Genre : Suspense
Year : 2008
Running time : 2 hours 40 minutes
Director : Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Anil Kapoor
Kid rating : PG
An old, red Mercedes screaming down a desert road. It veers here and there, and finally goes over a cliff. Underwater the camera zooms onto Saif, still seated in the car, and surreally, still underwater he opens his mouth and begins to talk . . .
I went to see this film with absolutely no hopes. (Yup – I still went). After being trashed by everyone I read, really how could one ? Hope, I mean. Still, there are times when one is pleasantly surprised. Not like in “Oh, what a fantastic film”; more like it really wasn’t that bad.
First off, Anil Kapoor turns me off. Plus the deal with the “Phormula” and the “Ishyle” and the whole “let’s do the attitude” thing – pretty juvenile, yeah ? But, inspite of that, “Tashan” is fairly well-stylized, and I don’t mean stylized like Dhoom2, where there are these wanna-be cool actors flashing their abs. Tashan actually has characters who seem to be genuinely off their rockers. Like Akshay Kumar’s small-time goon Bacchhan Pandey, who uses his powers of persuasion to land roles in the local Ram-lila as the 10-headed Ravana. Truly, there’s nothing quite as campy as a 10-headed, jean-clad Ravana on a scooter.
The other 2 main characters are Pooja and Jimmy. Kareena is Pooja, in a superficially Omkaara-ish role. Saif as Jimmy appears as a regular old call-center employee-cum-English teacher, who falls for Miss Pooja, as sweet and innocent as she appears to be. However, and we get pretty James Hadley Chase-ish at this point, the sweet ingénue has money troubles – dear old Dad passed away and left her with a whopping debt of 1.5 crores. Thus she must serve the reprehensible gangster Bhaiyyaji (Anil Kapoor), who makes her cry and wring her hands.
Of course our young Don Juan a.k.a Jimmy, who’s deeply smitten by now, will have none of it. Therefore together they plan to steal some of Bhaiyaji’s money, but when they do, Jimmy is in a soup, because sweet, innocent Pooja has apparently decamped with the loot. Bhaiyyaji is by now, baying for Jimmy’s blood. Enter Bachchan Pandey, from Kanpur – just another devotee of Bhaiyyaji’s. Pandey promises to recover the moolah, and together with Jimmy, who has, in his faultless English, managed to convince them of his innocence, sets off to find the money and the moll . . .
I must say this for Tashan’s characters – they aren’t lacking in the brain department. They might be violent, gaudy, and excessively campy, but stupid they are not. And they are relatively believable, in that they run true to character – throughout the film. The premise of the film is simple, if a little sketchy : lots of money and four people who want it.
Kareena is super-skinny in the film, permitting herself to be wrapped in a bikini, and extremely short shorts. She does look good, even if underweight, and her skin is stretched so tight minus the flab that one remains worried that an over-enthusiastic jhatka-matka might pop a now visible rib. Kareena is maturing as an actress. In Tashan she is in fine form, demure and sweet as Pooja, and appropriately rabid in the later half of the film. Saif plays himself, i.e.; a “cool” desi babu with just the right angrezi inflection to his accent. He’s traipsing along on the road of life, until ofcourse he meets the woman of his dreams. And Akshay, as I’ve said before is superbly campy; the epitome of the ambitious gangster bhaiya.
I must say this (and do you hear the awe in my voice ?) this is the desi version of “Pulp Fiction”. It’s one twist after another, with characters so singularly unalike, that when they get together, you’re waiting for the fireworks to explode. The film’s story unfolds in a narrative fashion, parts of it are related by Jimmy and parts by Bachhan. And when I say related, I mean that they actually tell the audience the story in little asides – a very interesting and effective technique to draw in the audience.
Here’s the downer though folks – the film is great until we get to the end of the film. Then, and let me not be too harsh here, the director loses his senses, and the film morphs into a typical C grade thriller. It’s predictable, and very much been-there-done-that. When all I needed to finish up this otherwise good film, was a twist in the tale, and some clean, cool, and slick editing, I got lots of noise, violence and an excessive amount of melodramatic (and might I say stupid ?) dialogue. Quite horrendous, because by now I had my hopes up.
Still, I recommend watching this film. Watch it for the cast and the characters, and the way the film builds around them. Watch it for the genuine moments of zaniness, as in when Bhaiyyaji, quite in awe of Jimmy’s English, remarks “Man ij haraami, but his Engleesh . . .”. And watch it for the well-choreographed, if outlandish, dance numbers.
All in all, an entertaining and engrossing watch.
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