Sunday, March 12, 2006

Rang De Basanti - Huh... nothing great about it!




Finally I did catch up with Rang De Basanti(RDB) ! First of all, why the name RDB ? Where is the Rang ? ... and no Basanti in the movie either !

After all the hype regarding the movie and plans to see it in Atlanta, we finally got hold of a good copy(courtesy: Akash Rao). Thank God I did not go to Atlanta - it would have been a waste of a day and $30!

Let me present some critical analyses:

When National Geographic(with Mission Udaan) and other foreign channels in India try and portray our IAF in a patriotic light, the last thing that we need is to see the MiG crashes and they being blamed for engine defects and politicians. Comon... give me a break. The defence recruitment numbers are at an all time low and we DO NOT need this kind of propaganda! I am surprised how the IAF gave a green signal to RDB ! If at all they wanted to show it, they need not have taken the name of the aircraft! Maybe it is a concidence that I watched this movie 2 days after Srinivas sent me a mail about the myth of MiGs and how the media is spreading false rumours about it.

Another thing is that you can no longer accept Aamir Khan as a student. The guy is over forty and will no more fit the role of a student. But well, to be fair, I like his portrayal of Chandrashekhar Azad. In fact, all of them suit their historic roles very well. I would have loved to see a completely historical movie accurately depicting the life of Chandrashekhar Azad and the others instead of juxtaposing with the present everynow and then(though it looked good at times).

Atul Kulkarni rocks! My respect for his talents has gone several notches up after watching his phenomenal role as 'Encounter Shankar' in that dumb movie Dum. I think he got shortchanged in this movie. Agreed that all 5 of them had to get equal roles and all that but I guess the director did not extract the full potential of Atul in RDB.

And Atul is portrayed(I think so) to be a party worker for the saffron party by showing other workers around him sporting orange towels on their shoulders. I think this is unfair(Well, I am entitled to my quota of irrationality!). Too much of Punjabi dialect for a South Indian ... Couldn't understand quite a bit of the slangs.

On the brighter side, there are some really good scenes in the movie and some dialogues(though they sound cliched at times). The music by A.R.Rahman is really good and the background tunes are splendid. I guess on the whole my rating is 6.5/10.

2 comments:

Praveen Krishnan said...

i share your views!!! Even I had posted the review on my reviews blog!!! People here too had gone gaga about the movie...God knows Why!!!!!

Kishan said...

hmm true...swalpa hype jaasti aythu...