Johnny Gaddaar : Film Review

Sriram Raghavan did a great job with Johnny Gaddaar. In fact a few days after I saw Ek Haseena Thi (Raghavan's first film), I was pretty sad wondering if the guy would ever get a chance to make a second movie. I loved Ek Haseena Thi but it did not do well at the box office. That did surprise me but ah ! well ! I was very impressed with the intelligent script and Saif's good looks. I loved the ending.

Coming to Johnny Gaddaar (JG), first a taste of the story line and then my analysis. The film revolves around a gang of five men, from different age groups, with different occupations and spectacularly different characteristics. What brought them together was a desire to make more money, easy money. "Easy" is the wrong word. Quick money. The movie starts with all of them putting in money together to invest in a deal. The movie really starts when one of them decides to steal the money before the money reaches the dealer. How does he do it ? HE (am not disclosing) plans something but things do not go according to his plan. Be it unintended murders, slip of tongue, instant decisions, irresponsible lying - the audience will never be able to guess what is there on HIS mind. Sometimes HE does not know it himself. A very careful sense of humor rendered by Dharamji as also Vinay Pathak; degrees of romance, be it between Vikram and his girl friend, between Dharamaji and his late wife, OR the absence of romance in Ashwini Kalsekar's marital life, with his wife cheating on him; a sufficient number of bar dancers (quite hot looking girls) and just the right amount of blood shedding - the movie is a complete paisa and time wasool. I add the "time" part of it because it cost me nothing to see the movie. That is another story.

So the movie is awesome. No one can get bored, partly because you will always labour to anticipate what will happen next and you will not know it (unless you are watching it the second time) and so you will keep labouring even harder. In all this exercise you will forget about getting bored. If you are a Hindi film buff this is just the movie. It has the essential bits that will contribute to its success. Reference to Hindi blockbusters is a great technique. Even You've Got Mail had frequent reference to Godfather and it worked well. A scene from JG will, rather should remind you of Anand's last scene. There were too many....

Performances are good. Dharamji is quite good in the film, specially after his horrible performance in Life in a Metro ( WHY did he and Nafisa have to be in that movie? That movie was good for the most part but I can never appreciate plagiarism. The main story in the movie was a scene by scene lift from the Academy Award wining film The Apartment . 1950s. Mr Director must have thought no one would have seen that movie. ) Dharam Paaji needed this film. Vinay Pathak and Ashwini Kalsekar are good actors. Vikram, the introducing-so-and-so guy, was OK. He will not make it big, though. He does not have too many expressions. He can do reasonably good butt works but unless he is playing a gay or a transvestite in his next film, which seems like a remote possibility, he has little chance. He played this role alright.

The execution of the movie is superb. Like Forrest Gump (feather blowing in the wind) and some more films the movie starts and ends with the same scenes. In the context of JG, it showed the triviality of the story told and yet magnetic quality it had. It did not end on some great note (surprise note, YES) but the entire stretch was so good, 'the coming of the police' did not have to happen in the end. The movie also reminded me of True Romance ( a must watch film for people who are serious about cinema). No sneaky lift there. Adequate in its doses of love scenes, the plot of both the movies intertwines itself around the leading couple but ends as if it did not matter. The script is quite authoritarian. It does not answer all questions. By the end the audience is prepared to be led.

Movies such as this and Bheja Fry in combination with movies such as Chak De India appeal to me as conforming that we are almost into the Golden Age of Bollywood. How long shall we keep repeating borrowed intellectual lines like " the lyrics of yester-years were amazing...lyrics today make no sense." We need to have movies that run because of the script mainly, without big stars. We also need to see King Khan once in a while. Even better if he is not crying and instead leading a team of bright, witty, women hockey players. WATCH JG.