film review - Kaminey

As always, I've managed to defect far beyond the domain of relevance by posting a review of a movie that everyone's watched already. But then I've always liked writing popular film reviews after most people have decided what they think of it. I think it gives readers a certain pleasure in revisiting the familiar. It also helps me sidestep crowded movie halls by catching a lazy afternoon show after all the hype has died down.

Kaminey

Directed by: Vishal Bhardwaj
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Amol Gupte, Deb Mukherjee

If you’ve yet to catch Kaminey and are expecting a cinematic masterpiece, then you’re probably in for a disappointment. Unfortunately, the media hype surrounding the film has robbed it of its gritty B-movie appeal. Bhardwaj is no Tarantino just yet, but Kaminey is a skillfully executed homage to pulp fiction on celluloid.

Estranged twin brothers brought together by twists of fate, crime and sex has been a Bollywood formula oft repeated. But Bhardwaj employs the inherent campiness of this genre to bring to life a set of truly menacing characters that inhabit the inner recesses of a dark, depraved world with uncomfortable ease. Madcap Bengali bookies with a penchant for automatic weapons, a power-hungry Marathi gangster stoking the flames of divisive politics for personal gain, a crooked cop and his faithful sidekick moonlighting as delivery boys for a ruthless drug lord are just some of the characters who, despite their limited screen time, bring a startling realism to the film as they momentarily crawl out of Bombay’s sordid underbelly to turn upside down the lives of our two protagonists.

The love track of the stuttering Guddu (Shahid Kapoor) and his fiesty lady love Sweety (Priyanka Chopra) seems at first inconsequential and thematically out of place in this story that finds its soul in the soulless. Guddu’s twin brother Charlie, with his bulging biceps and a lisp tailor-made ostensibly for comic relief, straddles the fine line between the two conflicting worlds. This comes to a head in the climax through a blood-spattered showdown, demonstrating Bhardwaj’s vision of a seemingly ordered world brimming underneath with unthinkable brutality and greed. It is against this threat of moral anarchy that the love story manages to bestow the film with that indispensible feel-good ending to which Bollywood audiences are so accustomed. We only wish Mr. Bhardwaj had sought to push the bravely crumpled creative envelope just a tiny bit further.

Regardless, Kaminey is an auteur film through and through. The terrific casting erases any trace of artifice in the film’s top-notch supporting performances, and is a major element of the film’s success. Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra, on the other hand, don’t give especially commendable performances, but stand out as proof of a good writer-director’s ability to mould his actors into the characters he originally penned. By far, the greatest achievement of Kaminey is the reassuring feeling you get from the very first shot, submitting yourself willingly to the unfaltering vision of a filmmaker as he takes you on the fast-track to his inspired version of hell and back.

(published in You & I Magazine)