PRODUCER – Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Baltasar Kormákur, Stephen Levinson, Mark Wahlberg
DIRECTOR – Baltasar Kormákur
WRITER – Aaron Guzikowski (screenplay), Arnaldur Indriðason and Óskar Jónasson for ‘Reykjavik-Rotterdam’
CAST – Mark WahlBerg, Kate Beckinsale, Giovanni Ribisi, Ben Foster
MUSIC – Clinton Shorter

Heist films are generally quickies, focused and to-the-point. Contraband keeps to its brief and serves up a delightfully tight, somewhat manipulative, a little complicated but intelligent crime caper that stays to the point.

It begins similarly as well. Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is an ex-smuggler who now works installing security alarms. He has a lovely wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale), two kids and a happy home. All of this comes under danger when Kate’s brother Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) drops a cocaine cargo he was running on a ship for fear of being caught. Now his boss Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi) is baying for his blood, demanding the cargo’s worth of money while threatening to harm Kate and her children. Chris is forced to work out a short-cut to getting instant millions and he does but not before putting his wife and children in his friend, Sebastian’s (Ben Foster) guardianship. What follows not only involves fake notes, armoured car heists, drug-running on cargo ships but betrayal and murder.

The director, Baltasar Kormákur remakes the film from an Icelandic film titled ‘Reykjavík-Rotterdam’ (2008) starring himself. It is a race-to-the-finish sort of film that leaves little time to absorb any details more than necessary for the plot to move on. In a tightly narrated fashion it lays out the plan, the progression and growing stakes in equal measure and creates a fair amount of tension while doing it. The odds stalked against Chris are huge yet he, the eponymous, templat-ish, fearless heist-hero will pull through anything however bizarre for that stoic and unassailable love for his family. He is the all-protector of his vulnerable wife, children and here, brother-in-law too. There is little we get to know about him apart from this unnatural heroism except that he loves pulling off such jobs. That, again does little for the plot.

What does is the sharp cutting and edgy narrative, just about balancing the showing and telling of the plan and unfolding of the next development, keeping us summarily hooked to what happens next. For a crime thriller this is enough runs gained for winning the match. Obviously then, the film becomes a plot-based caper where characters do little than serve up the next thrill or curve and Wahlberg and Beckinsale play their roles strictly within these limits. The grainy, grungy visuals chalk up a gritty landscape that helps the film do what it sets out to do with determination – to keep having you ask, so what’s next?!

Does that make it good film? Well, it makes it a good well-spent two hours following the twisted terrains of crime at the movies.

PRODUCER – Gregory Jacobs
DIRECTOR – Steven Soderbergh
WRITER – Lem Dobbs
CAST – Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas
MUSIC – David Holmes

After last year’s contemplative and analytic Contagion Steven Soderbergh comes back with a vigorous spy thriller. In a neat and tight little plot he makes his lady protagonist Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) combat, shoot, run, jump and defeat the most intrepid of opponents.

A covert operations spy, Mallory gets into a trap laid to betray her and turns the story on her opponents’ head by becoming their nemesis. Working for a private organization she is hired by a government agent Coblez (Michael Douglas) and his contact Rodrigo (Antonio Banderas) to rescue a man captured in Barcelona. Little does Mallory know, as she embarks upon the trail that she is being set-up and her own ex-boyfriend Kenneth (Ewan McGregor) is part of the plan. She soon gets wiser and in one swoop turns hunted from the hunter. But Mallory wants her revenge and she will have it. She begins her hunt for every person responsible for betraying her.

In a frenzy of building-scaling acrobatics and dynamic hand-to-hand combat Soderbergh tells a tale of action and fury that has little story. But he masks this with the aces of sharp twists and turns he throws at his audience without warning. He has his petite lady protagonist do the toughest acts and she pulls them off with a rare confidence, shining of smart manouveres and totally lacking in false bravado. Perhaps, after Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, Gina Carano fits well into the fantasy of the invincible, fearless Superwoman.

It is a sparse tale that unfolds in front of us, largely keeping to Mallory’s chase. She is the focus of the film and remains its only take-away. In a film that veers corners faster than F1, the remaining stellar cast become mere plot points with little to do but merely provide her the motive to zip-zam-zoom us into well-deserved awe. Gina Carano, on her part plays the death-defying spy with a steely confidence and a slight brazen-ness that becomes her young spy. It makes us root for her when she dressed in a little black dress takes on a man in hand to hand combat and fights a bone-cracking, muscle-numbing fight to the finish. And wins.

Soderbergh also handles the camera and gives us visuals as sparse as is the terrain of the film. He keeps colours muted and captures action as vigorously as it explodes between the people, never letting the camera get in the way.

As an action thriller the film works like a little charm. Especially the tongue-in-cheek climax Soderbergh leaves us to figure out. And the manner in which he treats his heroine it is but a befitting end, because by now we know what she is capable of and leave the film chuckling at the smart under-telling. Delectable.

PRODUCER – Karan Johar
DIRECTOR – Karan Malhotra
WRITER – Karan Malhotra (Screenplay), Piyush Mishra (Dialogues)
CAST – Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Sanjay Dutt, Rishi Kapoor
MUSIC –Ajay Gogavale, Atul Gogavale

In a small village off the Western coast of India a young teacher and his family live an upright and simple life. Until it is mercilessly uprooted by an evil drug-lord Kancha Cheena. The teacher is defamed and hanged publicly and the family is made to flee their village. Behind them, over time, the village becomes Kancha’s kingdom of hell and a festering wound within Vijay, the teacher’s young son. A wound that is poisonous enough to infect Vijay’s entire life with a singular motive, revenge.

Karan Johar reprises his father Yash Johar’s best work (Agneepath 1990) with Hrithik Roshan, Sanjay Dutt and Priyanka Chopra in the leads. It is a film that borrows the framework of the original story and presents it with its own suitable tweaks. The grey Mandwa and middle-class milieu are the same but the sensibility is different. Within this new sensibility the film becomes a melodramatic and over-wrought piece that leaves no stone unturned in telling and literalising every emotion, action and motive.

Right from the start, the film takes a relaxed pace of unravelling the story. Hence, Kancha and Vijay’s childhood’s track, his joining hands with Rauf Lala (Rishi Kapoor), the local ganglord and his romantic track plodge haltingly towards what the film is really about – Vijay’s revenge and emotional release. This meandering story-telling points to a masala sensibility that is compelled to include every other element of cinema at the cost of its story. Despite Hrithik’s immense frowning and suitable huffing-puffing this dilutes the intensity of Vijay’s story.

For a film doused in tears, ash, blood it is an extremely loud and melodramatic affair that we watch unfolding. Hrithik keeps the explosive angst of Vijay seething beneath the surface and brings alive the pain of his traumatic past by his mere demeanour. However, the film has him lose subtlety to over-expression and he gives into the temptation of blustering the anger that has long become stony-edged. This, in combination with Sanjay Dutt’s surreally evil Kancha who spouts spiritual theisms without a care for diction or variation in articulation makes for a mis-matched war leaving us confused on whose side we are on. Piyush Mishra’s dialogues swings furiously from the terribly pedestrian to the most mis-fit philosophy.

In the war between Vijay and Kancha all else seem but of tertiary importance. Yet, a self-possessed but badly performed Rauf Lala takes up a lot of screen time. And so do a uselessly chirpy Priyanka Chopra and her colony of compulsively colourfully dressed up women. She fills her space with decent value but matters little in the larger scheme of things. Zarina Wahab’s weepy mother constantly fluctuates between two emotions never letting us get close to the taut complexity of her and Vijay’s relationship. Om Puri, in his upright and determined police officer role is simply a miscast and does not command the power his role is meant to.

A very tepid musical score and lyrics mark the entire narrative. An over-wrought back ground score underlines every emotion and turning point as though the dialogues weren’t (over) doing it enough. Besides being loud the film is also naïve while showing the interactions between the police and Home Ministry. A distinct lack of touch with rawness, angst and compelling evil in the directorial vision lends this film to become an insistently bloody saga of little impact than the one on the eardrums.

PRODUCER – Ralph Fiennes, Gabrielle Tana, Julia Taylor-Stanley, Colin Vaines
DIRECTOR – Ralph Fiennes
WRITER – John Logan based on William Shakespeare’s play ‘Coriolanus’.
CAST – Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Chastain
MUSIC – Ilan Eshkeri

When the film opens we see a tattooed hand sharpening a somewhat historic-looking knife. Soon, this visual gives way to footage of modern-day warfare and bloodshed. We know then, that Shakespeare’s tragic saga of the Roman leader Coriolanus is to be viewed in the 21st century setting.

Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes), the protagonist is at war and fights his arch-enemy Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler) in a valiant hand-to-hand combat. In minutes we know this is a ferocious General with an unbridled temperament. But it is when he gets back home that the real drama begins. His superiors and his mother Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave) persuade him to take up political office as a mark of recognition for his military accolades. He wins the support of the Roman Senate but a mutiny stirred up by Brutus and Sicinius turns the public against him. Egged by his passionate, irreverent and volatile disposition Coriolanus completely alienates them attracting an exile for himself. He leaves Rome in anger and joins forces with Aufidius to besiege Rome for revenge. Like a true Shakespearean tragic hero, he begins paving way for his own fall.

The film remains completely loyal to Shakespeare’s plot which in turn is based on historic turn of events. In adapting it to contemporary times Ralph Fiennes plays with setting but retains the dialogue and politics of yore. He also retains Shakespeare’s original vision of his characters and redraws them with a sparkling honesty. He shows Coriolanus for the impulsive and explosive valiant leader he is and Ralph Fiennes plays it with vigour and passion. However, he plays it uni-dimensional, unable to go deeper into the skin of the tragic hero and bring into play the various shades of good and bad that mark all of Shakespeare’s tragedy kings. Fiennes captures the mother-son relationship of Volumnia and Coriolanus with the same insight as Shakespeare, defining with discernment the almost possessive sense of ownership she displays, also alienating and disconcerting Coriolanus’ wife. Vanessa Redgrave owns the matriarch with a towering presence and conviction dwarfing Fiennes’ Coriolanus both by her stature and strength of character. But then that is exactly the sub-text of their relationship. Jessica Chastain as the fragile wife makes the perfect foil for the over-bearing mother and aggressive son with her intuitive performance.

Among the secondary characters Gerard Butler and Brian Cox put in dependable performances but it is Paul Jesson as Brutus and James Nesbitt as Sicinius who draw eyeballs by bringing out the vile corruption and squirming under-handed evil with ease.

The entire cast transforms the bombastic Shakespearean verse and prose into dramatic conversation. It is the ‘feeling’ more than usual eloquence with which his lines are generally enacted that contributes to the drama coming alive. However, it makes the film inaccessible but powerful nonetheless.

FATEMA KAGALWALA

PRODUCER – Sudhish Kamat
DIRECTOR – Sudhish Kamat
WRITER – Sudhish Kamat, Shilpa Rathnam
CAST – Manu Narayan, Seema Rehmani, Vasanth Santosham, Raja Sen, Abhishek D Shah

As sages, legends and wisdom have always said love is random to find and easy to lose. Yet the more number of times we lose it the less capable we remain to nourish it. Goodnight Good Morning, in its own gentle manner, soul-bares two fragile people, Turiya (Manu Narayan) and Moira (Seema Rehmani) who accidentally meet in a bar and then spend an entire night on phone talking. This chat, innocuous flirting at first, leads them through the eight stages of relationships – The Icebreaker. The Honeymoon. The Reality Check. The Break-up. The Patch-up. The Confiding. The Great Friendship & The Killing Confusion.

Experimental in approach, the film is black and white and presented as a split-screen conversation between the two. All along jazz music plays in the background never letting us forget the film is about love, the finding, losing, keeping, gaining and searching of it.

The film is cosy even though a tad claustrophobic. It is assured of its characters and peels them layer by layer through the conversation they have. It’s with a piquant observation of urban, contemporary ideas and experiences of love in men and women that the film explores its characters. There may be little insight about relationships but the tightness of characterisation help us go along Turiya and Moira’s journey effortlessly. It however, leaves a gap in exploring the said stages with depth making the explanation of the same seem forced.There is also the spoofs in between that become inconsistent with the mood of the entire film, not helping it go anywhere. Similarly, the gang of friends become a less-than-useful baggage as well.

Although it is a singularly dialogue-oriented film, it cries out to be more visually imaginative. It pulls us into engaging with the smart-n-sexy Moira and soft-n-sugary Turiya from the start. They are opposites and they attract. There is sharp and easy camaraderie in their ice-breaker phase that effortlessly leads into us eagerly asking the ever-important question – what next? Their conversation is verbose and unfortunately limited by a visual style that makes the viewing auditory than the actual sensual experience to is. The singular split-screen with only close-ups and mid-shots, especially profiles to help do not let us explore the characters in our minds visually, which the narrative badly makes us want to do.

The film rallies on, on the steam of some sharp writing and absorbing performances of the lead pair. Manu Narayan’s guy-next-door Turiya, the consummate believer in true and everlasting love makes a solid contrast for the exquisite Seema Rehmani as Moira.Together, the pair pull the somewhat difficult film off-the-ground into a satisfying experience. It may not be brilliant but if you have known love closely, the film has the power to make you love or hate love, depending on your experience with it.

FATEMA KAGALWALA

PRODUCER – Clint Eastwood, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Robert Lorenz
DIRECTOR – Clint Eastwood
WRITER – Dustin Lance Black
CAST – Clint Eastwood, Naomi Watts, Armie Hammer
MUSIC – Clint Eastwood

American history remembers J. Edgar Hoover as a man with a checkered life. Almost single-handedly responsible for building the Federal Bureau of Investigation, America’s premier intelligence institution of world-wide repute, Hoover largely remains a man who used his power illegally and beyond the jurisdiction of the organisation.

Clint Eastwood’s biopic chooses to portray a tender picture of the man, underplaying the ethical questions that surrounded his tenure of service with the US Government but not necessarily underscoring his achievements either. While, this may be doing a disservice to the records of history, it also personalizes the account of a man as important as he was seen as notorious. Within this personal and tinted framework Eastwood and his writer Dustin Lance Black tell a story of a determined man focused towards vindicating justice but not too unwilling to tweak rules for personal glory. The same man is also a mamma’s boy fighting a sexual dilemma, he loves toting guns, being the all-American hero and is in love with his deputy but unable to face it. Hoover’s homosexuality and his relationship with Clyde Tolson, his deputy, is a suggestion rather than proven in history but in making it a concrete aspect of his personality Eastwood sketches an endearing portrayal of male bonding and companionship.

The film focuses entirely on Hoover’s FBI career taking us through the various chapters of his professional life in a back and forth weave strung together by Hoover’s voice over dictating his memoirs. This technique reserved for thrillers works equally well in drama while we decode Hoover’s life layer by layer and sink into engaging with what unfolds.

While there is an inconsistency in dealing with America’s pre and post-war politics, the film, like any other Eastwood film, draws out the man behind the drama and lays him out, human and vulnerable for our consumption. It is the sterling performances of the main leads that hold the film together. Leonardo Dicaprio shuttles between a young and tense Hoover to an old Hoover, almost at the end of his time, with a superb ease and control. The devastatingly handsome Armie Hammer, last seen in The Social Network, supports Dicaprio’s performance with a solidarity as sincere as Tolson’s must have been to Hoover. Naomi Watts as Miss Gandy, the loyal and trusted secretary of Hoover for fifty-four years, is relegated to the background after an exciting start. Yet the actress manages to hold her place in the triumvirate with a silent conviction and dependability that has almost become a hallmark of her performances.

Like all his films earlier, Clint Eastwood turns this biopic into an engaging human drama about morals, values, relationships and human vulnerabilities. He does not judge nor is he cynical and in this lack of cynicism he manages to portray a man of a dubitable past we can view with equanimity. Eastwood also provides music to his biopic and what we get is a subtle and simple score helping the movie along gently, never over-powering, never underscoring, never diminishing.

The film is no legendary saga or a celebration of triumph. But it is a recognition of contribution to the creation of history and an effort full of empathy and understanding to unravel an almost mythic man. It is engaging, solid, with a lot of heart and a perspicacity so rare in the way we tell our stories these days.

PRODUCER – ANUYA MHAISKAR, SACHIN AWASTHEE AND UDAY SHETTY
DIRECTOR – HRIDAY SHETTY
WRITER – YASH-VINAY
CAST – NASEERUDDIN SHAH, ATUL KULKARNI, KAY KAY MENON, RAVI KISSEN, SHWETA BHARDWAJ, RAJESH SHARMA, ZAKIR HUSSAIN
MUSIC – LALIT PANDIT AND VISHAL RAJAN

Many a times a film becomes its characters. Or rather actors in the case of Chaalis Chaurasi. Then it stoops to the presence and prowess of stage-burners and unless the vision of the film or its story stands above all, rarely does a film like this is able to bear the weight of a weightily talented star-cast.

Probably, the onus of the film’s failure lies there. Failure, yes we’ve already said it. In a casting coup of sorts the film gets together Naseeruddin Shah as Pankaj Suri or Sir, Kay Kay Menon as Albert Pinto, a car thief, Atul Kulkarni as Bobby, a bar singer and Ravi Kisshen as Shakti , a drug dealer. They are small-time crooks with dreams in their eyes and corny plans to make it big which involves raiding a deserted house to catch hold of 20 crores. Even as they dress up as cops and begin their act they are confronted with an actual encounter cop (Rajesh Sharma) who enlists them to catch a real-time gangster Bisleri (Zakir Hussain). The four suddenly meet the real world. Will their bravado last and will their dreams outrun the harshness of the reality?

The film is a caper film which keeps the narrative run-time as short as a night’s dilemma but includes reels of flashback that doesn’t give the impression of tightness. It tackles the characters with depth, revealing to us the story of each in great detail but in doing so side-steps their present. It tries to infuse as much quirk as possible in the entire proceedings but a rather short-sighted approach to comedy and narrative leaves the actors and story short of lasting pegs reducing the entire film to flashes of wit and some inconsistently sparkling chemistry. A listless and sometimes uninspiring plot twists leave the actors with little material to infuse in the proceedings. So Naseeruddin Shah looks like a misfit, Ravi Kishen becomes OTT, Kay Kay Menon swaggers from feel good convincing to ineffective and Atul Kulkarni is refreshing at best, but only because the zest with which he seems to be enjoying himself is so.

The film seems to be paying tribute to the film industry with the way it chooses to name its protagonists and thereby indulgingly professing a huge love for its own. It makes us dig into our past as well with a refreshing inclusion of the 80’s Pakistani hit song ‘Hawa Hawa’. It then trips over its feet by introducing pointless item numbers and slapstick comedy that makes for slightly embarrassing watch.

The film takes too long to come to the point. It meanders needlessly over laugh-out-loud moments at the cost of story-telling. Even though we love knowing about Sir’s erstwhile crush and Pinto’s almost child-like car craze at the end of it all the journey becomes exhausting enough for us to ultimately ask – ”And the point was?” Not a good thing for a film to evoke, you will agree.

PRODUCER – Bharat Shah
DIRECTOR – Puja Jatinder Bedi
WRITER – Puja Jatinder Bedi
CAST – Shiney Ahuja, Sayali Bhagat, Tej Sapru, Deepraj Rana, Julia Bliss, Gulshan Rana
MUSIC – Sharib Sabri, Toshi Sabri

Friday, the 13^th is probably a suitable date for releasing a film called Ghost. This forced connection of spook however, does little for the audience.
Ghost revolves around the story of a series hospital murders witnessed by Dr Suhani (Sayali Bhagat) and suffered by a number of patients of City Hospital. In comes a detective Vijay Singh (Shiney Ahuja) to investigate these untoward happenings. Suhani senses supernatural presence behind these killings and suspects herself to be susceptible too but Vijay Singh ignores her suspicions, looking for a rational explanation. But it isn’t long that Suhani is proven right and Vijay Singh has to face that his opponent is a supernatural phenomena he doesn’t believe in. Added to this is the revelation of his own partial memory loss and a past that figured a blonde girl (Julia Bliss). As is revealed, the ghost seen by some, has blonde hair too. Does it have something to do with Vijay’s past?

While coming to terms with these developments Vijay and Suhani fall in love and the already emotional tangle of the story gets a little more wrought.

The film takes on several themes, of karma, revenge, good vs evil, retribution and even religion. While trying to justify each it lets its grip loosen on plausibility and characterization. It takes clichés of set-ups, emotions and character developments and piles on melodrama that we, as an audience of horror films are no strangers to. There is no sense of danger, ominous sub-text or sympathy for the characters or situations that the film compels in us. While Vijay’s past and present conflict end up seeming trite, Suhani’s fear of the spirit spells redundant over-doing of a stereotyped female protagonist. The performances of both ranging from listless to uncontrolled hamming, redeem nothing. Neither does her wardrobe inspire the strength and rootedness of a doctor nor do her surroundings create a tangible, realistic world for her to operate in. Shiney’s Vijay Singh desperately tries to carry the film on his slippery shoulders but remains too unbalanced with an unskilled performance to do so successfully.

The horror film is what is generically called a slasher flick and the ghost plays its role with ultimate glee, slashing the hearts out of its victims at the drop of a hat. In what appears to be an attempt to instill demonic fear into the audience, a very liberal use of prosthetics, blood and gore splashes across the screen repetitively. However, there is a distinct lack of imagination and skill with which the make-up and violence presents itself leaving one cold, not with fear but indifference.

For a horror film, editing and sound play a role as important as a protagonist, something this tacky little flick pays little attention to. For a film that ends in a climax that recalls the crucifixion of Christ and thereby tries to draw around itself web of important social and moral questions, it becomes an amateur, laughably trivial and largely ineffective film.

PRODUCER – Burmawala Partners, Viacom 18 Motion Pictures
DIRECTOR – Abbas-Mustan
WRITER – Rohit Jugraj, Sudeep Sharma
CAST – Abhishek Bachchan, Bipasha Basu, Bobby Deol, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Sonam Kapoor, Sikander Kher, Omi Vaidya, Vinod Khanna
MUSIC – Pritam Chakraborty

Abbas-Mustan’s latest film ‘Players’, puts down the curtain on that question in one lethal sweep.

A daring story about a gold heist from the streets by creating a massive traffic jam was made into a film called the Italian Job twice, once in 1969 and then again in 2003. Abbas-Mustan try to make it again in 2012 but end up reprising their own super twister ‘Race’. In this one, Abhishek Bachchan, Bipasha Basu, Bobby Deol, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Sonam Kapoor, Sikander Kher and Omi Vaidya come together to pull off not one but multiple robberies involving that same set of gold bullions. Personal agendas turn into betrayal and a heist film becomes one about revenge which then again gleefully cuts to the chase for the gold. It is all a part of the game that begins to seem never-ending.

Players is stylishly packaged. It has snazzy action, squeaky visuals and daring stunts that try to qualify it into a more refined bracket. But the film is a little lost on plot, with too many twists, too much explanation, too many motives and it all taking too long to come together. It takes the central plot of Italian Job and puts its own imagination to work adding motives, characters and general ‘Race’-yness to add to the pacy-ness. Unfortunately, that makes quite a mess of the entire story leaving behind little engaging material and more of a ‘trying-too-hard-to-be’ feel. It adds a murder and motive for revenge alongwith a love triangle and of course item numbers, comedians and more.

The film travels through exotic foreign locales as it traipses through its heist planning and execution. As much as it is pleasing eye candy, it is part of the ‘too much’ that is the theme of the film. The only different thing that catches the attention, sometimes charmingly, mostly embarrassingly is Sonam Kapoor’s experimental grunge look that the lady chose with little care but carries off with flair. As for the others, Abhishek Bachchan is in his usual grim-is-good, two-frown demeanour, Neil Nitin Mukesh and Bobby Deol ham it away without restraint and Bipasha Basu does what she does in every film, flaunt her curves while pretending to perform a meaty role. Sikander Kher has precious little to do and Omi Vaidya yet again plays Chatur. Vinod Khanna as the crime master brain behind the heist is shockingly embarrassing, almost painful to watch.

The film ends up constantly twisting round itself in over-smartness. With overwrought dialogues and under-written characters, overdone chases and a merry-g-round plot, it tries to achieve the best of thrills but ends up a cold turkey on the wrong side of chill.

FATEMA KAGALWALA

PRODUCER – Timur Bekmambetov, Tom Jacobson
DIRECTOR – Chris Gorak
WRITER – Jon Spaihts (story and screenplay), Leslie Bohem & M.T. Ahern (story)
CAST – Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Max Minghella, Rachael Taylor, Joel Kinnaman
MUSIC – Tyler Bates

The world is coming to an end yet again and yet again it is the aliens out to get us. It isn’t America that is the centre of action this time though but Moscow where five people have been thrown together to fight or survive the alien forces. It is an invisible destructive source that feeds of energy and is out to destroy all life on earth. New York, London, Paris and Tokyo have already been annihilated and it is Moscow’s turn now.

The forces seem insurmountable and vicious due to their invisibility. They are given away by electricity but the showing doesn’t do much to lessen their power. The fight to survival needs to necessarily end at a submarine taking survivors out of Moscow but before they reach it, the group have to go through a trial by hell.

The film is a characteristic horror movie, almost template-ish in its entire narrative. It is constructed to provide chills and thrills right till the end and takes ample help of eliminating lives with glee. Bodies fall like nine pins almost leading us to a ‘and then there were none’ kind of anticipation. This, however, makes it no edge-of-the-seat scary movie since the amount we care about the characters is given least importance by the screenplay and direction. The set-up is meagre in building a relation and the progression equally weak. Nothing compelling about the characters or their situations jumps out and performances do not drive us to participate either.

There is large scale destruction all around and immensely threatening consequences ahead of this attack. The film touches upon none nor hints at the larger picture that might await beyond the submarine. It reduces itself to a limited expose of hide-n-seek and run-n-catch between a bunch of aliens and humans, both quite an unimaginative set.

For a scif-fi, horror film it uses tepid effects to recreate cardboardlike giant buildings crashing to the ground and volcanos erupting out of the core of earth with little impact. Its 3D is meant to bring a surge of involvement and shock at exploding debris flying at us but that too does little than dim the proceedings, literally.

With little logic or forceful science behind the alien invasion the film comes across as a somewhat watery experience. It all sums upto watching perfectly healthy building fall to ruins while humans run helter-skelter screaming for lives amidst blinking bulbs. It doesn’t sound that persuasive, does it?

FATEMA KAGALWALA