Movie review: ‘Hate Story 2′ is a Hot Story

Hate Story 2 has a sense of affection like many of those epic revenge sagas made in our Indian cinema. The problem is that after setting an apt plot, it doesn’t do much justice to it.
Cast- Surveen Chawla, Jay Bhanushali, Sushant Singh
Director- Vishal Pandya
Music Director- Mithoon, Meet Bros Anjjan, Rashid Khan
In a scene the female protagonist Surveen Chawla out of angst over her lover’s (Jay Banushali) murder, assaults one of the killers physically by tying him on a chair. The scene stirs angst against the killer after you know that innocent Jay was slayed mercilessly, but despite that you are not able to connect with the scene and it departs giving you an empty feeling.
Hate Story 2 has a sense of affection like many of those revenge sagas made in our Indian cinema. The problem lies here is that after setting an apt plot, it doesn’t do much justice to it.
Debutant director Vishal Pandya picks a vindictive idea and attempts to make it as gruesome as he can. After exotic romance and dreadful assassination in the first half, the flick follows vengeful killing of the murderers in the second half.

Singh Saab The Great Review

Rating: 3/5 Stars (Three Stars)

Star cast: Sunny Deol, Prakash Raj, Amrita Rao, Johnny Lever, Urvashi Rautela.

Director: Anil Sharma

What’s Good: Sunny Deol and Prakash Raj give exceptionally interesting performances.

What’s Bad: Tacky camera work, a drabby second half and an uninteresting romance angle are spoilers.

Loo break: Few.

Watch or Not?: Singh Saab The Great is perhaps one of recent times’ most novel masala films. Despite a multitude of grave hitches, the film is surprisingly original and intense. Being fed on a host of extremely trashy and mediocre masala films which have become Bollywood’s staple these days, Anil Sharma gives us a welcome change. Sunny Deol and Prakash Raj make the film worth a watch for their earnestness and ardour at portraying their respective roles. I won’t call this fantastic or thrilling but for its sheer unconventionality, the film had me impressed.

User Rating:

216 Votes

Collector Karanjit Talwar (Sunny Deol) is known for his honesty in the political circles. His life comes to a standstill following a posting to Bhadori where the corrupt Bhudev Singh’s (Prakaj Raj) words is the law of the land. As Talwar tries to stop the area’s malpractices with his strict norms, the man faces the brunt of his good deeds as the villain victimized his family.
It is not long before Talwar loses his dear ones and lands up in jail framed under charges of crimes he hasn’t even committed. But the determined man maintains his will power and mental strength emerging as a social worker under the name of Singh Saab and fights Bhudev’s intricate web of evil doings. The film retells how Singh Saab reforms Bhudev and takes a unique revenge on the guy.

Sunny Deol in a still from Singh Saab The Great

Singh Saab The Great Review: Script Analysis

Movie Review: 'Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbaai Dobaara!'

 

Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbaai Dobaara!'
U/A; Action-drama
Director: Milan Luthria
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Imran Khan
Ratings:

There is a brilliant scene in this film. Akshay Kumar (as the dreaded don Shoaib Khan) after killing a rival on a busy street, walks into a police station and walks out unrecognised, with his freedom and his wicked charm intact. This one bright scene actually works against the film. It tells us what this film could have been. It also tells us that one or two stray good scenes or one or two relevant dialogues can't make a good film, when it is preceded and proceeded by a whole lot of brainless mess.
When a supposedly dreaded don (Akshay plays Shoaib Khan, taking on from Emraan Hashmi in the film's prequel) has to go blah blah insisting on how powerful he is, when the dialogues are cheesier than forwarded SMSes and when the lead actors are struggling so hard to appear convincing, you know this film is not taking you anywhere.

Akshay's Shoaib is reigning in Dubai and comes back to Mumbai to get it back under his control. Aslam (Imran Khan) is his henchman and as luck would have it, the two fall for the same woman, Jasmine (Sonakshi Sinha). The woman is selectively daft. She confuses intermediate with intercourse but she gives gyaan to rank strangers about the goodness of the heart. In the meanwhile, the powerful Don is also struggling to fight one of his rivals, Rawal (Mahesh Manjrekar, who looks and behaves as menacing as a bank clerk).
The don, who's out to conquer the city, is so busy trying to conquer the woman of his dreams instead, that his so-called terror is served only as an insipid side dish.
Rajat Arora's dialogues were breath-taking, for all the wrong reasons. Writing smart dialogues to fit the script is one thing, but forcibly squeezing in "clever" sounding dialogues is another thing. I can almost visualise Rajat giving himself a high-five every time he came up with lines like, "Jisne doodh me nimbu daala paneer uska" or "Zubaan ki chuppi pyar ki pappi lene nahi deti", but no sir, in the context of the movie, it only ends up being cringe-worthy or at best, unintentionally hilarious. And when a tapori (played by Imran), who otherwise struggles with English, says hamare Dhande me ek "saying" hai, you know the writer was more concerned about sounding clever than sticking to common sense.
Akshay playing an unapologetically bad man sounds like a fantastic idea, only if there was better direction and a script to back it. What a waste.