AN oVeRRAteD emotIoN cALLeD LoVe

R ANGRE zz

sTarriNg: Jackky Bhagnani, Amitosh Nagpal, Vijay Verma and Priya Anand DirEc TED by: Priyadarshan

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Way back, Tina Turner sang, What’s love got to do with it?

Now in Rangrezz, the question is spun into a spunky drama of brutal love and betrayal.

Priyadarshan takes the original Tamil film Naadodigal and twists it into an engrossing saga of how lust can often be a convenient pretext for love.

In what must rank as one of the most gripping elopement sequences written in the history of celluloid courtship, three friends, who look like they’ve walked out of Kai Po Che when Chetan Bhagat wasn’t looking, get together to abduct a powerful minister’s daughter from a crowded temple to unite her with their lovelorn friend.

The entire sequence lasts for a good 10 minutes. And yet there is an air of unrehearsed casualness in the way the three, played with throw-away conviction by Jackky Bhagnani, Vijay Verma and Amitosh Nagpal, flee, fall and scamper away from danger, bruised, bleeding and bellowing like wounded animals, with the eloping couple in the backseat of a screeching car.

Full marks to the action director for cutting to the chase without negotiating a single faltering step in the way the drama unfolds.

Indeed, the real hero of this surprisingly watchable film on the violent end of that much-abused emotion called love, is cinematographer Santosh Sivan.

Santosh’s unerring eye for a detailed emotional and physical landscape makes this Priyadarshan’s visually richest film since Gardish in 1993.

This film isn’t at all apologetic about serving up a spicy dish. The Bihar-UP dialect dialogues come across selfconsciously the way they are mouthed by the two actors, Pankaj Tripathi and Lushin Dubey, playing warring politicanparents of lovers-on-the-run. Ms Dubey is specially hammy. But then this is no place for the soft-spoken.

There are strong sensory perceptions here. The landscape is ruthless, rugged and riveting. The emotions are primeval. Caveman tactics are the prevalent mode of vindication. It’s a tough world.

Though Rangrezz is partly a coarse bro-mance and partly a mocking romance, its brutal landscape scoffs at softer emotions.

And the violent flare-ups are shot with gumption and gusto, packing in plenty of punch.

Priyadarshan wastes no time in building up a tempo in the spiralling storytelling, and the characters plunge into a crisis before thinking of the repercussions.

The three guys seem to convey more sincerity in their feelings for one another than the two man-woman relationships in the plot. Jackky, giving a subdued but effective performance, likes the girl next door (Priya Anand, Sridevi’s pert niece in English Vinglish) but shies away from any physical contact. As for the other couple, whose elopement forms the central plot, their love evaporates faster than the film’s pacy editing can cope with.

But not before one of the protagonists loses a leg and the other, his hearing ability.

All this for love that never was! The racy proceedings could have been funny were they not so sad. The rage and passion of betrayal are astutely captured.

The film poses some disturbing questions on the lack of genuine commitment in today’s relationships. What if love is just hormones at work?

It’s a film with a number of advantages, the performances topping the list.

While Amitosh Nagpal, Vijay Verma and the redoubtable Rajpal Yadav as the

Tragically, the terror runs out of steam mid-way and the endgame doesn’t have the edge-ofthe-seat scream-stifling impact that the rest of the film leads us to Aatma is one of the scariest films in recent times because it doesn’t try to be scary.

The chills come from the normal gleaming surfaces. Suparn Verma keeps the proceedings quiet, subdued and uniformly ominous. He gets able support from his editor Hemal Kothari, who gives a tightly-wound but nonetheless baggy and freewheeling feel to the footage, and from the cinematographer Sophie Winquvist, who makes Bipasha and her world look pretty, though not in a picture-postcard way.

Aatma features some talented actors in the cast. Shernaz Patel and Jaideeep Ahlawat get into their characters’ skin without doing anything here that takes their reputation forward.

The show belongs to Bipasha all the way. After Raaz, she once again carries the scare-fest on her shapely shoulders, feeling every minute of the single mother’s terror and horror as her sadistic husband’s malevolent soul takes over her life.

Bipasha seems to get better with every film.

S UBHASH K. J HA

protagonist’s buddies in arms are first-rate, Jackky Bhagnani as the boy next door, who doesn’t think twice before plunging viciously into a friend’s love problem, gives a quietly self-assured performance. His character Rishi hardly sings and dances. But you know he can. You can sense the rhythm simmering under the surface of discontent.

Cupid’s arrow has never struck a deadlier blow.

S UBHASH K. J HA