The goal of this movie is quite clear, its another attempt by a star to prove that he is an actor by doing a festival circuit movie. Whats not clear was whether or not he read the script before choosing this movie as his artsy vehicle.
Also I would like to make it clear that I did not want to see this movie and was dragged to the theaters by the demands of my sister and Bhabhi.
I find such artsy movie painfully simple to understand especially when the motives are so clear.
I figured out the formula of the film by just looking at the posters, the all so standard one where are the actors are compressed into a row with the accolades (participation in this case) are displayed in wreaths on the top.
So we have John the star who wants to be an actor, Arshard who is going to going to be the funny sidekick in the next billion movies, the pretty foreign thing who will play the typical American woman (as if all foreigners are British or American), the afghan (named Khyber wtf), and the Omar Shariefish looking actor who will probably be Pakistani.
The moment the movie starts you feel that the filmmakers are trying a satire and starting with the humour....BUT THE TRAGEDY IS SO Predictable THAT YOU KNOW IT WITHIN MINUTES AND THE HUMOUR CONTINUES THROUGHOUT.
John has a lesser lines than even Arshad who quite clearly steals the show, the acting is good especially from the Afghan who doesn’t look awkward in his first movie.
Whats both endearing and weird is the way bloodshed is tackled in the movie.
For the battle-hardened Afghan death and destruction is a way of life and its eerie to see how casually they talk about it.
But for Indian news reporters on their first war assignment to act like nothings happened is stupid.
For a satire on war you never really feel the squirm that you are supposed to feel, the message if any is clearly lost in the sea of humour and predictability.
You have a miserably failed attempt by the actors on the ideals of journalism which made the shortcoming of the entire effort even more glaring.
The movie is bugged with plot holes and inconsistencies and is badly edited.
The movie has one special moment though when the father meets his daughter but that about it, the movie makes a couple of attempts at special moments but fails.
By and large the only parts where this movie succeeds is the humour and in this regards Arshard Warsi clearly steals the show, all his one liners are great and you are constantly smiling and laughing at them, brilliant ones are the conversations in the car on cricket and its after-effects, in fact for a small period this movie looked like it would rise above the ordinary, on the basis of the conversations between 3 parties that takes place in the car, BUT THE LARGE BORING AND HIGHLY PREDICTBLE PARTS RUIN THAT CHANCE.
Cinematographically this movie is pretty sound some of the shot of Afghanistan are breath taking and shooting in the cramped interiors of a car is much more difficult than it looks.
The soundtrack is ordinary and background score is forgettable.
The editing is poor you can notice the breaks and the cut dialogs, a lot of stuff is left unexplained and unnecessary stuff left in.
On the virtue of its inconsistency performance this movie will end up being strictly OK for all parties, albeit the people who like call their movies cinema and like them as tragic and boring as they come, the hardcore commercial lovers who are seeing this movie for John, the movie lovers who will see just about any movie etc etc.
Overall this movie is strictly OK, I may have liked it more than other because I too have this habit of finding humour in the worst of situations like Arshad but others may find him a bit of a annoyance.
The performance of this movie is exactly like the careers of Kapil Dev and Imran Khan (seeing the movie will help) who were mostly ordinary but showed flashes of brilliance, and had one big moment that defined their careers (the lifting of the cups).
This movie is best watched in the matinée show at multiplex, paying full admission especially at night will guarantee disappointment.
-s HIGHLY PREDICTABLE (even dialogs by less experienced movie goers), fails at everything else but humour, many inconsistencies, large boring parts, bad editing (very?).
+/-s John Abraham (only a distraction ?), unanswered questions.
+s great humour, good acting all around, good cinematography.
total 6/10 (factoring in that I expected less(added points) and the fact that I am biased towards seeing humour in everything (reduced points))