Drishyam

Directed by: Nishikant Kamat

Starring: Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Shriya Saran

Released: 2015

My rating: destroy every copy – horrible – bad – whatever – flawed but enjoyable - good – great – amazing

Watch more Bollywood films so you know how to get away with murder. That is the basic message of Drishyam. Also - teach your sons not to be slimy creeps. Otherwise they may not make it home one fine day. The film´s plot touches upon the topic of leaking of extremely private video footage, which leads to an accidental killing of the blackmailer by the victim. However the whole family becomes involved and Ajay Devgn (an uneducated TV-addict as we are constantly reminded) weaves a web of lies and half-truths that ultimately lead to a sort-of-happy ending.

The plot is definitely stretched in probability (there is NO bloody way the police inspector would have put it all together with so little information), but to be fair to much lesser degree than most movies Ajay Devgn has done in the past few years. Some explaining parts get tedious and you better not drop your attention any time during the film otherwise you may loose on some important points. The ending scene finishes everything brilliantly, bringing everything to a wrap, and leaving no questions unanswered. Except for one: Whom did the brother-in-law call? I am sure I must have missed something, and I have suspicions, but this piece of the puzzle is missing in my brain. However Drishyam definitely provides suspense and three-dimensional characters. Even the "good" and "righteous" have a dark side. The seemingly "evil" police officer has a motivation that has driven many a hero, over the years, to commit pretty awful stuff as well.

Furthermore the picture is very well acted. Ajay gives a very solid, balanced performance, without any ridiculous flying and smashing tricks that inevitably would transform the film into something else. His strength as an actor is that even when he keeps his voice and expressions down throughout the whole movie, he projects so much inner strength he never gets boring. Tabu is excellent, and to make a little confession, this was the absolutely very first time when I could see how good she is. Not even Haider and Chandni Bar had endeared her to me, but in Drishyam I could truly feel her emotions. The problem I´ve always had with her was how painfully boring she usually is to watch. Not here though. Shriya Saran (looking beautiful and more like one of Ajay´s daughters than his wife) gets lesser scale of emotions to project, in fact is destined, by her role of a mother (who apparently does not watch as much TV as her husband), to be scared and worried. Still, to be fair, she does very well. Both child actresses did a good job too, there was just no point in the teenage girl being adopted other than actually acknowledging how young Shriya is. But we need someone that young beside 50-years-old Devgn, amirite?

I was not sure whether to rate this film as good or great. It is something in between, so let´s just agree it is very good. And actually there is one more question that remains unanswered: Why does the "bad" police officer always needs to be the darkest one they have at the station? Where are the Aashiqui days when it was the white ginger psycho we had to worry about?

Awarapan

Directed by: Mohit Suri

Starring: Emraan Hashmi, Mrinalini Sharma, Shriya Saran, Ashutosh Rana

Released: 2007

Verdict: destroy every copy – horrible – bad – whatever – flawed but enjoyable - good – great – amazing

Awarapan suffered what I call „the fate of Lagaan“. I have not come across a single person who wouldn´t be praising it, and naturally the expectations shot skyhigh, never to be met. In the end I just had to admit that I would have liked Awarapan much more had I had not any preconcieved notion about it as well. It is a good film from all angles, but it lacks the "smashing" quality that would make it truly memorable.

Emraan Hashmi, whom I have an unexplainable dislike for (rooting probably in his resemblance to Anil Kapoor in both appearance and manner), plays Shivam, for whom, according to the posters, „Love was his only destination“. To get to the destination he chose a rather strange path though. We meet him as a right hand to a Hong Kong based gangster Malik, doing mostly the ugly and dirty work for him. Thus when he receives an order to spy on Malik´s mistress Reema, who apparently hasn´t shown a proper excitement while having sex with her lover and thus raising doubt about her own fidelity, he doesn´t question it, nor is he apprehensive to carry out her murder in case she would indeed prove to be unfaithful to his boss.

"Kill my girlfriend, OK?"

"Sure. Enjoy your holiday, Boss."

And she does! Apparently she is in love with a poor but handsome young man and wants nothing but to run away and return to India, from where she had been kidnapped and subsequently made to please Malik. Shivam points a gun to her head – and yet the ruthless gangster cannot press the trigger. You see, in Reema Shivam has recognized something he had been trying to forget and we see he is in fact a pitiful heart-broken atheist who once upon a time was in love with gorgeous and deeply religious Muslim girl Aliyah (Shriya Saran, who is apparently stuck with cameos and lame roles opposite unsalelable actors when it comes to Bollywood and is HURTS, oh it hurts). However the deeply in love Shivam lost his deeply religious Aliyah when her deeply offended father shot his daughter by mistake (of course he had been aiming at Shivam), and this loss marked Shivam forever.

Prayer can indeed save a life - even if not yours.

He pretty much gives his blessing to Reema and her lover and helps them to escape, which of course is not all that easy since Malik comes to know about it. The last 40 or so minutes are action packed and together with lots of shooting and cursing we get to see Shivam finally accepting God, whom he had never believed in before. Religious movies are rather tricky. They can easily offend everybody and tend to be preachy, Awarapan manages not to. Aliyah is a Muslim, and yet Shivam finds God in a Buddhist temple, indicating that God is one for everybody, no matter of what you call yourself – and that is one theme I shall always love and be grateful for it.

Emraan was good as long as his burnt out mode fitted the story, but once he sets out on his last quest, I would have expected him to actually show some emotion. All were scared of him in the film but there was nothing scary about him. He looked mostly confused and his stone face was not really appropriate to lot of situations. A hero with more of visible emotional range would have done wonders for the film. As I have indicated above, I was also left wanting more of Shriya, who only had an extended cameo in the film, although her character was essential to the story. I would love to see her in „big“ film with „big“ heroes, with her amount of talent and beauty she could easily overrule many wanna-be starlets that Bollywood is currently full of.