A sucker punch called Kaminey

Sunday evening I broke with tradition and ventured out of home to watch a movie. Usually, I relax at home Sundays evenings recharging my batteries for another week of labor. I made an exception and the movie was the much acclaimed director Vishal Bharadwaj’s supposedly best until now comic-action caper Kaminey.

I landed at the theater expecting to be blown away by a first of its kind Hindi movie as claimed by all critics. Blown away I was, but not by the sheer magnificence but by acute boredom. Before you guys jump to rip my throat apart accusing me of lack of understanding of cinema and ability to appreciate something good, please read me out. I am not going to retell the already oft told story; I am just going to talk of why the movie failed to win my vote.

For starters there was nothing hugely dark about the movie other than its lighting for most part. Please tell me what’s so new in a story of twin brothers, one good and the other evil on surface and decent beneath the scratch? I have lost count of such movies made by Bollywood.

From when did lisping and stammering qualify as good acting? From when did having sex, getting pregnant and marriage become a novel theme? And the sex wasn’t even good enough resembling a 30-second MMS clip shot in some shady hotel off Madh Island in Mumbai. The only difference, here both parties were willing to be captured on camera.

The lyrics were the only saving grace, thanks to Gulzar, but wasted in a movie that was flagged off from an unknown destination and ended at an equally nondescript one. I can go on and on just like the movie did in a near empty auditorium, but I will cut the chase short and come directly to the end.

With bullets flying all around, all players getting a chance to show off their gun wielding skills, the rains and the dark compounding an already confusing passage of play…the end reminded one the Antoine Fuqua-directed Replacement Killers. Originality is relative, I guess. And the last scene had to be typical Bollywood, right? The lovebirds delivering twins, and the free and footloose living life King Size!

I don't know what the critics were thinking when they fell over each other to give the movie all the stars that they did. I would be happy if Vishal Bhardwaj refunded my Rs290 because for me, Kaminey was just an inferior rip-off of any or all of the John Woo and Quentin Tarantino movies, besides Fuqua.