Kaminey

Genre: Action
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Amol Gupte, Deb Mukherjee, Rajatabha Dutta, Harish Khanna
Music: Vishal Bharadwaj
Cinematography: Tassaduq Hussain
Written by: Vishal Bhardwaj
Produced by: UTV Motion Pictures
Directed by: Vishal Bhardwaj
Date Seen: 17/8/2009
Rating 4.5/5


Kaminey, (In english, it means Rascals. No.. not you…) - the movie, is finally here to make you shiver. Vishal Bharadwaj made an attempt to brings Hollywood to Bollywood, remindful of the rashness of Quentin Tarantino’s action thrillers which slings the viewer into the dark, violent world of crime and criminals, leaving you no time to blink or breathe easy. Moreover its certainly a film for the people with above average intelligence to understand the script of the film. For others, its a messy dish with bitter taste, at least for first 10 minutes when the movie begins.
The Story:
Charlie & Guddu (Shahid Kapoor in double role) are twins. Guddu is a NGO worker, who stammers while speaking. While Charlie lisps Guddu has stuttering problem, and can’t stand each other. One fateful night Charlie gets sucked into a deadly get rich quick scheme, while Guddu realizes that the love of his life, Sweety has put a price on his head. It’s all about how the brothers, sucked into a world of drugs, guns and money tackle gangsters, rebel soldiers, rogue politicians and crooked cops while protecting themselves, their dreams, and their love.
Kaminey is about twin brothers Charlie and Guddu (Shahid Kapoor in double role), both of whom suffer from speech impediments and they hate each other.
Guddu is a NGO worker, who stammers while speaking. He is of common man type with straight-forward attitudes who prefers to live a peaceful, non-violent life. He is punctilious and has life plans made till 2014 on a chart pasted in his cupboard.
Guddu realizes love of his life with his girl friend Sweety (Priyanka Chopra) who is the sister of a Underworld Gangster cum Politician, Bhope (Amol Gupte). Guddu’s all plans are shattered when he impregnates Sweety and suddenly marries without knowing that she is the sister of Bhope.
Charlie is a small gangster, who pronounces the alphabet ‘S’ as ‘F’. Charlie is totally opposite to Guddu in every aspect of life except one thing, stammering problem. He steals a guitar containing cocaine worth 10 crore from a bunch of currupt cops on streets. Then he thinks he has finally made it to the big league.
What happens next is a gripping journey through Mumbai streets surrounded with many Kamineys like corrupt policemen, drug dealers, henchmen, informers and agents. Finally the two brothers though having separate story lines meet at a point in film and they are forced to come together however they hate each other.

Love Aaj Kal

Rating : 4/5
Date Seen: 02-08-2009
Director : Imtiaz Ali
Cast : Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Rishi Kapoor, Rahul Khanna, Raj Zutshi, Vir Das, Giselle Monteiro

The movie attempts to answer the above question by example. The questioner here is Jai Vardhan Singh (Saif) who’s living in the UK, dreaming of working for the Golden Gate Company in San Francisco, and in the meanwhile trying not to “pile-on” to beautiful girls. While trying the whole “don’t mean to pile-on, but” routine, he meets beautiful Meera Pandit (Deepika). They hit it off, which subsequently leads to a relationship. When their careers dictate that they move to different countries, they part amicably, and move on with their lives . . .

This film with it’s dual-track love-stories falls strongly into the romance genre. However it’s not your frothy, bubbly romance, a la “Jab we met” , but more of a tale of “difficult” love - i.e.; finding “The One”, and on finding him/her (if you do), the more onerous task of knowing if this is it. Our protagonists Meera and Jai really don’t have a clue; they don’t appear to have thought that far.

Saif plays two characters in the film, that of suave city-boy Jai, and also that of the young Sardar Veer. He looked quite a “natural” Sardar, and even managed the Punjabi accent ably. Overall his performance was energetic, enthusiastic, and if not immaculate, really quite decent. Deepika is quite good as Meera. Meera is an unconventional Bollywood heroine, in that she is smart, has her wits about her, and is calm and reserved by nature. Thus, Deepika seemed a good fit for this role, although her monotonous dialogue delivery didn’t actually light up the screen in the first half of the movie. Her acting style is rather understated, which kind of works here, because that’s who Meera is.

The film when it started, presented the Jai-Meera story in a flurry of quick, short takes - I could just imagine the director yelling “Cut“ after every 10 seconds. Until about the interval, this was how it went, kind of abrupt, and cryptic - made me feel like I was getting the compressed version of the story. But post-interval Ali seemed to get his act together, and the squiggly little pieces of the plot seemed to come together and flow. Thus while I was beginning to have my doubts in the first half of the film, I must say I was floored by the second. The characters are hard not to like, and Meera’s predicament had me shedding a few tears of my own.

“Love Aaj Kal” is a film well worth your time.