It’s claimed that Kaante was made to satisfy high demands of hollywood buffs. Now it’s a contradiction in term (’’hollywood buff’’) if you have not watched either Reservoir Dogs or Usual suspects. so having seen it all, what should entice you to walk this thorny path ?
It was a big mistake to make this film in hollywood. Methink LA did not figure atall in ’’kahaani ki maang’’. The crass language [yuck :-(] , semi-nude dancers (its ’’all or nothing’’ in any respectable dance club in LA .. not this walking on tight bikini-rope), the tapori charactors just dont fit. I’d have been more at home with a mumbai setting and a ’’Kolhapur Sahakari Bank’’ heist.
So, shooting in hollywood will redefined bollywood, is it ? Kaante took 40 Million USD to make .. an A-Grade hollywood movie budget .. Take LOTR:Two Towers as point in case. Read my review. now THAT took only 100M per part .. get the wind ? we move to hollywood when some producer has too much black money to blow. LOTR was entirely shot in New Zealand to cut costs (amongst other more practical reasons)
And LA outdoors being shot in that annoying yellow filter ! OK , it was ripped from Traffic. But in Traffic, it was subtly used to visually differentiate first world USA and dry, dreary, desert of Mexico. this trick does not work to show one of the most ’colorful’ cities in the world maan, it’s el Aye !!
The movie will run for hardly 30 mins if you decide to speed the slow-motion shots .. it gets so so annoying .. almost ’’wake me when its over’’ .. its like an opiate to senses .. thats how bad the residual effect was. e.g. climactic round gun-shot sequence. In RD it was a swift split-second affair .. bang bang bang .. which made it effective and shocking. Seeing the same in ultra-slo-mo only makes it ludicrous and gives a feeling of anti-climax to this overly drawn yarn (unless u knew it coming)
Plot was riddled with holes. I am sure, being so late to review this film, my able pre-viewers must have already done the job of shining the light thru’ the holes at you. It was a patchwork of atleast 4-5 hollywood products. but seamlines were really patched bad.
A few performances were good. Mahesh manjrekar stole the show for me. He was the only redeeming factor for this film. I wonder how much more money it’d have cost sanju baba to get this constantly hamming, stuttering guy across to dubai on an ISD call! Excellent performance. It broke the bollywood cliche that stuttering guys == pitiable rejected match made for heroin by poor parents .. they can be fun too :)
Sanju was good too. If only the script-writer has spared him of unbelievably vulgar dialogues. and the caption-writer was even worse. instead of living it to viewers imagination/discretion, he had to put it in B&W. (baburao =?= hard on ?!) and Ok .. be inspired, but lift dialogues ad verbatim ? ’’Are you gonna bark or bite too ?’’ I made one of my friends ;impressed with this; see RD again to prove that I am not barking ..
Lucky Ali should better keep to singing. And I read this guy used to be a struggling actor before he hit gold with singing .. explains it.
So you want song n dance, love story side-plots, heroins for each hero, NRI-patriotism, interval in a pseudo-hollywood film ? You can’t have it all. You CANNOT marry hollywood to bollywood .. planting a few trees from this wood to that wood dosent make a forest .. (well, that was deeeeep , no ?)