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Post by MrB on Oct 7, 2014 8:56:18 GMT
Time we had a thread for reviews of this one, starting with the Vigil Idiot, who's been out of circulation with TB apparently. Warning: his review gives away the plot twist: Bang Bang!
My own opinion is that Vigil Idiot nailed it in his review. Knight and Day was mildly entertaining, but this copy is so stupid and incoherent that I couldn't suspend disbelief enough to enjoy it. In the interests of fairness I should mention that MrsB did like it, but check out the Vigil Idiot's depiction of Hrithik Roshan to find a possible explanation of that.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Oct 7, 2014 18:32:46 GMT
Hilarious! Good to have him back. When I get home and have less limited access, I will try to post links to FilmiGirl's review (she liked it) and Mohar Basu's review on KoiMoi-she takes a similar attitude towards the film as the Vigil Idiot, but is slightly more tolerant, for much the same reasons as MrsB. It did well but not amazingly at the box office over the long weekend, and due to the delays caused by Hrithik's health problems plus the generally lavish production values it was fairly expensive to make. My own impression is that it's probably going to end up in that Singham Returns/Jab Tak/Krissh 3 zone of being a hit but not quite as big a hit as expected.
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Post by dancelover on Oct 8, 2014 17:01:17 GMT
BoxOfficeIndia seems to agree with Odadune. "Held well on Tuesday, now over 100 crore, should cross 115 this week, good chance to go over 150 lifetime."
I note that 150 this year is like 100 three or four years ago. I also note that it is trending down from a high start: 25, 20, 17, 18, 13, 8. Not as well as Kick, but better than Jai Ho.
D
Hilarious! Good to have him back. When I get home and have less limited access, I will try to post links to FilmiGirl's review (she liked it) and Mohar Basu's review on KoiMoi-she takes a similar attitude towards the film as the Vigil Idiot, but is slightly more tolerant, for much the same reasons as MrsB. It did well but not amazingly at the box office over the long weekend, and due to the delays caused by Hrithik's health problems plus the generally lavish production values it was fairly expensive to make. My own impression is that it's probably going to end up in that Singham Returns/Jab Tak/Krissh 3 zone of being a hit but not quite as big a hit as expected.
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Post by rose on Oct 10, 2014 7:26:57 GMT
Make no mistake, this film was stupid and mostly predictable. I totally totally loved it! It's the definition of an entertainer and it's not the destination (plot) but the journey (performances, action sequences, locations, etc.)
Tu Meri still sucks though. I regret not running to the bathroom during it.
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Post by rose on Oct 10, 2014 7:30:36 GMT
Hilarious! Good to have him back. When I get home and have less limited access, I will try to post links to FilmiGirl's review (she liked it) and Mohar Basu's review on KoiMoi-she takes a similar attitude towards the film as the Vigil Idiot, but is slightly more tolerant, for much the same reasons as MrsB. It did well but not amazingly at the box office over the long weekend, and due to the delays caused by Hrithik's health problems plus the generally lavish production values it was fairly expensive to make. My own impression is that it's probably going to end up in that Singham Returns/Jab Tak/Krissh 3 zone of being a hit but not quite as big a hit as expected. I love what she wrote on it. I didn't see Harleen as the protagonist while watching, but she's right. She is. And that does make a difference here. She's also spot on about Hrithik's appeal. He's a very masculine and cunning injured puppy.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Oct 11, 2014 18:14:21 GMT
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madhu
Dancing in the chorus
Posts: 10
Favorite actor: Hrithik Roshan, Sidharth Malhotra
Favorite actress: Rani Mukherjee, Deepika Padukone, Vidya Balan
Upcoming release you're most excited about: Happy New Year/Bang Bang
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Post by madhu on Oct 12, 2014 0:47:08 GMT
Saw it this morning. LOVED IT. LOVED IT. LOVED IT. This is a leave-your-brains-behind out and out entertainer, and I don't think it's pretending to be anything more than that. It had everything: comedy, romance, two leads with crackling chemistry, breathtaking locales, thrilling action sequences, HRITHIK'S ABS, HRITHIK'S FACE, HRITHIK'S BEST HAIR SINCE DHOOM 2. Ahem. Seriously, this was just such a blast. I fell in love with Hrithik all over again, and Katrina was adorable and lovely in this. I was finally won over by the songs seeing them on a big screen. Hrithik hasn't danced like this in YEARS, and it is such a pleasure to watch. His hair is the nicest it's been in years, and I intensely hated both his Krrish 3 hair and his ZNMD hair (the orange, yeagh.) He is painfully, ridiculously hot in this, and perhaps my only quibble is that they really overdid whatever body-contouring make-up they had on Hrithik's muscles. {Click to view!} I will give the movie credit for giving the audience the opportunity to realize that Rajveer and Viren are brothers way before Katrina helpfully sees a picture of the two of them. Rajveer introduces himself as Rajveer Nanda pretty early in the movie, and if you were paying attention, you'll remember that it was Col Nanda in the beginning of the movie. And Harleen coming into her own and taking initiative and kicking ass was amazing, and made up for some of the sting of Dhoom 3 totally sidelining Katrina. I know the nurse scene at the end was totally implausible. I cheered anyway. The best summary of this movie is that it is very much a blend of Dhoom 2 and Ek Tha Tiger, so if those are your kind of movies, you should have fun with this one. I certainly did. ETA: Forgot to say yesterday, Hrithik has the most badass slow-mo walk EVER. The movie makes full use of it, and it is epic and awesome.
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Post by rose on Oct 12, 2014 2:54:30 GMT
I loved the last scene too made it equal. And the part where Hrithik is in the water with the jet boots is something else. He is a dolphin. It is beautiful.
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Post by James on Oct 12, 2014 6:03:38 GMT
I loved the Vigil Idiot's review! Made me laugh in several places. I'm looking forward to reading Filmigirl's when I have a bit more time. Reading Vigil Idiot's review made me realise how low my standards are for judging a Hritik Roshan film. I actually did enjoy this one, but I think it's mainly because I turned off any part of my brain that has to do with enjoying plot, and switched on action sequence enjoyment+nice locales. It helped that my friends and I were already in a generally good mood and had enjoyed a really good meal before we went... Come to think of it, we were laughing at it and making fun of it in places where it made no sense, so I enjoyed it whether it deserved to be enjoyed or not. It was interesting that Katrina was still explained away in this movie as someone born in Canada who moved back to family in India after her parents died. I thought she was past needing that kind of justification, I wonder why it was there? I really liked whoever it was who played Katrina's grandmother. She was a very sympathetic character and really quite modern in her outlook. It was funny to see her say that she's modern enough to accept her granddaughter being out with a man over night, but not when she can't remember his name! She had a few good dialogues and had a good screen presence for a smaller role. I have to bitch a little about the obsession with the crown jewels. Hritik stole them in Dhoom 2, and again in this movie. It's such a dumb plot device, I don't know why they keep including it. Really, one of the many ways in which the script of this movie was so very lacking... Aside from all that, I was very surprised Jimmy Shergill took such a small role, makes me wonder how his career is. His acting was really good for what he had, shame he's so under-utilized. It was fun to see the songs on the big screen, especially the title song at the end was fun for me. Hritik did a great job with the dancing in this one, I enjoyed Katrina particularly in the title song. It occurs to me that I think of Hritik as a sort of male-Madhuri Dixit. Someone considered pretty, great dancer, charming and charismatic, and star power. I think she's a better actor, but his fans will probably disagree with me.
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Post by corbie on Oct 13, 2014 23:48:52 GMT
It was ok. I am not a fan of action action action fight fight fight. The parts that didn't have action and fighting were fun. I never saw Knight and day.
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Post by dancelover on Oct 14, 2014 17:20:16 GMT
Now BOI is saying that BB will probably reach "only" 140 crore, after a 21 crore second weekend. They now expect it to earn less than Jai Ho.
Oct 18: BOI now calls it Semi-Hit. Koimoi has called it Plus. D
BoxOfficeIndia seems to agree with Odadune. "Held well on Tuesday, now over 100 crore, should cross 115 this week, good chance to go over 150 lifetime."
I note that 150 this year is like 100 three or four years ago. I also note that it is trending down from a high start: 25, 20, 17, 18, 13, 8. Not as well as Kick, but better than Jai Ho.
D
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Post by newbiefan on Oct 27, 2014 23:48:31 GMT
I wrote a little bit about this film on the "what's the latest movie you've watched?" thread a few days back. Since I have some time to kill now, let me write some more. This is not a "clever" film. It's not like D-Day or Kahaani, where the plot makes sense and the pieces fit. This is Dhoom territory, with a bit of masala backstory thrown in. The masala back story doesn't fit very well with the tone of the bulk of the movie. Fortunately, the film doesn't push this family drama angle too hard, unlike, say, Dhoom 3, which IMO was an inconsistent mess. The heart of the film is the back-and-forth between Harleen and Rajveer and Harleen's gradual opening up to the big wide world and the treasure trove of experiences it has to offer. She goes from being someone who is risk averse, getting by with the bare minimum of interaction with the outside world, dreaming of adventure but never striking out on her own, to someone who actually puts herself out there and does things which are not required of her just because she wants to. Her changing level of boldness is reflected in the two fantasy songs she gets in the movie. Uff, which appears early in the movie, is sweet and innocent and set in her familiar world around Shimla. Meherbaan Hua, which comes later, is much more obviously sexual, and set in the unfamiliar Santorini. This change in her outlook is also why the final role reversal, {Click to view!} when she kidnaps Rajveer, is so charming. People rag on Katrina all the time for her poor acting, and I've never understood why. Maybe it's because I've only seen a small selection of her movies (Namastey London, New York, Rajneeti, ZNMD, Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, Dhoom 3, and parts of Welcome and APKGK), and have managed to avoid the real stinkers, but I've never thought that her facial expressions were terribly inadequate in any of these films. Her Hindi accent is not perfect, but then again, I've lived in the USA for 15 years now and I still sound like a desi, so I will never hold her accent against her. I thought she did really well in this film and made me buy into her transformation. Hrithik is less "real" in this film. We don't get enough of his masala backstory or any hint of vulnerability in a timely fashion to be emotionally invested in him, even though we can guess what his motivations are. He comes off as the indestructible, wisecracking, teflon prince, which IMO is not a bad thing. In his last couple of movie outings he has been a little too teary-eyed and twitchy for my liking, so keeping the overblown histrionics to a minimum and showing competence with comedy is a sign of progress. I could never get myself to rewatch either Agneepath or Krrish 3, but I know I'll be getting the DVD of Bang Bang because I liked Hrithik in this film and I know I won't be cringing at his excesses. What this film could have done better is the staging of the stunts. Some of the stunt sequences, like the flyboarding one, just go on for too long. That flyboarding sequence is also not fast-paced enough to be believable and thrilling. It seems like Hrithik is emerging out of the water and diving back in in a regular, predictable pattern. Why the goons don't just shoot him in mid-air is unclear. His movements would have to appear far more quick and unpredictable for that sequence to be plausible. Likewise, the F1 race car scene in the climax looks pointless. If you want the audience to feel the excitement, show them how much faster an F1 car is compared to a regular passenger car. The way to do that is to show the F1 car from some distance, weaving through the traffic and coming out ahead because nothing can keep pace with it. Instead we get a lot of close up shots of the car and Hrithik's face, so you can't really tell that this ride is something out of the ordinary. The climax as a whole should have been edited down to half its current length. It just goes on and on, from a desert fortress to the streets of Dubai, to an airplane, with stunts that aren't eyepopping enough to keep the viewer's interest. The other thing is the portrayal of the villains. They belong in a different universe compared to the rest of the cast. The way they speak and dress, it looks like they stepped out of some 80s potboiler. It's like the whole film was designed to showcase Hrithik and Katrina, and these guys were tossed in as an afterthought. It didn't bother me too much because I was watching this precisely for Hrithik and Katrina, so I was getting what I wanted from the film, but I can imagine that someone who is less fond of the leads will find this aspect offputting. Finally, there is Sujoy Ghosh's unmistakable stamp on this story. Just like {Click to view!} Kahaani is all about an account of events given by someone whom we unquestioningly trust, only to find out later that the story was untrue, here too we have a claim that is pushed by people whom we normally believe, only to discover that they have duped us.
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Post by newbiefan on Oct 28, 2014 2:49:48 GMT
Ok, a few more thoughts. Please excuse my rambling, folks!
I mentioned in my previous comment that Hrithik's Rajveer comes across as too invulnerable early on to evoke any emotional attachment. He does eventually show just a touch of wistfulness when Harleen asks him what he dreams of, and he says he longs for home and stability. I thought that was really well done and well played by Hrithik. Small town girl Harleen dreams of adventure and travel. Super agent Rajveer dreams of a quieter life. It adds poignancy to the final stretch of the movie.
There are a number of visual and verbal evocations of Hrithik's other movies. The most obvious of these is in the scene where the two leads first meet. In this scene Harleen is the uptight person who is putting off enjoying her life for some day in the future, while Rajveer is the guy who is at ease with himself, living for today, and trying to coax Harleen out of her shell. This is a neat reversal of their roles in ZNMD. The photo of Rajveer that Harleen sees in his house is a shoutout to Lakshya. The scene where Hrithik jumps out of a plane into a desert and scales the walls of a fortress is obviously reminiscent of Dhoom 2.
There are product placements in this movie. The two that caught my attention were Pizza hut and Mountain Dew. I didn't mind Pizza hut so much. The two characters stop there for a meal and discuss what to eat. I've had similar conversations in real life, so I am willing to go along with that. Mountain Dew gets two placements, first when the leads order it at Pizza Hut(OK by me), and second, when Hrithik repeats the Mountain Dew tag line before jumping out of a plane. This second one was really tacky IMO. I wonder why Mountain Dew got two mentions? Did they pay extra? Something like this can be worked into the script, provided it is couched in humor. A straight delivery is just bad.
Which brings me to the one logical flaw in the film that I, a diehard fan, couldn't overlook. Why does Rajveer approach Harleen and get her embroiled in this mess in the first place? He tells her later that he has never been responsible for the death of an innocent, so he is going to offer her his protection, which explains the rest of the movie, but there is no good explanation for why he gets the innocent party involved to begin with. I know we are supposed to think that it is love at first sight, but that does not seem to be in character for a canny guy like him. I wish they had done something different with this, like, say, he is hiding in her car to avoid the goons, but then she gets into the car and drives off before he has a chance to sneak out, and thereby she gets involved, or something along those lines. This whole "I see your face and I am immediately so enamoured that all judgment goes out the window" is too hackneyed and needs to be retired.
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Post by MrB on Oct 28, 2014 8:33:08 GMT
... What this film could have done better is the staging of the stunts. ... I think this was at the heart of my inability to go along for the ride. Far too often Hrithik's way of escaping chasers is to jump off something really high and trust to dumb luck that he's not going to end up as jam at the bottom. It would have been much better to show him glimpsing some possible way of survival in advance, however high-risk and implausible - then you can enjoy the excitement/silliness of what comes next.
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Post by newbiefan on Oct 28, 2014 14:04:44 GMT
I think this was at the heart of my inability to go along for the ride. Far too often Hrithik's way of escaping chasers is to jump off something really high and trust to dumb luck that he's not going to end up as jam at the bottom. It would have been much better to show him glimpsing some possible way of survival in advance, however high-risk and implausible - then you can enjoy the excitement/silliness of what comes next. I know. This jumping off high places happens at least twice, in the Shimla rooftop sequence and the Pizza Hut sequence. The Shimla sequence is less problematic because we do see him looking down first, so it comes across as if he is assessing the odds and deciding to take the risk. the Pizza Hut thing makes less sense unless you assume that he didn't just stop there by chance, but had previously scoped out the place and knew he could get away if cornered. Overall, I liked the stunt choreography in Indian locations better. You see the crowded streets, the speeding traffic, the dizzying heights of the rooftops and hillsides and get a better sense of the danger and the level of coordination and dexterity required to come out of the chase unscathed. The foreign setting are too empty - deserted stretch of road in the middle of nowhere, beach and water near an uninhabited island- for there to be the same sense of skilfully threading a needle, so to speak, in order to survive.
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