Review: Jaani Dushman : Ek Anokhi Kahani
Baradwaj Rangan
http://www.sitagita.com/article.asp?cyberspace=36-10-0-0&leafId=8149
If you were wondering how the 'Terminator' films would translate into
a 'desi' context, here's the answer. Recast those morphing,
time-travelling cyborgs as 'ichhadari nagins' and, voila, you have a
similar setup with shape-shifting creatures that exist across 'janams'
and are frighteningly unstoppable by all of mankind except Sunny Deol.
Producer-director Rajkumar Kohli grafts this 'Terminator' surface onto
his own '70s smash 'Nagin', the Sunil Dutt-Reena Roy starrer, adding
contemporary references to ATMs and the Internet along the way. Here,
Manisha Koirala, in another of her increasingly eccentric choice of
roles, is the 'nagin' with a green-contact-lens-wearing snake-lover
Kapil (Munish Kohli, making one more bid for stardom with
director-daddy's clout, after 'Aulad Ke Dushman' and 'Qahar'). While
singing and executing some truly ghastly choreography, the duo
disturbs a 'rishi', who curses them to wait for eons before they are
reunited.
Reborn in the 21st century, Manisha now goes to college and takes
joint showers with her hostel roommate. One night, she's entranced by
a voice that sings out to her, much like what happened with Waheeda
Rehman in 'Neelkamal'. She then remembers all about her previous life
and Kapil, but before anything can be done with this discovery, she's
raped by fellow students. She kills herself and her soul teams up with
Kapil to wreak gorier-than-thou vengeance on the perpetrators.
This mumbo-jumbo is clearly targeted at the crowd that did not fancy
'Dil Chahta Hai', nothing wrong with that, but what's unforgivable is
the bottom-of-the-barrel writing that sinks what could have been a
guilty pleasure of a supernatural thriller. Sample dialogue: 'Zindagi
ke ring mein tu ne jeet hi liya', says Sunil Shetty to a friend who's
getting married. (As we're wondering what a peculiar greeting this is
at a wedding, it's revealed that Shetty's a boxer!) Sample howlingly
hysterical scene: Manisha is having this conversation with a big fat
snake that's crawled through her window, when the phone rings; she
asks the snake to excuse her while she gets the call. Sample
distasteful plot point: If anything's a given in our cinema, it's that
good triumphs over evil, but here, a horde of innocents dies for no
reason at all.
That an enterprise this dubious has attracted the stars that it has,
most of whom are merely required to die in overly elaborate ways,
either speaks for the producer's goodwill in the industry or his bank
balance. The (not so) young brigade is made up of Sunny Deol (who, as
usual, gets to flex his muscles and scream), Akshay Kumar, Sunil
Shetty, Aftab Shivdasani, Sonu Nigam (the singer, not bad in his
ill-advised acting debut) and Johny Lever. In the senior lot, you have
Amrish Puri, Raza Murad, Kiran Kumar, Raj Babbar and Jaspal Bhatti.
Plus, there are folks who tried to make it and failed, the likes of
Atul Agnihotri, Arshad Warsi and Aditya Pancholi.
That's just the male cast. To flesh out these roles, there are
skimpily clad girlfriends galore (Rambha, Kiran Rathod and Mohini
Sharma among others) and half-baked rich-girl-poor-boy romantic
subplots that slam the brakes on the proceedings after a brisk first
hour. None of the actors really makes an impact and quite a few of
them pop up in the pink of health even after you think there's no way
they could have survived that stabbing/beating/impaling. (With the
superpowers that the snakes possess, why are most of the
chase-and-kill scenarios full of mere fisticuffs?)
The song-and-dance breaks seek to soften the violence, but despite the
presence of three music directors, nothing really registers. There's
Anand Raaj Anand's signature 'bhangra-pop' and Anand-Milind show that
they are still stuck in their 'Dil' mode ('Ishq sanam ishq khuda' is a
rehash of 'Mujhe neend na aaye').
The USP of this film is its barrage of special effects. These won't
cut much ice with fans of Hollywood wizardry (entire scenes are
borrowed from the 'Terminator' movies, 'Mission: Impossible 2' and
'The Matrix') but by our standards some effects come off pretty well.
Along with the action interludes some of which are also good for
laughs, as when snake-man Kapil summons up not only a motorbike out of
thin air during a chase, but also a pair of snazzy sunglasses these
supernatural parts compensate for at least some of the wildly uneven
drama.
The best miracle of all, however, comes without a single special
effect. It's the on-time appearance of cops after a crime, not once
but twice. Now there's something that makes this hokey 'Jaani Dushman'
a truly 'Anokhi Kahani.'
Alok
> Jaani Dushman : Ek Anokhi Kahani
>
> http://www.sitagita.com/article.asp?cyberspace=36-10-0-0&leafId=8149
<snip a great review>
Thanks a lot for this one, Baradwaj! I immensely enjoyed it, and I
almost decided to watch this movie just because of your review!
-Alok
--
Thanks bud.
--David Starr
Vishal
"Alok" <ganda...@rediffmail.com> wrote in message
news:slrnamh6m6.v...@karma.astro.Virginia.EDU...
Isn't the guy you talk as Rajkumar Kohli's son, named Armaan Kohli? You call
him Munish Kohli.. is that his real name?
Baradwaj Rangan
> him Munish Kohli.. is that his real name?
The guy tried his luck as Armaan Kohli with Aulaad Ke Dushman and
Qahar. Now he's back to using his original name, Munish. I think this
is the first film that he's using this name (Munish), though.