Re: Talaash 1080p Movies
Canumil Flowers
KAUFMAN - "Or cramming in sex, or car chases, or guns. Or characters learning profound life lessons. Or characters growing or characters changing or characters learning to like each other or characters overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. Y'know ? Movie shit."
Kaufman is sweating like crazy now. Valerie is quiet for a moment - from "Adaptation".
About the surface bit. let me try to write what i felt in better words than i spoke..his son is dead and wants to tell his dadda that he is fine and it was not his fault that he died..Rani keeps visiting Shernaz and when Aamir opens the cupboard he finds many letters but picks just one of them which clears his guilt for his child unfortunate death.
Again this is what i felt should/could have come in the screenplay. It is the choice of the writers. What i felt was that the writers are not convinced themselves about their take on the whole issue. Resolving it with a letter which addresses the core Point is all fine but again i feel it could have been done in a much better way. You may or may not agree.
for me the film lacked just one thing. Conviction in writing. let me put it this way. Vikram Bhatt makes SHIT movies. But he believes in the world he creates. He is not scared to go the distance with his insane theories of the supernatural but these people were. and i was not convinced about Aamir getting over the loss..somehow i found the last scene Satyamev Jayetish..yes..that is my biggest problem..Kahaani with all its convenience and plot holes made me feel for Rana and Bidya Bagchi. In Talaash the only character i felt for was Nawaaz.
Talaash first exploits the formula but then tries to wrap it up in haste to hide its own shame and guilt. Yes, what @navjotalive said is right that Vikram Bhatt or even Ramsay brothers believe in world they create but it is not same with Talaash.
@rahul the blog doesnt believe in ripping apart movies. it believes in honestly saying whatever one feels. if am not wrong, the blog has promoted more movies compared to what it has ripped apart. about the film i have clearly written that it can go into LOL facts as well. but you cant force me to change what i feel.
A suspense drama which builds on for three-quarter of the story and when climaxes it leaves you appalled. Not in your wildest dreams you will guess how the suspense will be revealed. There are no traditional hints which will make you believe five different results. Only when it is revealed you know what was going on.
The story is about the personal struggle of inspector Shekhawat played by Aamir who chases two truths- one inside his self and the other out side in the physical world. Rani Mukerji plays his wife Roshni and a prostitute/call girl/informer is played by Kareena. Nawazuddin Sidiqui plays a beggar Taimur who accounts or a subplot.
There is a car crash resulting in death of a famous actor. The car crashes in to the sea. Aamir son also dies in water who he thinks he could have saved. The water imagery comes alive every now and then.
Another outstanding thing in the film is music and background score. Ram Sampat has blended it so beautifully that the music dissolves in the narrative. For any suspense or horror film the success depends on the background score and Sampat has done a great job. Neither the songs are forced nor they are meaningless as is the case with most of the movies nowadays.
The beauty of the story is that both the plots hold each other well and result is great. The fight with the self is the main story. An unending search for the unknown and perhaps non-existent truth forms the whole story. Will Shekhawat get there, will he be able to solve the case on the personal as well as professional front and how will he do that is what forms the story.
What makes the change is when Rani starts to come to life again. Their neighbor is a medium, gives her letters written by their son from the afterlife. It helps Rani, finally, stop worrying about him, get past her own immovable breaking point. And gives her the strength to confront Aamir, to try to push him to the same point. She can stop worrying about her son and start worrying about her husband.
And she reaches done through the water to pull him up at the end, bring him back to life, fully back to life, not just saved from this water but from the water he has been lost in searching for his son over and over again.
Yes, Aamir really embraced this flawed human person, instead of the larger than life sort of image. I really wish he was doing more movies like this, instead of just going bigger and bigger both with the films and the characters.
Raja Sen feels Talaash is well made and strongly acted but is not as enjoyable to watch as it deserved to be.
Make no mistake, Talaash is a Vikram Bhatt film.
Which isn't to say Bhatt actually made it (though he or Mohit Suri or Pooja Bhatt may well have at some point, who dare keep count) but that it has a story built on the exact same pulpy foundations.
Just yank out the invariably catchy Pritam soundtrack, replace Emraan Hashmi or Randeep Hooda with Aamir Khan and throw in major heroines where Vishesh Films would have cast unfamiliar models. (The only key character in Talaash who isn't a top actor is, actually, the one who plays a top actor.)
To give credit where due, director Reema Kagti and her crew show significant flair in terms of creating atmosphere.
Cinematographer Mohanan has always dealt strikingly well with shadows and darkness, and the film emerges as a fine looking mood-piece.
It's a somber, well-assembled film in contrast to the quick and flashy schlock that would have been doled out by the aforementioned merchants of middlebrow masala, and while the film's craft -- and the acting chops shared by its considerable cast -- can't at all be denied, it must also be said that perhaps the trashier approach may have worked better for this material. Or, at the very least, made for more fun.
Allow me to make my case, then, without once discussing the film's plot. No spoilers here, folks.
There are a few essentials for a police procedural film, all rather basic: either the crime should be a stupefying one, one which raises many a "how in the world" question and flummoxes audience and investigator; or the suspects should be interesting and complex, those whose motivations become clearer only when the film gets less murky; or the investigator himself should be a compelling protagonist, someone who makes you either care about himself or the case, ideally rooting for his success.
And if all else fails, then it should be thrilling enough to hide the lack of the above.
Alas, Talaash ticks none of these boxes. It starts off well, but simmers far too long before it gets to the boil. The case -- of an actor driving off the highway and into the sea -- is only marginally intriguing since the police never really explore its mechanics, and the suspects it throws up mostly insignificant.
The cop Aamir plays from behind a Hulk Hogan moustache is doggedly dour, frequently unreasonable, and a really bad husband. Not the sort of man you want to celebrate, no. And, as said, the film gets more than a bit long in the tooth, hinging on a final twist that isn't too hard to see coming.
Which is all dashed exasperating, considering just how good this film could have been. It's great to look at, with brilliantly art-directed frames bursting with detail. The music's good, even if the songs sometimes interrupt the narrative when playing on too long.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Raj Kumar Yadav are routinely excellent, Siddiqui effortlessly stealing most of the film. There are some deftly edited intercuts, most situated from the cop's point of view, effectively flashing back and forth within the realms of past and possibility.
Aamir is as stoic as his character needs him to be, Rani Mukherji is plaintive but wasted, and much of the film's verve comes from Kareena Kapoor's streetwalker, who, like Anne Hathaway's Catwoman in the most recent Batman movie, thankfully doesn't ever seem to take the film or its clunky lines seriously.
And my lord, what lines. Even in good scenes, the dialogues jar, sounding either b-movie or trite or incredibly textbook.
Given the film's unhurried pace, this often makes it play out like an old telefilm. Khan mouths the word "talaash" with promo-cutting heft, characters spell things out unbearably simply, and in a film about drowned people, lines like "dard mein doobe" are used with great intent and disappointingly little irony. Indeed, the film is awash with obvious metaphor. (Sorry, couldn't help it.)
There is one good, true line about cheesecake, though.
It is also a film trying to be subtle while drawing attention to just how subtle it's trying to be. To wit: a frazzled Shernaz Patel accosts Aamir on the street, grabbing his arm, something that confounds the indignant policeman, and this simple moment is broken down into her touching him, him looking at her, him looking pointedly at her hand on his arm, him stiffening, then reacting.
A brothel-controlling Madam talks tough, but repeatedly backs down whenever glared at. Pimps meticulously change their SIM cards at the first sign of trouble but bigger fish use their personal cellphones for monkey business.
Ah, and odd visual cues: a big poster from the awful film Showgirls proudly displayed in the red-light area, advertising actual showgirls. Um, okay.
A yellow rubber slipper floating by itself in the water -- meant to be an evocative memory, but probably nightmarish to fashionable women simply because its a Croc.
Am I being too cruel? Perhaps, but because of the wasted opportunity. Someone asked me if Talaash was a watchable film, and indeed it is. It's better put together than a lot of the films we see here, and definitely strongly acted, but ends up so, so much less enjoyable than it deserved to be.
In the end, I didn't care about the case or the characters: not cop, wife, pimp, kid or hooker -- ah, I might as well pick the dead actor who kicked the whole story off; at least the poor guy had an Eraserhead poster in his room.
Rediff Rating:
Also Read: Review: Talaash tells a fascinating story