Going for a night show at Sathyam has its own charm and ease - the road back is not so fraught with the unnerving traffic. So it was me, vasanth and his friends. Wonder why Sathyam wont have hot coffee during night hours, doesnt quite make sense to just have only cold coffee especially for the night shows. Anyways, enough of the complaining part.
The only other movie I watched that of Shahid was "Jab We Met", which was Imitiaz Ali's debut as director, and surprisingly I liked the movie. Never thought too much of Kareena and Shahid - the latter seemed to be quite happy to be called as the pocked sized Shahrukh, not just for the hamming bit but even in the unkempt hair and over the top antics. From the first frame in Kaminey, it promised to be a mad caper, with one Shahid twin lisping and the other stammering. Vishal Bharadwaj, director-music director-singer-screenplya, doesnt take too long to sketch the main characters. And come the twins, come the flashback - so we are shown rather in a short burst how the twins grew to hate each other. Charlie ( the lisp bro ) says "fortcut" for "shortcut" and carries off his part as a wannabe horse racing bookie with consistency, while Guddu stammers his way through the role of a NGO activist. Add in Priyanka as "Sweety" as the emotional Marathi spewing love of Guddu who gets "knocked up" in her inebriated moment with him. The script writer of Taare Zameen Par, Amol Gupte, plays the venomous Marathi devout "Bhope", an aspiring politician who hates the sight of Mumbai immigrants. He also happens to be Sweety's brother and does everything possible to stop Guddu's marriage to Sweety and eventually knock him off too. Tenzing Nima plays Tashi, the remorseless drug dealer, who is after a guitar filled with cocaine which accidently lands in the lap of Charlie. Few of my friends were disoriented by the camera work and rapid edits, especially the strobe filled "Dhan Tana Tan" song, which tries to bring forth the potent mix of drugs and loud music. At the intermission, the corrupt police backed by Tashi get hold of Guddu, while Bhope gets hold of Charlie. A rendezvous on the local mumbai train is staged to exchange the guitar and the twins, with each group planning to outwit the other.
The second half gives scope for the audience to engage in the love hate relationship between the twins and the visceral scheming of Bhope and Tashi who leave no stone unturned to meet their personal agendas. Add to this mix a bookie gang of bongs, who employ Charlie and have a fascination to spend on assault weapons, and wear their hearts on the sleeve. The movie moves at a rapid pace and we end for an "all for guns and drugs" type shootout including police, bhope, bongs and tashi with their respective cronies. The baddies kill each other as expected, and at the end of the movie we see the sweet couple Sweety and Guddu ending up their own pair of twins, while Charlie goes after the bigger riches in the bets on horse stables.
All in all a good gangster movie, with a superb sound track and intense acting by the cast. A must watch, even if one is not a big fan of the dark genre of Vishal Bharadwaj. 4 out of 5 !!
