Mukhbiir

Starring: Om Puri, Jackie Shroff, Alok Nath, Suneil Shetty, Sushant Singh, Sammir Dattani, Rahul Dev, Kelly Dorje, Raj Zutshi and Raima Sen (guest appearance)
Music: Illaya Raja, Karthik Raja
Director: Mani Shankar
Ratings: **

Mukhbiir is the story of those people who work as honest and dedicated informers for the intelligence department but their story always remain behind the curtain.

Om Puri arrests Kailash (Sameer Duttani), a nineteen year old antisocial but looking at his innocent face Om Puri advices him to become an informer for them so that his offences can be forgiven.

Kailash accepts the approach in order to save his life. Om Puri slowly becomes a father figure for Kailash and he starts calling him Babuji and wife as Maaji.

On the other hand Kailash continues with his job of informer so that he can earn twelve lakhs rupees to wave adieu to the world of crime forever. Due to an operation in Hyderabad, Kailash has to get into the character called Vinayak Marathe to enter the gang of Mamu Don (Alok Nath).

But Mamu proves to be the don just for the namesake and in reality it’s his widow daughter and sharp shooter Pasha Bhai (Sushant Singh) who run the gang. Kailash’s mission in Hyderabad is to finish the notorious gangster Mustafa.

He accomplishes his job but the situation forces him to kill Om Puri and thus, in the police force, Om Puri’s friend Rahaman (Suneil Shetty) comes into the position of Om Puri.

The story forwards and the next step in the mission comes where they have to reach Saaya (Rahul Dev), the boss of Mustafa. To complete this part of the mission, Kailash now has to get into the skin of Shahzad Khan.

In this way Kailash enters the gang of Saaya and comes to know that Saaya is going to blast more than twenty bombs in several places of Mumbai in the duration of less than seven minutes.

The whole terrorist operation is supported by some foreign power. Kailash informs that to his Maaji and through her the news reaches the Chief Minister (Jackie Sroff) and somehow the blasts cannot take place.

From writing the film to the direction of the wonderful scenes, Mani Shankar has taken care of both the things very well but why did he take Raima in this film is still beyond our comprehension.

Not only that. The song canned on Raima is also the wastage of time. As far as acting is concerned, all the actors are just to the level which is not acceptable from such great actors.

It specially can be told in case with Om Puri. Sameer has tried well getting into the skin of the informer. Music of the film is not up to the mark though lines by Samir depicting the life of the informer etch well with the film.

Albeit the film is still under the scanner of doubt about how it will attract the audience, people should try it once to know secrets about the lives of informers. Sameer Duttani’s dialogue ‘dedh saal mein jaan par khel kar sirf saade char lakh rupay kamae’ (Putting my life in danger I have earned a mere amount of four and half a lakh in the span of one and half a year), depicts the pain of a Mukhbiir (informer).

Mehbooba

Starring Manisha Koirala, Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgan
Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali….oops, Afzal Khan
Rating: * ½

Manisha Koirala is the one reason why one would want to brave this prolonged homage to the cinema of Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

This one is a 3-hour long rag-carpet welcome to Sanjay Leela Bhansali Hum…Dil De Chuke Sanam. The plot, ambience, characters, music and even the interactive interludes between the main protagonists are all derived with lipsmacking relish from Bhansali's film.

Why, Mehbooba (no relation to Shakti Samanta's Mehbooba in 1977) even goes to Budapest where Bhansali shot the second-half of Hum….

Except, that Mehbooba goes to Budapest in the first-half and to the bustling screechy noisy food-laden haveli from the first-half of Bhansali's Hum… in the second-half.

Ho hum…. The melodies (if one may call them that) flit in and out like unwanted guests after every ten minutes of dialogue.

If the songs were sacrificed on the editing table, maybe—just maybe—Mehbooba would be more bearable in its old-world love triangle ambience of two brothers (one idealistic and lovelorn, the other unscrupulous and ever-libidinous) who fall for the same girl.

The meat of the métier goes to the majestic Manisha…Still resplendent and lovely no matter where and in what they put her, Manisha never fails to infuse a poetic aura to her character.

Fetchingly photographed by that wunder-lensman Ashok Mehta at times Manisha looks as incandescent as she did in Bhansali's Khamoshi: The Musical.

Alas, like this long-delayed film, Manisha too has gone through innumerable ups and downs in her career.

The inconsistencies in the narration are covered up with a lot of exterior gloss. To the director Afzal Khan's credit the film's scattered pastiche is woven into what can pretty much be described as a seamless 'yawn' about two men and a woman who should know better.

The sets and locations are opulent flamboyant and eye-catching. No subtlety is applied in the visuals or emotions. The song-and-dance numbers that come along with alarming rapidity are shot with an eye for unhampered opulence.

So who gets the girl at the end? That's a question which must remain in the audiences' mind in any love triangle.

Beyond a point we stop caring completely about these three compulsively conflicted characters, even though one of them is played by a star who brings in an element of the tragic and classic grandeur from an era gone-by.

And one isn't referring to either of the two male leads. Devgan and Dutt behave like Devgan and Salman Khan from Bhansali's Hum Dil… discussing the same woman with each other ad nauseam as though she were two different entities.

A case of a split personality? By the time the triangle is resolved (with one of heroes coming to a suitably stickly nemesis) the only 'split' personality is the audience.

Most of them have fled the dread of watching a film that goes back the oldest traditions of Hindi cinema and emerges with a product that substitutes genuine emotions with elaborate props borrowed from a master storyteller's creative godown.

Jaane Tu...Ya Jaane Na

By Subhash K Jha

Starring: Imran Khan, Genelia
Written & Directed by Abbas Tyrewala
Rating: ***

A blessed week at the movies. If this week we get Harman Baweja as the full filmy package of an all-rounder, we also get Imran Khan…Fesh - faced original and possessing a natural screen presence that immediately connects him with the audience.

Abbas Tyrewala's directorial debut has a certain sparkling spirit, a zest for living life quirk-sized and a certain zing thing about the way the characters look at life and love.

It's not only about the way the characters' exuberant yearnings connect with the audience. It's also about the casual free-flowing downloading of events and dialogues in the narrative that give the characters an edge over other urbane youngsters who have come and gone in the past creating a spirit of lingering joie de vivre.

The bunch of collegians here take their cues from Farhan Akhtar's Dil Chahta Hai, Rakeysh Mehra's Rang De Basanti and even Karan Johar's Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

Echoes from these iconic youth -films fill out the outer edges of the 'cool' canvas creating for the characters at-hand a sense of wondrous and informal perpetuity as they go from humorous heartbreak to sober selfrealization in a plot that accommodates both impulse and pre-meditated thought in a mix that is engaging endearing and fairly original in spite of the derivative echoes.

While the supporting cast of friends are both real and tangible, at the core of this romantic musical are Jai (Irfan Khan) and Aditi (Genelia) who are "best friends" in the coolest sense of the term.

Bantering bum-chums at the surface but sharing a much deeper bond underneath, all their friends can see that the twosome is made for each other.

But they can't.

It's an exceedingly old formula for a romantic comedy given a fresh new spin by a storyteller who picks on moments from ordinary lives and converts them into a celebration of life and love.

Old songs (R.D Burman mainly) and new original music (A.R Rahman) coalesce with the minum fuss while Jai and Aditi's love story goes through several turns and twists until they arrive at that traditional end-game for romantic films: the grand reunion at the airport seconds before the girl is scheduled to take off for good.

The flurry is charming, though a little to selfconsciously designed at times.

Peep underneath. And you see the narration covering a lot of familiar ground.

The freshness lies in the way the characters respond to the familiar material often exceeding the domain created by the script.

Every actor pitches in at just the right volume of vivacity. There are stand-out supporting performances by Naseeruddin Shah (playing the hero Jai's dead father in a portrait), Ratna Pathak (superbly skilled as Jai's mom), Paresh Rawal (flawless as a boorish cop) and Arbaaz and Sohail Khan (as a couple of outlandish cowboys they supplant the believably urbane love story with a touch of the surreal).

Then there's Manjrai Phadnis as the hero's could-be love interest. Living in perpetual denial she thinks her embittered parents (Rajat Kapoor and Kitu Gidwani) actually love each other under the acrimony.

The characters never claim to be extraordinary in their desires. It's their ordinary dreams and down-to-earth desires which give the narration a spirited spin.

And then there are protagonists. Not just young Imran Khan and Genelia. But their friends. Each one played as though the wall dividing the actor from the characters had disappeared.

While Genelia is a natural in most scenes, Imran's unassuming boy-next-door personality lends itself with picture-perfect precision to the mood and tenor of the narration.

Here's a young actor who has a long innings ahead. He doesn't think before he acts.

It's not about how deep he goes into his character. It's more about how much at home he's occupying the space provided by the script.

The same is true of the other actors.

Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na exudes an urbane cool. It's not really trying to be anything. It doesn't have an earthshattering message for the masses. What it has is an honest story about a bunch of credible characters told in a fashion that's casually trendy and warm.

Manoj Lobo's cinematography and Shan Mohamed's editing assist the director in making this a film that you'd probably like to watch again just to see if you missed out a vital bit of the characters' lives while they were looking for love.