NOLAN FOR OLD MEN-A FAIR TALE OF DOOM

Poor Hugh Jackman, if only he knew that riding an elevator was all it took to discover a prized secret. The Prestige may never have been made. I am sure Christopher Nolan wishes it wasn’t ever made. Don’t get me wrong, I love movies with the right combination of masala. Dhoom 2 was thoroughly enjoyable in its unabashed celebration of Hrithik Roshan’s good looks in place of a story. The Greek God played the banal role with so much sincerity and charisma that Abhishek Bacchan was forced to let him go.

The entire Dhoom franchise is based on the superficial. Good looking men who are integral to the… er… story, partially dressed women who are not, and the traditional chor police story with a generous twist of testosterone. While the first movie succeeded on the originality factor, the second installment belonged to Hrithik.

Dhoom is about its villains. Good looking, bad ass men who make crime look like a desirable occupation. They don’t need to justify their actions with a tragic back story or be visited by the ghost of Christmas past. Aamir Khan does. How can he be a criminal just for the heck of it and enjoy doing something bad? Oh no… where is the social responsibility in that? Neither does he have the physicality or charisma that a Dhoom villain requires. His attempts at doing a sexy tap dance are cringe worthy. He plays marvelous twins, who are so identical that the field of genetics is in a tizzy. Lets call them Twitch and Pout since those are their chief expressions throughout the film.

The movie begins in 1990 in Chicago. While most Americans wore denim and acted normal, Jackie Shroff looks and dresses like he is in 1890. A time travel trick gone wrong eh Daddy?  So magician/circus freak, Sir Defaults-a-lot, believes that a bank loan is just taken for fun and that it may never need to be repaid. Shockingly, the bankers think otherwise. They even arrive in a car hired from Cruella DeVil and ignore the pleas of Pout who is dangled in front of them like bait. Pushed over the edge, Daddy acts like a responsible single parent and shoots himself, leaving two young children to fend for themselves.  They seem to do this remarkably well, amassing batmobikes, cool gadgets and computer screens. Identical Hand Twins people!!

The twins keep up their father’s dream of a dysfunctional family. Twitch has been locked away for 23 years, and only gets out once a week for a burger. Pout crosses his legs while watching Katrina strip but chooses Kaam over Kama, resisting her Asian stripper Barbie act. The lady has such good prospects as an exotic dancer or in a circus; I wonder what she is doing in Bollywood.

Twitch however falls head over heals in love with her, and the stereotypical sexy woman is planted between brothers. How macho this entire emotional saga is. Pout robs banks to fund his circus, not once but thrice,’ cause that’s how many branches it takes to bring down an established financial enterprise. Of course no one bothers to question where he has got the funds to run such a large scale dance program, or magic trick, or circus act… don’t really remember.

Anyway, just when we thought that Abhishek Bachchan had retired as an ACP, he and his sidekick, always-on-a-hop Uday Chopra arrive to lagao vaat of the chindi chor. They are briefed by a woman who is hell bent on proving the dumb blonde stereotype to be true. Why else would she say that the robberies are being committed by a thief? The movie has some of the most shoddy writing seen in recent times and gaping manholes in place of plot points or structure. I don’t know if the director was trying to do a story within a story, or a double plagiarism of The Prestige, because we have no clue of how the robberies are committed. That’s the director’s Prestige I am assuming. In fact at one point, ACP Jr. B hands Pout the details on a platter. Yet we are supposed to marvel at the way he commits a crime that has been planned for him. Instead of spending time writing smart robberies, the director shows us a series of chase sequences that spend more time in slow motion than speed. Special mention must be made of the flying cars sequence that Rohit Shetty will find very arousing.  

The acting is uniformly disappointing. Aamir Khan falls short, literally and otherwise, putting in a seldom seen mediocre performance. He either pouts in anger, hams in boredom, or acts like Rancho on crack. Abhishek Bachchan puts in a soggy vada paav of a performance and achieves the rare distinction of making Uday Chopra looks good. The junior Chopra who recently announced his retirement from cinema actually makes you grin and gives you a break from cringing and yawning.

It’s no surprise that the movie is raking in the moolah. All bad films these days do, but its sad that the Dhoom brand has been diluted to a story of banks instead of bikes, boys and bods. Do you really expect me to sympathise with a man who was an incompetent coward, or his children who turn to crime to avenge their father’s failures? It’s even more depressing to see Aamir Khan trying so hard, dancing and prancing like a lost soul. I guess Nolan was right, you can either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.