Raajneeti or "Out Damn Spot! No? Ok, What's the Big Deal About a Little Blood on my Hands Anyway?

SPOILERS! Sorry but there is no way to review this movie without some spoilers (though I've tried to steer clear of specific plot points) so read at our own risk.

I really enjoyed Raajneeti. Yes, it was long. Yes, it was fairly violent. Yes, it's a film about politics. It's also an engaging, absorbing tale of filial duty, the sins of one generation punishing the next, the love of power for power's sake and good old-fashioned vengeance. It is truly Shakespearean storytelling and to try to talk about it or see it through any other lens would make it seem over the top and I believe it deserves better than that. So, if you're in the mood for Machiavellian political machinations and high drama in a morality play with a resolution as murky and gray as the characters and their motivations, Raajneeti is a must-see film.

The film started out with a lot of information about the characters and their relation to each other and the same with political parties. I was a bit overwhelmed and wondered if I would be able to make sense of it all. Eventually, I realized that those things were really just distractions from the real story of people and the corrupting influence of power. You have 3 hours of political families and parties vying to win the upcoming elections and not once does anyone discuss the issues, what it is the voters want or why it is they want to win other than they believe they are entitled to win. The candidates feed the populace empty rhetoric that has nothing to do with actually governing the people and the people are easily influenced by such rhetoric, not questioning any of what happens. This is why I say Raajneeti is simply an examination of power. It's about how obtaining a little bit of power causes an insatiable thirst for more power, how having power creates a hunger to maintain that power at any cost, how power blinds those who have it to the reasons they wanted it in the first place and how it brings out the worst in them.

I find I don't really want to talk about the specific plot points of Raajneeti. I found all of it interesting and it all served to illustrate what I saw as the overall theme. What I do want to talk about are the performances and chemistry between characters.

Hallelujah! Finally, Arjun Rampal has an outstanding performance. He was truly good in this role. He was perfect as the charismatic but less calculating and more passion-driven scion of a ruling political family. He got everything about the character right from the coldness of the manipulating politician to the vulnerability of the brother, son and husband motivated by his love of his family, to bloodthirsty and slightly mad man in the throes of revenge. His chemistry with Ranbir was fantastic! He plays the protective, older brother with so much affection that you believe that, as bad as he is, if he can love his brother that much, he must not be totally irredeemable. I have always wanted Arjun to be a good actor and he has far exceeded my hopes in Raajneeti. I hope he can be consistent in the future.

Speaking of consistency....Katrina Kaif needs to try it sometime. She wasn't awful but she wasn't very good either. She had some of her trademark wooden moments when you wondered if, like a claymation figure, they were posing her, taking a shot, moving her, taking the next shot and thus animating her. She had some moments that were pretty well acted too but her problem seems to be that you can see her thinking about her acting all the time. She tries too hard and you can see the thought process as plain as day on-screen. Her character was a pivotal one which could have resulted in a very moving and powerful performance had it been given to a better actress. It's a shame it was wasted on someone not ready for it, someone who may never be ready for it.

Ranbir Kapoor was fantastic as usual. He is an actor that, I believe, has enough stand out performances under his belt now to be counted on to deliver every time. I've said it before and I will say it again, he's got the "it" factor and is Bollywood's newest generation's brightest star. He has joined the very exclusive ranks of stars who will get me to the theater no mater what, Shahrukh, Hrithik, and Ranbir. That being said, I have been eagerly awaiting him in a negative or gray role and he delivers in Raajneeti and how! I actually think it's genius casting because he has that vulnerability and aura of niceness that he brings to all of his roles so that you are all the more shocked to see what he does and becomes over the course of the film. He plays cold and calculating brilliantly and makes it sexy! His performance was fantastic and compelling. An interesting point about his character...he may seem to be one of the worst people in a film full of really bad people but his character actually has the purest motivation of all. He is ready to leave all the politics to his family and return to his studies in the U.S. until something happens that causes him to seek vengeance for the sake of a loved one. He is the character most suited to the mantle of power and yet he is the only character that I believe doesn't do what he does for power.

Ajay Devgan...another good character played by a mediocre actor. He's better than Katrina but he needs to have more than one facial expression. Is the man capable of smiling? Has anyone ever seen it? And the way he carries himself...classic "smell the fart acting." Also, whose idea was it for him to play a 27 year old character? Ridiculous! Still, his performance was passable. I just, again, think another actor could have done more with it.

Nana Patekar...wow! He was outstanding as the patriarch/puppet master/kingmaker of all the political maneuvering in the film. His character will go to any lengths to protect the family's political position and power all seemingly with a chilling lack of conscience. He smiles and plays the caring chacha while peoples' lives are bought and sold and ended to serve his whims. His chemistry with Ranbir was terrific! They have some stand out scenes together that are great fun to watch.

The other actors and actresses are fine. Again, they could have found a better American actress to play Ranbir's girlfriend but she wasn't awful in the KJo tradition of white actors. Although, if I had to hear her say "summer" instead of pronouning Samar properly one more time...I would have gladly killed her.

Manoj Bajpai as Veerendra was a little too "filmi villain" for me. It was mostly his look that was a bit ridiculous and he had a few OTT moments. I think a better actor could have won the audience's sympathy more at the end when I think we were meant to feel something for him. I was too distracted by his filmi moochie and straight from the 70s wardrobe to feel anything for him at that point.

Nikhila Trikha is the debutante actress who plays the mother of the family. She was much better in the scenes where she was a young woman opposing her father's political party than she was as the present day 50-60ish mother of Ajay, Arjun and Ranbir. She just didn't have the skill to play the emotional depth needed and her scenes that should have evoked some emotion left me feeling cold. Maybe it was because I couldn't find anything sympathetic about her character at that point in the film. Any woman who allows herself to be controlled and then allows the same thing to happen to her children and lets them be raised to be what they become gets nothing but contempt from me.

Finally, Nasserudin Shah. He has a very small role in the film but he made the most of it. He was wonderful for the few minutes he was onscreen and I wish he was in more films.

So, Raajneeti is definitely worth seeing in my opinion. Even if you don't like the story I think you'll find the performances worth your time and money. I, however, think that you'll find this case study of the human hunger and quest for power compelling in and of itself. There is a lot packed into the last half of the film and I've already heard some people say it gets too filmi but when you play as deep a game as these characters do, consequences are to be expected. What goes around comes around. This is why I call it Shakespearean in scale. It is a heightened version of life...an absolute version, if you will. After all, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Rocket Singh Salesman of the Year

Rocket Singh was not at all the movie I expected it to be.

So, let me take this opportunity to talk about the way some Hindi films are marketed. It seems to me that occasionally a film comes along that the producers are afraid to market for what it really is for one reason or another. Chance Pe Dance was marketed as a dance movie when it really isn't. It's a movie about a guy who wants to be an actor. Just because they had Shahid Kapoor they thought they had to market it as a dance movie I guess. I suppose, in that movie's case, they had to look for the best thing they had and go with it. Another film that comes to mind is Life in a Metro. I was really excited to see this film when I saw trailers for it. It looked like a nice, gushy film about various couples at different places in life. What I got when I finally watched it was a tawdry, infuriating film about people twisting love and mistaking physical intimacy for what's most important in life. (If you want to see the movie that Life in a Metro could have been see Playing by Heart) And now, Rocket Singh. The ads for this made it look like a high energy comedy of some sort. I was reluctant to see it because it looked like it would be slapstick and quite possibly ridiculous. Instead you have a thoughtful film that moves at a realistic pace. Nothing earth shattering happens and it's just about regular people going about their mundane lives but figuring out how to be as dignified and as happy as possible in the process. Now that is a movie I would have been anxious to see, a movie I really enjoyed once I overcame my misgivings caused by the ads. So what I'm saying is, don't be afraid of your films people! Especially just because they're not the typical BW fare, a good film will stand for itself. You do the films a disservice by marketing them based on what you think the audience wants to see. Market them properly and let them find their audience.

The main reason I decided to watch Rocket Singh, despite being wary of it based on the marketing, was Ranbir Kapoor. I believe he is definitely the best of Bollywood's younger generation of actors. He's that rarest of commodities...a really good actor. Beyond that, he's got the "it" factor. I don't think it's the super mega-star "it" factor of SRK but he's certainly more compelling than any of his peers and many of those who've been at it much longer *cough* Saif Ali Khan*cough* He has a great vulnerability about him and a genuineness that translates to his characters and really makes you care about them. I can't wait to see his future films. I especially want to see him play a grey character which, if the trailer for Rajneeti can be trusted, may be coming very soon.

On with the film review.... At first, Rocket Singh made me uncomfortable and, quite honestly, depressed me. I think it's because I identified with Harpreet so very much. He's a middle class boy being raised by his grandfather who graduates from college with below average grades. He passes the test to go for an MBA course but can't afford to pay for it so he goes out into the work world. He ends up in a shitty job that quickly sucks away any enthusiasm he had about entering the adult world and starts to change his attitude towards his life in general and his loved ones. The movie does a brilliant job of showing you what effect a horrible job can have on every aspect of your life and, as I once said about one of my jobs, can kill a little piece of your soul every day. Harpreet is a good guy and he gets punished mercilessly for doing the right thing. He finally decides to take things into his own hands and show those who have put him down that he is more than they have given him credit for.

Without getting into major spoilers, let me just say that Rocket Singh is a great example of how Bollywood can make movies that will appeal to an international audience without losing what makes them wonderful. It's a good story with a tight plot, good dialogue, believable characters and nothing over the top. There were a few instances in the plot where the characters had a choice to make. Had this been a Hollywood film, the characters would have gone with the cynical, negative choice. In this movie, however, they made the choice to trust, forgive, do the right thing and that is one of the best things about Hindi films. They have a hopefulness that the West has come to view as too uncool or unreal. (I'm really sad for us if hope has really become too "unreal" to even be portrayed in films. This is why I watch more Hindi films than American films these days.)

Overall, I thought Rocket Singh was a good, solid film. I identified with it and was interested in the characters and their journey. Ranbir gave a strong, engaging performance. The supporting cast was solid, especially Prem Chopra as Harpreet's grandfather. Rocket Singh tells you that you can't let other people's expectations of you write your destiny (nicely illustrated in a scene where the formerly slimy supervisor is misjudged by his new parters in Rocket Sales) Ultimately, it's a movie about not letting the world around you make you lose your self-respect, about getting the life you deserve the right way even when everything tells you you can't and about knowing that you're more than what's written in black and white and more than someone else's opinion.

Wake Up Sid! I Just Fell in Love.

Like the first soft drops of the monsoon, Sid's quiet tears on Aisha's doorstep and the gentle development of the love between them, Wake Up Sid crept gently into that part of my heart reserved for films that become part of my psyche, happy places that I visit when I need to smile.

I won't go into too much plot detail with spoilers because I don't wish to deprive anyone of the experience of falling in love with this perfect, simple film. Like Aisha's article, this movie is a love letter to Mumbai, to independence and to the journey from childhood to adulthood. If you're a bit older than the characters in the movie, as I am, it can be about waking up to the fact that life is just passing you by if you're not doing something you love. There are still things to be learned about yourself even 10 years down the road.

Konkona Sen Sharma as Aisha is wonderful as usual. I like her so much as an actress. She doesn't have the kinetic vibrancy of Kajol, my other favorite actress, but she has a soulfulness, intelligence and quiet strength that she brings to her characters that I adore. She is nurturing without losing herself which I heartily applaud. So often, women nurture by sacrificing parts of themselves, but her characters never seem to lose their identities while steering the men in their lives to self actualization.

Ranbir Kapoor surprised me and I think I have a small crush on him now. He portrays Sid's youthful arrogance and sense of entitlement with just enough sweetness to make sure the audience cares for him and is invested in his journey. As Sid grows as a person, Ranbir brings a new vulnerability to the character that makes you believe that Sid is learning and maturing. You really care about this spoiled brat and root for him.

Sid's friends Rishi and Laxmi don't get nearly enough screen time if you ask me but they do tremendous jobs with what they are given. Played by Namit Das and Shikha Talsania respectively, Sid's friends are endearing and real and you'll wish you had a Rishi and Laxmi in your life. They are so likeable as characters that they help greatly in winning the audience over to Sid because if he has such great friends, then he must not be just a spoiled brat but a good person with a good heart as well. I look forward to seeing both of them in future films.

What can I say about Anupam Kher as Sid's dad? Anupam is my favorite film dad of all time. When he's at his best playing a father (and he's at his best here), I always believe that his kid(s) are the most important thing in his life and that he loves them unconditionally. His performances are so warm and realistic that, no matter how small or ancillary the role, I enjoy them thoroughly.

Supriya Pathak is lovely too as Sid's mother. There are times when she looks at Sid with such love and hope in her eyes, pleading with him to acknowledge that he understands what she does for him and how much she loves him, that it almost breaks your heart.

Finally, we have Rahul Khanna as Aisha's boss. He's handsome, sexy, intelligent and, ultimately, a good guy. Rahul Khanna pulls off this small role beautifully. He flawlessly embodies every woman's fantasy about the sophisticated, gorgeous, older man we dream of sweeping us off our feet.

The screenplay and direction by Ayan Mukherji are terrific, especially considering this is his debut film. It feels as though the screenplay was fully realized before filming began which doesn't often seem to be the case with Hindi films. As a screenwriter he has written a story about relationships and becoming who you're meant to be that really makes sense. As a director , he has made the interaction between the characters and each of their journeys feel authentic and logical but, at the same time, very heartfelt and loving. He has also made Mumbai feel like a magical, beautiful place and one of the most vital characters in the movie. If I hadn't wanted to travel there before, I certainly do now.

So, as the first rains of the monsoon transform Mumbai, do those first tears of Sid's begin the transformation of an irresponsible young man to loving, successful adult? You have to watch the movie! Where will you end up? If you're like me, you'll end up wishing you lived in Aisha's flat, had friends like Sid's and were standing on the shore in Mumbai as the first monsoon rains fall on you.

But, even if you don't have those things, you might just be inspired to rethink what it is you really want to do with your life and, at the very least, Wake Up Sid will be a happy little place that you can always go to when you need a smile.