GOONS

STARRING: Sunny Deol, Harman Baweja, Ayesha Khanna, Prashant Narayanan, Aditya Chopra

DIRECTOR: SanamjitTalwar apa preaches to his little boy, "Be Gandhian''. Boy turns the other cheek to a bully in school. Bully slaps our young hero again. Boy visits neighbourhood gangster Tony Mota and asks for a solution.

"Hit him back;'says Mota Tony, and instantly endears himself to the child-hero who grows up to be Harman Baweja.

Quite a stroke of luck for the burdened script. Harman brings to the narrative a residue of angst that serves the plot well. He plays a gangster who suffers constantly.

So, for that matter, do we, though for different reasons.

Debutant director SanamjitTalwar unnecessarily complicates the gangster flick with layer after layer of characterisation. Sinister characters, desperately in need to bathe, keep popping up and popping off for no other reason except to remind us that the Mumbai's underworld has not changed much from the time when Ram Gopa l Varma madeSatya.

But while in Satya we genuinely cared for the sanguinary characters, here in Dishkiyaoon, we are too tired of the trigger-happy marauders to care whether they live or die.

The menacing characters all look like carryovers from Varma's Satya and Company trying hard to shield their jadedness with a swagger which only helps to accentuate their frozen renewability.

The characters' hands remain soaked in the same blood as Satya, no matter how hard the script tries to cover their bloodied track with streaks of cosmetic conceit. Try as it might, the narration's worn-out edges stick out of the sleeklydesigned format.

The film is stylishly packaged with some ear-catching background music (Amar Mohile) and cinematography (Axel Fischer) that fuses colour and black-andwhite in a hide 'n' seek with time.

Sad to say the impressive co l our scheme lacks clarity, consistence and political fundas right, the plot also accommodates the central romantic conflict into its structure.

Every character, big or small, is effectively cast. Jackky as the prime ministeria l candidate, conveys a who le lot of sincerity in his performance His scenes with his dead father (Boman Irani) are emotionally resplendent. They play off well against the stark, sometime funny and outrageous reality of Indian politics.

Neha Sharma as his untameable girlfriend plays her character with intelligence and grace. This girl deserves more than what Hindi cinema has so far offered her. But it is the Farooque Sheikh as Bhagnani's quietly efficient personal assistant who brings a tw i nkle - eyed wisdom to the table.

The film tel l s us it's okay to have dynastic rule as long as the job gets done. It al so te ll s us that there's no need to get hysterical if our prime minister is in a live-in relationship. It may not be cool for a prime minister to get his girlfriend pregnant at a time when he has a responsibility towards the nation, but if it happens, there's no need to get righteous and holierthan-thou.

And, importantly, that politics need not be a drab colourless vocation. It can be a bastion for the young.

SUBHASH K JHA

logic. Much like the film which rambles on about the relationship between crime and comeuppance but doesn't offer us one reason to believe that these characters deserve our attention.

What redeems the film's inherently fagged-out storytelling are the actors Prashant Narayanan as Harman's mentor, Sumeet Nijhawan as a crime lord who doesn't use a gun and specially Anand Tiwari as a hot-headed goon, turn in implosive performances that ignite the frames when the director is taken up with intensifying the layering process

Sunny Deol's Haryanvi accent is as distracti ng as Harman's moustache.

But the young actor has returned to the screen with the language of languidity lending an aura of urgent doom to the goings-on. Newcomer Ayesha Khanna has a brief but effective part as the guitar-playing musician who wonders if she and the world around her wou l d ever be compatible.

End of the film, we are faced with the same dilemma. While we warm up to the film's performances and its intelligent take on gangsterism, the constant barrage of slaying and screaming leave us cold.

SUBHASH K.JHA