Tashan

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.

The worst movie I have seen since Tera Jadoo Chal Gaya. There is no story, no humor, no nothing! The action sequences seem more like a series of haphazard Akshay Kumar Thumbs-Up advertisements stitched together. Heavily influenced from The Matrix and Kung-Fu Hustle but very poorly executed.

I did not go a lot of expectations, but watching this movie is an exasperating experience which makes you wonder "What were these guys thinking??!!".

The only thing you might remember after watching it is an anorexic Kareena in a bikini.

The reason why I did not give a rating of '1' is that every time I think I have seen the worst, Bollywood proves me wrong.

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.

Let me tell you whether you like or hate Tashan, the fact is that this is a movie unlike you have ever seen in India or anywhere else. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on what you went into the theater expecting.

Also the point of this post is not as much as to review the movie but more to explain what Tashan was supposed to be. After that it's your call to decide if it's a good, average or pathetic movie. This was a movie which I watched for free on very first day of its release courtesy the firm I am having my summer internship with. So in absence of all the reviews that were supposed to come out the very next day, my experience and feelings while watching this were quite unbiased .Since then a lot has been said about the movie. It has been called amongst the 'worst movies ever","idiotic and silly","formulaic" and even been given nicknames like "aditya chopra ki aag".

OK I understand the movie is no classic but it certainly is not as bad as being said. I am a sort of person who hated movies like Dhoom 2 and Dus. The reason being that these pretended be cool and stylish but actually were just plain annoying and dumb ,and the hate is so strong that even this post will be reeking of the same.

Tashan is a movie which actually shouts out loud that look how silly I am. It is very honest in what it wants to be and what it's supposed to be .Take it or leave it. It is not at all meant to be serious, believable or intellectual cinema. It is meant to be a sort of a spoof and homage to the masala potboiler Hindi cinema of 70s and 80s. If you have seen Quentin Tarantino and Roberto Rodriguez directed Grindhouse then you will understand what I am talking about. This is the reason why everything in the movie is deliberately over the top –situations, characters, dialogs, action, dance sequences (e.g. dil dance mare) and everything else. The whole mood of the film can be summed up in one song -Dil dance mare which has been outrageously choreographed and actually in a good way with lyrics which are really very innovative.

The reason why this movie is attracting so much hate is because it tries to mock the same audience and critics who think Dhoom 2, Dus, Krrish, Race etc are good movies. Todays multiplex going audience who think of themselves as 'intellectuals' feel almost insulted of the fact that they have been presented with a movie which has supposedly been phased out of their theaters ( i.e. rickshawallahs type b grade cinema of 80s). These audience can bear a song like 'zara zara touch me' but cringe at 'dil dance mare'. But that is what I like about Tashan- a no holds barred, unpretentious and unapologetic bollywood ishtyle masala fare. It's the same old tale of revenge and love that has been told umpteen numbers of times but jazzed up for the 21st century.

While action sequences in Dhoom 2 kept annoying me and dialogs put me to sleep, the dialogs and conversations in Tashan are actually quite interesting with that completely gone crazy mix of Hindi and English. Tashan is no more or less silly compared to Dhoom 2 and Dus but actually has much better performances. Akshay Kumar is brilliant as Bachhan Pandey and Anil Kapoor is good in first half.

That being said it's not a very good homage and the film falters badly in second half with unnecessary subplots and stretched out action sequences which reach a level of craziness that is almost surreal. Also the storyline fails to hold your interest after a while.

If you are ready to suspend your sense of belief for a couple of hours, sick of current crop of 'multiplex' movies and actually understand that its all meant to be hyper realistic you may will find some redeeming qualities. I will rate it 2.5/5. Not good but still better than other pseudo cool and insult to intelligence movies like Dhoom 2 and Dus. Don't waste your precious bucks in a theater for this, rent a DVD and find out yourself how good or bad this movie is.

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.