Abhishek Bachchan is no Rajinikanth, but his entry scene in Dum Maaro Dum makes you feel like a spaced out hippy on an acid trip. In what looks like a smash-and-nab raid at a rave bar in Goa, he -- a narcotics officer and a corrupt one at that -- does a blinder with a baseball bat, smashing everything from martini glasses to splayed palms reaching out for those magic pills I’m sure many of you know about. The entire sequence, surreal and in slow motion, plays out against psychedelic lights, almost giving the high of a real Dum to a breathless viewer.
The frisson, however, fizzles out soon, for a few reels later this no-nonsense cop -- now honest after a personal tragedy -- is made to break into an embarrassingly pulpy rap song Thayn Thayn. It’s this seesaw graph of the Rohan Sippy-directed film that makes Dum Maaro Dum kabhi dum kabhi dud.
Writer Sridhar Raghavan lays the pitch for a nail-biting ‘who-is-it’, but fails to dope out a screenplay that keeps you hooked despite the seeming cold trail of Barbossa. For the most part, Kamath is reduced to an ultimate party-pooper, busting the raves, roughing up the firangs, and baring his teeth to Biscuta. For the most part, the cop looks like chasing his own tail. Finally and quite inexplicably, Kamath puts all his faith on a shady recount by Lorry who’s holed up in a juvenile detention centre. And when the mystery is at long last unravelled, the viewer can’t help feeling their expectations crucified with no resurrection in the offing.
However, credit to Sridhar Raghavan for the way he’s structured the screenplay. The story unspools non-linearly, often flitting into flashbacks. The tracks of Lorry, Kamath and Joki are separate until they converge at the Goa airport. Credit to Rohan Sippy as well for making a film that’s high on style, gloss, and with piecemeal doses of entertainment. Granted that there’re no wheels-within-wheels or peels-after-peels of layers in the rather shallow plot, but the movie ends up as a one-time watch.
Among actors, Prateik Babbar stands out as the wide-eyed juvenile who sees his dream turn into a nightmare overnight. Rana Daggubati is doubtlessly a hunk girls would swoon over but is ill at ease in lip-synching Hindi. No wonder the camera captures him more often from his back rather than front. Abhishek Bachchan once again does his signature stuff -- glower and grin -- without delivering anything exceptional. Bipasha Basu, likewise again, sticks to a few expressions and Deepika Padukone’s Mit Jaye Gham too isn’t the screen-scorcher it’s touted to be.
Crafted as a suspense thriller, the story is a long-winded search for a mysterious figure by the name of Michael Barbossa, who’s described as the ever unseen kingpin of the drug racket in Goa, even above the dapperly deputy Lorsa Biscuta (Aditya Pancholi), the man singlehandedly responsible for wrecking the lives of Lorry (Prateik Babbar), Zoe (Bipasha Basu) and her former boyfriend Joki (Rana Daggubati).
Lorry is a young gullible Goan who’s sucked into drug-trafficking for the lure of the money he needs to go to the US to reunite with his girlfriend (Anaitha Nair). Zoe, likewise, wanted to be an airhostess but ends up being a coke-snorting mistress of Biscuta. The guitar-strumming Joki, meanwhile, is coming to grips with the loss of his girlfriend Zoe to Biscuta and preventing the likes of Lorry from falling into the same cesspool.
Inspector Kamath (Abhishek Bachchan) is out to clean Goa’s image and he cherry-picks two subordinates (Govind Namdev and Muzammil) to launch a campaign against the drug mafia and nab the ever elusive Barbossa.
All in all, a film with more gloss than Dum.
The frisson, however, fizzles out soon, for a few reels later this no-nonsense cop -- now honest after a personal tragedy -- is made to break into an embarrassingly pulpy rap song Thayn Thayn. It’s this seesaw graph of the Rohan Sippy-directed film that makes Dum Maaro Dum kabhi dum kabhi dud.
Writer Sridhar Raghavan lays the pitch for a nail-biting ‘who-is-it’, but fails to dope out a screenplay that keeps you hooked despite the seeming cold trail of Barbossa. For the most part, Kamath is reduced to an ultimate party-pooper, busting the raves, roughing up the firangs, and baring his teeth to Biscuta. For the most part, the cop looks like chasing his own tail. Finally and quite inexplicably, Kamath puts all his faith on a shady recount by Lorry who’s holed up in a juvenile detention centre. And when the mystery is at long last unravelled, the viewer can’t help feeling their expectations crucified with no resurrection in the offing.
However, credit to Sridhar Raghavan for the way he’s structured the screenplay. The story unspools non-linearly, often flitting into flashbacks. The tracks of Lorry, Kamath and Joki are separate until they converge at the Goa airport. Credit to Rohan Sippy as well for making a film that’s high on style, gloss, and with piecemeal doses of entertainment. Granted that there’re no wheels-within-wheels or peels-after-peels of layers in the rather shallow plot, but the movie ends up as a one-time watch.
Among actors, Prateik Babbar stands out as the wide-eyed juvenile who sees his dream turn into a nightmare overnight. Rana Daggubati is doubtlessly a hunk girls would swoon over but is ill at ease in lip-synching Hindi. No wonder the camera captures him more often from his back rather than front. Abhishek Bachchan once again does his signature stuff -- glower and grin -- without delivering anything exceptional. Bipasha Basu, likewise again, sticks to a few expressions and Deepika Padukone’s Mit Jaye Gham too isn’t the screen-scorcher it’s touted to be.
Crafted as a suspense thriller, the story is a long-winded search for a mysterious figure by the name of Michael Barbossa, who’s described as the ever unseen kingpin of the drug racket in Goa, even above the dapperly deputy Lorsa Biscuta (Aditya Pancholi), the man singlehandedly responsible for wrecking the lives of Lorry (Prateik Babbar), Zoe (Bipasha Basu) and her former boyfriend Joki (Rana Daggubati).
Lorry is a young gullible Goan who’s sucked into drug-trafficking for the lure of the money he needs to go to the US to reunite with his girlfriend (Anaitha Nair). Zoe, likewise, wanted to be an airhostess but ends up being a coke-snorting mistress of Biscuta. The guitar-strumming Joki, meanwhile, is coming to grips with the loss of his girlfriend Zoe to Biscuta and preventing the likes of Lorry from falling into the same cesspool.
Inspector Kamath (Abhishek Bachchan) is out to clean Goa’s image and he cherry-picks two subordinates (Govind Namdev and Muzammil) to launch a campaign against the drug mafia and nab the ever elusive Barbossa.
All in all, a film with more gloss than Dum.
0 comments:
Post a Comment