Red – the dark side is, quite expectedly, Vikram Bhatt’s tribute to crass, unworthy and unwatchable cinema. As the movie progresses, you realize how bad an idea it is to watch Cries and Whispers and Basic Instinct (both the parts) before brainstorming for a new idea for a movie. Unlike Sanjoy who chose Red over Water, and, thus had only himself to blame, I had no option. You don’t come back from the multiplex empty-handed, is what I have believed in, only to realize that it is always infinitely better than coming back with a slight feeling of empty-headedness.
This is the second movie review which almost prevents me from detailing the plot, partly because it would be an exercise in futility, and partly because much of the movie didn’t have any. Vikram Bhatt’s last decent movie was, in all probability, was Awara Paagal Deewana, which incidentally has a 7.0/10.0 rating on IMDB, and presumably was quoted by the director as he explained to his yes-man the plot of Red: The Dark side and how it would be an admirable way to make the credulous film-goer part with some of his hard earned cash, and thus cash-in on the culturally challenged and deficient audience.
Thus Red is a movie which is, quite evidently, about murder, and in some strange similarities to The Shining, 21 Grams, and Double Indemnity comprised of momentary fading from and to red in between scenes. So in spite of my earlier decision of not detailing the plot, let me tell you something about the story this film has to offer. Aftab, the hero of the film, sells his dog towards the beginning of the movie, and promptly gets a puncture in his heart. The puncture is not because of St. Valentine’s Day.
A puncture in the heart is not a pretty thing, and almost always causes debilitating effects to the general health of the person, so the hero of the film decides to get a new heart. Money is not a problem, and this part of the story is shown through complex camerawork flitting in and out of hospital rooms, and general cinematography reminiscent of such environs; stuff that would put Stanley Kubrick and the entire camera-crew of Barry Lyndon to shame. Armed with a new heart, and a large bottle of immunosuppressant drugs, Affi decides to celebrate with a heavy dose of alcohol.
The immunosuppressant drugs are to be taken all through his life because (according to the movie) without them, the new fluid which is being pumped out by his new heart would be rejected by his body. I suppose this is true, but I haven’t spent any time on Google trying to authenticate this facet of the story. He also decides to find out the previous possessor of his heart. If I have not mentioned before, Affi also owns his own computer corporation called CompTran, which he works in when he doesn’t spend his time pawning dogs and getting epileptic fits.
This is where the darker side of the immunosuppressant drugs kicks in – apparently they can result in most interesting effects, and the poor excuse for a storyline goes wildly astray. Ultimately, several machinations later, the hero does find out the owner of the pump which is happily pumping away in his body, and starts stalking his wife. In the process, he also gets hit by a metal rod on his skull, which sadly, only injures him. Following the near frontal lobotomy, he also meets up with the love of his life -- the grieving [sic] widow, sings a few songs, and scatters a few roses around.
There is a lot of unpleasantness in the remainder of the movie, which is accentuated by the skimpily-clad heroines who are predictably dressed in red. Writing reasonable reviews on terrible films is a thankless job, and trying to analyze them is even worse. Red is a movie that excels on all fronts, scoring universal lows everywhere - direction, script, storyline, acting, necklines, comedy, et al. Although Affi gives glimpses of a good performance coming through, the pedestrian direction and storyline shoots it down before it has a chance of flowering.
Ultimately Red remains an atrocity, one perpetrated by Bhatt and his coterie, as he tried to make a lousy attempt at European noir-style thrillers. Celina Jaitley needs to be taught acting, hopefully with a suitable sprinkling of corporal punishment, and she also needs to understand that heavy breathing is good, but not in every frame.As an aside: Guess who was responsible for the music of this film? Yes, none other than the swanky Himesh.
I never found it easy to tolerate the guy, but in a movie abounding in lows in all movie-making angles, it’s easy to see how the music is a perfect backdrop to the two skimpily-clad heroines which infest the movie, doing little to add to the smut and sleaze quotient, making you wish that you were wasting your time in more pleasant ways. Finally, we might want to kill the idiot which dragged us to the movie, but at the end of the day, we’re the damned fools to have watched it in the first place.
All thumbs down.