than the few post intermission exchanges between Kareena and Akshay. The wacky look and behavior will impress the urban young Indians, but seems doubtful to have any takers in the interiors of India. And finally the exhausting 'kungfu hustle' and 'kill bill' wannabe type climax sequence just creates a new height of self indulgence in Bollywood, something that may only look pale in front of southern super star action movies.

This has been the Yashraj formula for catering its urban audience, a thin storyline filled with stylized action like 'Dhoom'and its sequel. But 'Tashan' has its own wacky Ishtyle which may just cheer you on a certain dull day.