Superhero noir

If the words of director Matthew Vaughn are anything to go by, the form-shifting, mutant men and women with one single incredible personal power that differentiates them from the others are in for a rollicking ride on the turnstiles as long as comic book superheroes rule. “If introducing the major characters in X-Men: First Class was the difficult part, the next few films would be joyrides,” he said and how right he could turn out to be. As the introductory prequel to the box office blowback franchise, the celluloid adaptation of the Marvel comic sensation makes for an awesome, prosaic and bat-your-eyelid-and-miss-the-fun adventure, albeit with a stupendously genuine historical context.
The film rearranges the characters to build them to their present forms, providing a wrenching account of the relationship between friends-turned-foes Professor X (the progenitor of X-Men, convincingly played by James McAvoy) and Magneto (the creator of the Brotherhood of Mutants). Running through the narrative is a blatantly undisguised yet remarkably muted reference to the non-acceptance of difference that has characterized human society. It cleaves in place the fact that mankind has historically been unkind to those who are different. Exemplified with stark ingenuity in the constant inner battle waged by the blue-hued mutant Raven who walks around in her human form just so that she is accepted by humans till Erik Lensherr or Magneto (a utterly brilliant Micheal Fassbender as the wronged, brooding, monosyllabic avenger) as he will finally be called, walks into her life and proposes an alternative life—that of a blue-formed, rough-skinned young mutant, her original form, the way she is, the way she would always be. Or the super-smart, six-toed Hank (Beast) who develops an antibiotic fix for his difference, all for the sake of acceptance. Unfortunately for the nerd, the experiment goes wrong, leaving in its wake a faux-toothed, dark blue, hairy Neanderthal, a visage that mankind would find all the more difficult to accept. This allusion to difference and its acceptance runs through the film concluding in the difference of opinion that emerges between Professor X and Magneto over joining hands with mankind or raising hackles to fight the marauding humans—the real enemies of the world of mutants, mirthless humans who distinguish and discriminate on the basis of form, colour and appearance.
The film is a spectacular dash to the beginning of the saga and unfolds with a young Erik bending drawers, tables and book racks in Herr Schmidt’s office who shoots down his mother in cold blood to make Erik unleash his metal-bending powers. Across national boundaries, a teenage Charles Xavier (Professor X) meets a young Raven who appears to him, of course, in human form. Years later, as Erik searches high and low for his mother’s killer, Professor X, fresh from the success with his PhD, is sought out by the CIA which is convinced that a marauding mutant, Sebastian Shaw (previously Herr Schmidt [Kevin Bacon at his menacing best]) is hell-bent on a Third World War for the complete annihilation of mankind so that mutants could hold fort on earth. The Professor and the avenging angel meet as the world is at the cusp of a nuclear war, with the United States and USSR stationing missiles across the Cuban peninsula, one intent on helping the humans come out of the crisis and the other mind-numbingly immune to everything else but revenge for his mother’s death. A group of young mutants with extraordinary powers is their last hope to stop Shaw from executing his sinister plan. Shaw’s death at the hands of Erik is only the beginning of the end. As Professor X prefers to side with the humans, Erik opts out to battle them—the race he terms as the real enemies—as Magneto!

Up in smoke

The verdant albeit crowded beaches of Goa are a treat to watch, in any cinematic landscape, through the twists and turns of even a lukewarm plot, the dramatic sizzle of western India’s most happening state is infectious. Therefore, when Dum Maro Dum opens with a cutting line on the myriad snakes populating the golden sands of Goa in the form of drug traffickers and runners, controlled by the string-pulling hands of the drug mafia, the expectant veins of the cinegoer do not exactly hyperventilate. Though the lines are pithy and searing. This is the story of a Goa marred and polluted by the acrid smoke rising out of the chillums of thousands of backpackers, tourists and locals; there is no default in the supply chain, the carriers are chosen carefully, and cocaine and heroin worth millions are traded everyday against the backdrop of rave parties and beach fiestas. Gone are the scenes of palms swaying against the sea breeze and the shimmering waters lapping against the glittering sands; this is a Goa of Russian drug lords, British rave organizers, and Nigerian peddlers who work in unison and with alarming alacrity and guile with local Goans (not to forget the police) to seal the fate of this fabulous party destination. The characters range from a bad cop-turned-good cop, a young college topper with dreams in his eyes, to a local DJ with a heart of gold and the drug kingpin who inaugurates deaddiction centres without batting an eyelid. Lawrence Eduardo Gomes (Prateik Babbar) is the local goalkeeper who receives an admission letter from a university in the US but not the scholarship, which incidentally is bagged by his girlfriend. So, Lorry (short for Lawrence, a typical Goan quirk) becomes easy prey for the drug overlords hatchet men who turn him into a willing carrier of contraband drugs, trying to pass off a suitcase laced with kilos of cocaine through airport security. Incidentally, Lorry is all set to join his girlfriend in the US having secured all payments and papers in return for a safe passage for the consignment. Enter ACP Vishnu Kamath, the cop with an enduring legacy of being one of the deadliest narcotics policemen, also one of the most corrupt, but with a tragic past (lost his family in accident etc etc). A shaken Lorry is caught, detained, searched and questioned. Kamath, on special duty on invitation by the Chief Minister of the state, has put together a small team of two men (and himself) which includes Rane (Govind Namdeo). The clueless police force, by the way, has been trying to track down a shadowy man called Michael Barbossa, the alleged leader of the cartel running the contraband industry in Goa. Joki, short for Joachim, Fernandes (Rana Daggubati) steps in to help a pleading Lorry, willing to stand guarantee for the young lad. After all, the aspiring musician has already lost his ladylove Zoe (Bipasha Basu) to drugs and the local lord, Lorsa Biscuita (Aditya Panscholi) (never mind the name!) and, of course, is incredibly pained to see another young life going to the dogs. Subsequently, Kamath and his team, with help from Joki, embark on a wild goose chase to find Barbossa, also known as Vincent Vega, Colin Coutinho, and Toby Follett. Cut to sacrifice by the fallen air-hostess-turned-gangsters moll and her consequent death at the hands of Biscuita and the enlightening discovery of the origins of Barbossa—actually a name engraved on top of a gravestone brings the film to a close. By this time, Kamath has been killed, felled by bullets from the service revolver of his own team man Rane who sleeps with the enemy and follows the lure of the lucre and Biscuita has been unmasked. Ever the help at hand, Joki takes on from where Kamath left off, goes for the jugular making Rane grovel and beg for mercy, finds Michael Barbossa’s grave, stuffed with narcotics worth Rs 970 million and avenges his girlfriend’s death. Lorry, meanwhile, has been let off and is free to fly away. The plot is racy and the dialogues taut. Cinematographically, Dum Maro Dum captures the beach life of Goa abundantly and reflects the colour and splendour of the state. The performances are efficient, except for Bipasha Basu who has little to do except look slim and svelte, shed a few tears and make love to Rana Daggubati and (hold your breath) Aditya Panscholi. Abhishek Bachchan stands his ground as the angry young cop, while south star Rana Daggubati takes pretty long strides into the heart of Bollywood. Panscholi looks sufficiently menacing though the cold countenance could have been better exploited.

Of war and retribution

When Michelangelo painted the Fall of Man, little did he fathom the commonality and the parallels that could possibly be, insipiently and rather incongruously, drawn between the falling out of the men on the mural and the growing wedges between men and women irrespective of creed and colour, who, driven by anger, jealousy, lust, ambition, and egos, go to war. Men have been at war for ever. Even so, images of war on celluloid sear the soul, cripple memory and instigate fears of yet another conflagration claiming the lives of hundreds of innocents. But, the sucker for war films that I am, I end up compulsively and with renewed interest watch was films the second and even the third time. Saving Private Ryan (1998) is a film I have watched thrice and every single time I did, I came away thoughtful, questioning. Why do men go to war (I say men here as the case of women going to war have been critically rare)? In 1914, the Germans, the British, the French and the Russians went to war, the leaders disregarding faint but powerful voices advocating peace. Mammoth egos of powerful men led thousands to their deaths, countries and economies collapsed, widowed women lined the streets demanding jobs, Russia convulsed internally as the peasants and the working class rose against the Tsar. Even after the Treaty of Versailles had been signed, the League of Nations established, the losing Germans stripped of everything including their dignity, and the world sighed in relief, Europe went up in flames again in 1939, this time primarily because of the whims of one man—Adolf Hitler—and the uncompromising attitudes of the Allied powers. The mass murder that followed left all involved with nothing more to fight for or fight with and hence the bloodiest war in history came to an end in 1945. Saving Private Ryan is a story set in 1944 and begins on the beaches of Normandy in France, seen through the eyes of erstwhile Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon). Captain John H Miller (Tom Hanks) and his company, oblivious of the German emplacements throughout the beach lands in hell as the German guns open up. Miller loses more than thirty of his men under ominously grey French skies, in one of the best combat sequences ever filmed. As young American soldiers, most not more than boys, kiss their crosses and utter the Lord’s Prayer and stricken men look around the bloody beach for a limb, the catastrophe that is war comes home in one blinding flash. A day later Captain Miller is informed of his next mission—finding Private Ryan, under direct orders from the Army high command in Washington, following the deaths of all three of his brothers in combat. A shamed American military top brass is faced with a tragic dilemma—breaking the news to the grieving mother and delivering alive the one hope in the world she has—her last child. Thus, begin’s Miller’s journey, seven of his men giving him company through the French battlefields, through the heart of German reinforcements. He loses one man then another to battle. As the men trudge along, they make small talk, trying desperately to shrug off the fear and the possibility of death, they bet dollars on the origins of their group leader, toss around dog tags to find Private Ryan and even converse about the merits and demerits of a melancholic love song playing in the background of their last battlefield. They also lose friends, the team medic Wade who asks for morphine so that he does not feel the pain and dies calling for his mother and the big Caparzo who tries to save a tiny French girl from German sniper guns because she reminds him of his niece and falls to a shot. And Miller faces rebellion in the form of Reiben who wants to kill a f****** German PoW but relents to reason by Miller and protestations by Upham, the translator. After a few false starts, Ryan is actually found alive and unwilling to vacate his post. What wrong have these men committed? Why do I get to go home while they don’t? The utter uselessness of war, the half-baked logic of sending young men to their deaths for no fault of theirs, apparent or otherwise, the preposterous arguments in favour of armed conflict and absolutely unnecessary exercise of power…it all comes to naught. There is no logic for war, no logic either for transferring the weight of the ambitions of one man or one class of men on to the shoulders of common men and women. In the glazed dead eyes of Captain John Miller and the tears-streaked eyes of Private Ryan, is reflected the futility of war.

Of human ups and downs

Every once in a while, along comes a film which portrays the real as a fractious compilation of human failings, surrender to the baser instincts, departures from the staid guidelines of societal behaviour and finally, unnatural, uncanny and unprecedented success. A chronicle of pseudo-modern realism, The Social Network (2010) by David Fincher is a matter-of-fact, pragmatic, often banal overview of the forces behind the Facebook phenomenon. It is not the usual gravitas-filled, pathos-induced biography that we are so used to watching. Mark Zuckerberg is not really the wartime hero who sends tremors of emotion through the gloating audience, nor is he the vile, repugnant anti-hero who elicits nothing more than hatred; he is a hero and an anti-hero all at once, a function of duality overwhelmingly and achingly real. He pilfers the idea of a global social networking website from his Harvard colleagues, the handsome, well-bred Winklevoss twins and their Indian friend, adds his ingenuity as a master programmer and $19000 of his best buddy, Eaduardo Saverin’s money and voila! We have The Facebook. Then, Sean Parker walks in. The former founder of Napster is now out of a job and looking to make big bucks. Zuckerberg, who can safely now be renamed “Suckerberg”, falls for the charms of the big-talking Parker who nets him a huge financial deal. And yes! On Parkers word “The” is dropped from Facebook! Then, what does Zuckerberg do? He quietly and coolly deletes Saverin from his friend list, reducing his profit share to 0.1 per cent. Not surprisingly, Saverin takes Zuckerberg to court and that, along with the Winklevoss’ trial, forms the backdrop of this little gem of a film. But, of course, the millionaire twins sue Zuckerberg for theft of intellectual property, a heinous crime in the haloed portals of Harvard. Based loosely on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 bestseller The Accidental Billionaires, the film is helped along marvelously by a taut, gripping screenplay by Aaron Sorkin. Jesse Eisenberg is superb as Zuckerberg. The wronged former best friend Saverin is played to perfection by Andrew Garfield. However, the high point of the film is Justin Timberlake’s turn as Sean Parker. His rakish, over-the-top, loud act completely overshadows the second half of the film.

Grimace alright...but watch

Danny Boyle’s last film celebrated the filth and grime of Mumbai. The enterprising chaiwala, in pursuit of his childhood love, ended up taking Uncle Oscar home. Boyle is again part of the Oscar race…this time for a fine piece of cinematic experiment. It pits human spirit against the uncompromising, unrelenting force of nature. Nature as we have seldom known it. 127 Hours does not create a fantastic canvas of rain or hail, nor does it breathe life into the bounties of nature by panning the camera too close to accentuate the smallest particles that sustain life. As it sweeps over the dry, yellow, silent canyons of Colorado, it breathes life into the rocks and boulders that have made these devastating ravines some of the most beautiful, though one of the most feared, natural formations on the planet. The nooks, crannies and crevices are breathtakingly shot. American hiker/adventurer Aaron Ralston (James Franco) traverses these dangerous depths with the characteristic nonchalance of someone with many years behind him climbing rocks. Just that this time, the rocks decide to trap him and for good. From here on 127 Hours becomes a clear, concise and abridged guide to human survival. Ralston, his hand stuck against a boulder that has fallen into a crevice with just enough space for him to balance himself on the climbing rope, survives for five days, or 127 Hours, on a bottle of fast diminishing water, moisture from chewing his contact lenses, meager dinner (the last three days without dinner or lunch), a few yards of climbing ropes, some patience and lots of grit. Four days hence when the vitals start deteriorating and everything from the first steps on the canyon with his father, little sister playing his favourite tune on the piano, a zillion apologies to a doting mother, handycam recordings for family and friends and a phony act as a radio jockey (also for the handycam) have zoomed past his rapidly collapsing mind and feverish eyes, Ralston does what he had envisioned on the second day itself. He decides to live…even if he has to without his right hand. And how does he think he can do that? All he has is a Chinese multi-purpose knife which is of little help. Day five, Ralston must use the knife. And he does. Cutting through tissue and nerves, Ralston seems to be remarkably accurate.
Highlight of the film—James Franco. He is excruciatingly real. Moves from being a charmer to someone with incredible amount of guts with amazing ease. Beginning with his encounter with the girls out to have some fun on the boulders to gnawing at the tissues of his arm with a pen-knife, Franco is a delight to watch.

Along River Jordan

Syriana (2005), directed by Steven Gaghan, was probably best known for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar that the film fetched for its leading man—George Clooney. What many of us missed (no numbers on this though) was the pivotal parts played by the rather impressive cast, which included Matt Damon and Jeffrey Wright, in this well-rounded and well-told political drama that relies on facts from old CIA espionage files to construct a timely tale of intrigue and deceit at the highest levels.
The petroleum politics that lies at the heart of the ‘clash of civilization’ between the United States and the oil-rich Arab world forms the captivating background to the thriller, so does the fundamental argument that pervades the construction of the ‘Bad Muslim’—the English-speaking, educated, politically ambitious, reformist Prince of an Emirate who repels American propaganda to hand out an oil deal to the Chinese—and the ‘Good Muslim—the wine-swilling American stooge, the younger Prince of the same Emirate, in mainstream American cinema. The demarcation is stark and compartmentalized. The characters are etched out correctly, to convey the gist of the matter to the viewer—American double game in the Middle East.
The creation of a terrorist is also documented well enough, in the form of the young Pakistani boy who is sacked from his lowly job as a migrant worker in an oil rig. Not only does he end up in the local madrasa, watching tapes featuring Osama bin Laden, he is the protagonist of the suicide attack on an American ship (ostensibly taking off from the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in 2000). Thus, is all boils down to the emergence of the United States as the key driver of Islamic fundamentalism, owing to its incendiary and one-sided Middle East policy—the propping up of puppet regimes in the Arab world in order to control the global demand and supply of oil. Using multiple, parallel storylines, Syriana manages to convey the moot point pretty well.
The American energy analyst (Matt Damon) comes to appreciate his employer’s—the ‘Bad Muslim’ Prince—point of view as he outlines plans to usher some semblance of democracy in the Emirate. The ‘Good Muslim’ Prince, meanwhile is working against his brother to gain control of the throne, as well as his ailing father—the reigning Emir—with the help of the Americans. But he is ‘good’ because he is with the Americans. The embittered, double-crossed CIA agent (George Clooney) lurks in the background for most of the film, and makes time towards the end to warn the ‘Bad Muslim’ of the impending rocket attack on him and his family as they travel across the desert. Turned away by the Agency once his utility as a Middle East expert is over, Clooney realizes his folly (involvement in an assassination attempt on the ‘Bad Muslim’). Also taking up considerable reel space in the film is the story of the merger of two American petroleum giants and the discovery, by a young attorney, of the nefarious ways in which the deal was brokered and the blood that was spilt. Perhaps a tad slow in parts, Syriana is a powerful indictment of American foreign policy.

The mind of a murderer

One usually expects a whodunnit to follow the oft beaten path, or that’s how most people view murder stories as they unfold on screen. With Hitchcock, its different. The first thing that one notices about Psycho (1960) is the sheer paucity of people or characters in the narrative. Minimalist. As the drama jostles its way forward, the realism of the plot hits home. There isn’t a necessity of having any extra characters. The ones that are there captivate you and how. There’s the runaway petty thief, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), the woman who keeps a straight face while scampering away from town with a stash of cash, $ 40,000 no less, all belonging to her employer’s client. So, what does Ms Crane do next? She keeps the suspicious cop at bay, dusts off the queries of the curious garage salesman and heads away into a cash-rich future? Not really!
Alighting out of her rental car, away from the highway, Ms Crane comes across a run-down motel and…..Norman Bates. Good ol’ Norman Bates. He lives alone…well…with his “mentally ill” mother and runs (if twelve out of twelve empty cabins is called business) the Bates Motel, hidden away from the glare of the headlights speeding along the highway. As Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins is unmatched. He fumbles and stammers his way through the scene where Ms Crane is munching on a light dinner brought around by, why, Bates himself, betraying just a hint of his satanic, psychotic personality. Absolute brilliance. Then, Ms Crane is killed, stabbed repeatedly by what appears to be an apparition (ostensibly Bates’ mother) and Bates cleans up, pushing her car away into a slush pond, completely oblivious of the cash that the woman was carrying. One remembers Bates peeping through a hole in the parlour wall as Ms Crane undresses.
In obvious panic, Ms Crane’s sister hires the services of private investigator Arbogast…to find her lost sister…and , of course, the stolen money! The detective, arriving at the Bates motel, encounters…well who else but Norman Bates. The bumbling Bates, reveals after considerable cajoling that Ms Crane did come in to spend the night. Unsatisfied with the responses, Arbogast decides to check in on the old mother to know if she met the woman. He, too never returns. Bates is again found standing by the slush pond, apparently smiling to himself.
Its now the turn of the other Ms Crane and Marion Cranes’ boyfriend Sam to take a trip to the Bates Motel. Before that they meet the town Sheriff, only to be told that Norman Bates’ old mother died years ago. Convinced that the man at the counter at the motel has something to do with the disappearance of her sister, Lila Crane ventures (much to the dismay of Norman Bates) into his large house, to find his ailing old mother. The rest is one of the best pre-climax and climax scenes ever shot in a psycho thriller. The explanation for Bates’ crimes is even more macabre. Utterly psychotic and hideously neurotic who keeps stuffed dead birds in his parlour, Bates smiles devilishly into the camera as the police cracks the cases, one by one (apparently he killed more people than Just Ms Crane and the detective). Psycho can be watched for a feral performance by Perkins and, of course, the mind-boggling justification of his heinous crimes. Bates’ body harbours two personalities, that of his mother apart from his own. After murdering his mother and her lover years ago, he does not bury his mother’s body, but keeps it in the old house. Whenever, Bates, the man, is sexually drawn to another woman, the “mother” takes charge, compelling Bates to kill the object of his desire.
The plot is a case study of the portrayal of desire, especially physical desire, on celluloid. With the murders and the pychosis in the background, Psycho is pure genius exploration of the human mind and the animal desires that is contains.

Friendship...pain...revenge

I remember being unable to sleep half the night after watching Barry Levinson’s Sleepers way back in 1998. Probably because the images of four teenagers being repeatedly brutalized by sadistic prison guards kept me awake. But did it really? Wasn’t the fact that the boys came back ten years later to avenge their humiliation a greater pull? In hindsight, maybe it was. That emotion does not change, eleven years later as I switch off the TV after watching the film again. The ensemble cast of the film—Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Bacon, Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro—had gotten me interested in the film in 1998. In 2011, I watched the film again for what it really was. A brutal, sad, but strong story well-told. Based on a controversial book by Lorenzo Carcaterra, Sleepers attempts to peel the layers off the truth behind juvenile justice in the United States of America, no less. And did we think that juveniles languishing in remand homes in India were victims of sexual abuse, rapes, and prolonged torture! Carcaterra is the protagonist of the film who, along with his friends—Michael Sullivan, John Riley, and Thomas Marcano, all growing up in Hell’s Kitchen—pull a prank on a hotdog vendor, which goes horribly wrong. The result is 18 months of incarceration at the upcountry Wilkinson’s Home for Boys. From the frame where the guard Sean Nokes (played by Kevin Bacon) forces the young Carcaterra to strip in front of him, to the scenes—shot in black and white—of rape and abuse, the film is demanding…in places painful, where except for the sporadic meetings with the local priest, Father Bobby (Robert De Niro), the boys are pretty much on their own.

Out of the correction centre, and ten years later, John and Tom are small-time gangsters, Carcaterra (Jason Patric) is a clerk at the New York Times and Michael (Brad Pitt, quite remarkable) is a district attorney. The rest of the film is a courtroom drama with both De Niro and Dustin Hoffman (as the defence attorney) pitching in with brilliant performances. John and Tom shoot Nokes dead and are put on trial. Michael and Lorenzo—Shakes to his friends—plan the proceedings of the trial so that Nokes’ friend and torturer-in-arms is brought on as a witness and humiliated in full view of the jury, another one in the group is arrested and tried for dealing drugs, the fourth member of the gang is shot by the brother of a boy the former guards killed at Wilkinson’s. Revenge taken, the boys spend an evening—their last one together—before walking away. As the story goes, John and Tom were found dead, shot at close range just shy of their thirtieth birthdays; Michael quit practice immediately after the trial and lives alone in England; while Shakes is elevated from clerk to trainee reporter at the New York Times. Michael never married. Young lives lost forever. Powerful!