Tashan

After an intriguing opening twenty minutes, 'Tashan' stops making any sense. Saif Ali Khan has a weak role and does little with it. Akshay Kumar rise above the script and remains watchable. Anil Kapoor is disastrously bad. He mumbles his lines and his Hindi-English dialog simply annoys. The makers clearly forget about the script. They seem to have spent all their time on the look of the film. Yes, it IS stylish and the visuals are nice, but the film simply doesn't work. The songs are mediocre but well shot. A few numbers could have been cut. A disappointment.

Overall 3/10

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.

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.

I totally disagree with the ratings and think that its not justified. though the movie had its good and bad parts overall the movie is in fact very good. On the negative side the action scenes were totally unrealistic, totally clichéd where our main leads are showered with bullets but escape without a scratch while bad guys and pathetic side actors fall like a bunch of leaves in autumn. But on the positive side the acting was really great especially by Akshay Kumar, Kareena looked smoking hot, Saif, though not a significant role, did good justice to his part and last but not the least Anil Kapoor who was brilliant with his bihari hinglish. The music is top notch with lots of catchy songs. I really think the positives far outweigh the negatives of this movie. If you really want to watch a movie which is funny, stylish and added to that some amazing music and cinematography then you cannot miss this movie.

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.