Ek Tha Tiger (India, 2012)

As the man who literally wrote the book on 1970s Indian action movies, it was enlightening for me to see a more recent example of the Bollywood spy films that the Hindi film industry is so fond of revisiting. And while 2012’s Ek Tha Tiger testifies to an industry miles ahead in terms of slickness, technical prowess and production value of the one that made films like Golden Eyes: Secret Agent 077 and Gunmaster G9, it also demonstrates that Bollywood is no less, if not more, influenced by Hollywood in its approach to tackling commercial genres.

For instance, within the first ten minutes of Ek Tha Tiger, I pegged it as being an Indian take on a very specific type of Hollywood action film--by which I mean a vehicle for a bankable, preternaturally fit star with an unlikable public persona who does penitence by sacrificing his gym-toned body on the torture wheel of post-millennial action spectacle. In this case, that star is accused domestic abuser and animal murderer Salman Kahn, who, in the film’s opening scene, is involved in a harrowing foot chase along the alleyways and across the rooftops of an Iraqi city (which I imagine was described in the script as “just like the one at the beginning of Casino Royale.”) Of course, Khan’s alleged crimes are more serious than those of Tom Cruise, who was made to hang from the roof of Singapore’s tallest building for sullying Oprah Winfrey’s couch, which kind of makes us Americans look like quite an unforgiving lot.

But that doesn’t really matter, because, almost as soon as that opening scene ends, Ek Tha Tiger shuffles genres like a well curated mixtape and plants us down in the middle of a pretty by-the-numbers Bollywood romcom. This happens when Khan, playing the dutiful Indian secret agent known as Tiger, meets Zoya (newcomer Katrina Kaif), the comely housekeeper of the professor whom he has been charged with protecting from Pakistani assassins. While Tiger is immediately, if reluctantly, smitten, Zoya, haughty and Western educated (this part of the film takes place at Ireland’s Trinity College) is resistant to his charms. So, yes, the type of by-the-numbers Bollywood romcom I’m talking about is that one where (sigh) a red blooded Indian boy is tasked with breaking the spirit of a willful girl via a nagging ritual that seems a lot more like stalking than courtship.

This conflict between love and duty, along with the academic setting, gives Ek Tha Tiger a superficial similarity to Farah Khan’s Main Hoon Naa, though to compare the two doesn’t flatter it. Khan and Kaif simply lack the chemistry and charm of Main Hoon Naa’s stars, Shah Rukh Khan and Sushmita Sen, while Salman Khan is too self-absorbed to attempt the type of self-parody that SRK proves so expert at in Main Hoon Naa Furthermore, Main Hoon Naa, as directed by Farah Khan, both a choreographer and a director, is a film that pulsates joyously with its music, while Ek Tha Tiger’s score is meager (I don’t think I counted more than four songs) and the dancing prosaically staged.

Eventually Zoya is revealed to be a rogue agent of the Pakistani secret service and she and Tiger, now pursued by the intelligence agencies of both of their countries, must go on the run. This leads into an episode marked by a series of the kind of beautifully shot location sequences that beg the question, "How can two such pretty people in such pretty places not fall totally in love?" And the answer is that they totally do.

Zoya is finally captured and taken hostage, at which point Tiger and his colleagues must enact a daring rescue. It is at this point that Ek Tha Tiger awakens from its reverie as if having received a well-intentioned slap to the face and becomes the stunt-filled, explosion laden killfest that we all (well, some of us) have been hoping it would become all along. During this section we get to see Zoya repeatedly demonstrate the She-Hulk like ability to drop from thirty feet and land on her feet without shattering her knees. We also get to see Salman Khan punched in the face in slow motion, which is pretty gratifying.

I don’t mean to be too hard on Ek Tha Tiger, but I think that, given it was an international box office smash, it can stand to take a few well-intentioned knocks to the chin. It is, in all honesty, not a hard film to watch. It’s an expertly made commercial entertainment that gives its audience everything they could ask for, though in a perhaps less manic and well apportioned manner than the Masala films of old. And there lies the greatest difference between it and the Indian spy films of the 60s, 70s, and 80s: rather than stirring its disparate genre elements into a rough stew, it puts them in a kind of narrative Cuisinart, providing its audience with a ride that is less bumpy and dizzying than its predecessors. If you see this as some kind of loss (as I do), I prescribe that you chase this film down with a viewing of James Bond 777.

WIth new eyes

My review of V. Shantaram's Do Ankhen Barah Haath ("Two Eyes Twelve Hands"), which first appeared on the Lucha Diaries site, was one of the first long form film reviews I ever wrote. Now, apropos of the holiday, it has been resurrected over at Mezzanotte. Fortunately it has aged little, because the film it considers is timeless. Have a gander, won't you?

See you in Austin?

First thing Thursday morning, Mrs. 4Dk and I will be jetting off to Austin for this year's Fantastic Fest, where I will be spreading the gospel of Funky Bollywood and mingling with other world genre cinema obsessives. Of course, we'll also be catching some films. Those we most hotly anticipate are Park Chan-Wook's latest, The Handmaiden, the Thai Krasue comedy The Dwarves Must be Crazy, 1971 exploitation oddity The Zodiac Killer, Korean spy thriller Age of Shadows, and Fraud, a meta-mystery cobbled together from random YouTube clips. Oh, and I am just dying to catch the blisteringly insane Telugu action film Magadheera on the big screen.

Between screenings I will probably be wandering the Alamo Drafthouse complex in a dazed stupor. If you see me, please grab me and point me in the direction of the bathroom, the snack bar, or the nurse's station as circumstances dictate. Oh, and also say "howdy". I look like one of these three people:

Nagina (India, 1986)

It's a sad fact that Western horror cinema has produced no female creature as enduring as India's Nagin. The closest it has come are Jacques Fournier’s The Cat People, which only merited one sequel, and Hammer's The Reptile, which was one of the studio’s rare “one and done” monster films. The Bride of Frankenstein’s debut was also her swan song, although she did get an Aurora model kit out of the deal. By contrast, the Nagin, a poisonous snake given the form of a beautiful human woman, has been a part of Hindi cinema almost since its inception.

As with most iconic beasties, the fixity of the Nagin’s image in the minds of her audience has allowed filmmakers to be fluid with both her meanings and representation. Take for example two of the most well-known versions of the Nagin’s tale in modern Hindi film, Rajkumar Kohli’s star-studded Nagin from 1976 and Harmesh Malhotra’s 1986 Nagina.

Kohli’s Nagin, following the trends of the time, is one part “body count” horror film and one part funky action thriller. His Nagin, played by the bodacious Reena Roy, is an unstoppable killer, driven by vengeance to mow down everyone in her path, be they man, woman or child (Kohli would take this concept several steps further in his blighted 2002 remake of the film, Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, by giving his Nagin unexplained Robocop powers.) Malhotra’s Nagina, on the other hand, makes of the tale a gothic romance, complete with haunted atmosphere worthy of comparison to Hammer’s classic horrors of the 60s. In this context, the Nagin becomes a sympathetic and ultimately heroic figure.

The story begins with young Rajiv (Rishi Kapoor) returning, after a long absence, to the palatial estate of his birth, where he is enthusiastically welcomed by his mother (Shushma Seth.) There is some talk of Rajiv having been sent to Europe as a child due to some kind of vague mental issue (chances are he was put under the charge of one of those wacky German psychoanalysts). Now he has returned to take control of the sugar plantation to which he is heir.

On a tour of the grounds, Rajiv is shown the ruins of a mansion that was once the family home. There he hears a ghostly female voice singing a haunting melody. He returns later and meets Rajni (Sridevi), a beautiful woman of mysterious origins who claims to have known Rajiv since they were both children. Rajiv is entranced by her and, because this is a Bollywood movie, falls in love with her before the day is through. He later announces to his mother his intention to marry Rajni, which scuttles her plan to marry him off to Vijaya (Roobini), who, if I followed this movie correctly, is Rajiv’s cousin.

You see, Rajiv has an uncle named Ajay Singh, who has acted as overseer of the plantation in his absence. Ajay Singh is also father to the now-heartbroken Vijaya. Unfortunately for Rajiv, Ajay Singh is played by Prem Chopra, which means that, in the unforgiving calculus of Hindi cinema casting, he is a rat bastard. Enraged at Rajiv for rejecting his daughter, Ajay Singh vows to obstruct Rajiv’s happiness in any way he can. When it comes time for him to sign control of the plantation over to Rajiv, he refuses to do so and rips up the agreement.(Ajay Singh’s plan was to swindle the family anyway, so this is really just a case of one plan dovetailing nicely into another.) Later, he learns that Rajiv has a file containing all the documentation he needs to prove his title. He sends wave after wave of grubby henchmen to steal the file, only to have each thwarted by the mysterious intervention of a cobra.

Around this time, an imposing shaman called Bhairon Nath (Amrish Puri) shows up at the family mansion with a retinue of orange-clad disciples. Bhairon Nath and Rajiv’s mother are apparently acquainted, and soon reveal themselves to have some kind of secret history together. Bhairon senses the presence of the Nagin and, upon seeing Rajni, demands that Rajiv and his mom banish her from the house. Rajiv responds by instead showing Bhairon and his entourage the door. Later when Rajiv is shot by Ajay Singh and hospitalized, Bhairon seeks revenge by dispatching a cobra to his bedside.

You have to feel sorry for Rajiv, seeing as he is on the receiving end of both Amrish Puri’s and Prem Chopra’s bad tidings. It is hard to imagine any filmi hero surviving such a villainous one-two punch. Sadly, I am unable to judge Rishi Kapoor’s performance as Rajiv due to my almost pathological inability to be moved by anything he does. All that I can say for him is that he serves as a good model for a number of cozy looking sweaters. I think this is partly due to Kapoor’s misfortune of having his career coincide with those of such exponentially more exciting actors as Amitabh Bachchan, Feroz Khan, and Vinod Khanna. In fact, my saying that makes me ponder just how great Nagina¸ an already good film, would be if Vinod Khanna were its male lead.

It also has to be said that an actor like Rishi Kapoor stands little chance of standing out when cast alongside a formidable pair of scene stealers like Amrish Puri and Sridevi. Puri is at the top of his game here, bringing all of his natural authority and presence to a portrayal as iconic as the one he would give as Mr. India’s Mogambo a couple of years later (and speaking of authority and presence, it only just occurred to me that Amrish Puri is India’s answer to Christopher Lee, and vice versa.) Sridevi, for her part, was a newly minted superstar at the time and earns the title, delivering a performance of fierce intensity. Her Nagin has both a soul and a conscience and, despite whatever plans she might have started out with, comes to dedicate herself to being the loyal protector of Rajiv and his family. It’s something of a reversal of the Kipling story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” with the cobra acting as the protector of the family rather than the threat against it.

In Puri and Sridevi’s hands, one gets the sense that the rivalry between Rajni and Bhairon goes back several lifetimes, with all of the accumulated enmity that would entail. As such, every meeting between them sees them matching each other blazing eye for blazing eye, flaring nostril for flaring nostril, and curled lip for curled lip. Bone shuddering oaths are exchanged while thunder roars and lighting flashes, eventually leading us to “Main Teri Dushman” (“I am Your Enemy”) a song and dance number that is, to me, the film’s inarguable highlight.

“Main Teri Dushman” provides a direct counterpoint to an earlier musical number in the film, “Balma Tum Balma Ho Mere Kali”, in which Rajni tries to woo Rajiv away from a dangerous engagement by distracting him with an erotic dance. But where “Balma Tum Balma Ho Mere Kali” is a song of seduction, “Main Teri Dushman” is a song of defiance. In it, Rajni delivers a fiery-eyed challenge to Bhairon’s attempts to control her with every thrust of her hip and insolent jut of her chin. Bhairon, meanwhile, circles her like a beast of prey, trilling away on his flute in a vain attempt to rein her in. Between them, they generate more of an air of combined sex and menace than in all of the love scenes between Sridevi and Rishi Kapoor combined.

I’m not going to spoil any more of the plot developments in Nagina, because I am going to enthusiastically recommend it to you. It has a couple of unforgettable performances, I story that is rewardingly complex without being convoluted, a tight script that is light on trivial digressions (well, there is a bit where Jagdeep tells some sub-Borscht Belt fat jokes about his wife, but we can’t ask for miracles), an appropriately hip-swiveling score by Laxmikant-Pyarelal in full tribal mode, and a lot of moody atmosphere. Bollywood rarely delivers genre cinema as pure as this. Watch it and be enchanted.

Shh! Funkiness in progress.

Do you live in the San Francisco area? Well, here's an idea: why not play hooky from work on Tuesday and come down to the SF Public Library's main branch, where I will be appearing in conversation with Arts Librarian Moazzam Sheikh--no slouch on the subject of Indian cinema himself--on the topic of all things Funky Bollywood. The event will be taking place in the Koret Auditorium, which is located on the library's lower lever, and runs from 3:30 to 5:30pm.

The more highbrow among you might frown upon the notion of such a monument to literacy and learning as the SFPL hosting an event like this, but clearly the folks there recognize my book Funky Bollywood as a gateway to the classics.

Come on down. You might learn something.

Funky Bollywood: The Podcast!

Last Saturday's Funky Bollywood event at San Diego's Digital Gym Cinema was all kinds of swell. What started out as a simple Q & A session between me and my esteemed fellow MOSS-er Miguel Rodriguez quickly evolved into a lively discussion involving most of a very engaged audience, many of whom contributed interesting and informative comments of their own. If you wish you had been there, you're in luck--because Miguel has just posted the audio recording of the event as the latest episode of his Horrible Imaginings podcast (formerly known as Monster Island Resort). You can listen to it here.

This Saturday: Funky Bollywood comes to San Diego!

That's right, folks; it's time for me to take my show on the road, flacking the magical healing properties of my book Funky Bollywood: The Wild World of 1970s Action Cinema from city to city until I get run out of town by an angry mob. First stop: San Diego, California, where I will be engaging in an informative chat with my good friend Miguel Rodriguez--he of the Monster Island Resort Podcast and the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival--at the Digital Gym Cinema. When is it? Why, this coming Saturday, June 13th, starting at 8pm.

In addition to some interesting talk, this event will also include a funky assortment of film clips and, of course, copies of Funky Bollywood for sale that I will be happy to sign whether you want me to or not. This is a free event, so if you live in San Diego or thereabouts, you'll need a really good excuse for not showing up. Hope to see you there.

C.I.D. Raju (India, 1971)

C.I.D. Raju confounded my efforts to understand it without subtitles by featuring a male cast that was, to a man, made up of dark haired men with mustaches, heavily painted eyebrows and powdered faces. Their characters would have been no less indistinguishable to me had they been played by members of the Blue Man Group. C.I.D. Raju also confounded my efforts to understand it without subtitles by being as crazy as a bonobo in heat.

If the above description does not already scream “Telugu film” to you, let me also say that C.I.D. Raju raises high expectations by having been made in the same year as the sublime James Bond 777 and by sharing some of that film’s key talent both behind and in front of the camera. Chief among these is director K.S.R. Doss, whose unique aesthetic would be obvious even without his prominent billing in the credits:

Holding this film up to James Bond 777 may seem unfair, but the truth is that it acquits itself quite well, if to a large extent by means of compensation. It does not, for instance, have a trio of dog assassins (though there is a hero German Shepherd named Sabu) or dueling Jyothi Laxmis, but in place of those things it gives us more than we might expect. Here Doss has taken the secret agent trappings of JB777 and combined them with those of an “old dark house” thriller along with the mad science of an old Universal horror picture. Yes, there are monsters.

Our story begins with the escape from prison of one of the aforementioned mustached and powdered gentlemen, who, it turns out, is one of the bad mustached and powdered gentlemen, as opposed to the many also mustached and powdered gentlemen who make up the city’s easily baffled police force. This crumb bum wastes no time in reuniting with his old gang, who, despite the film’s contemporary urban milieu, all dress in cowboy outfits—probably because this is a K.S.R. Doss film. It soon follows that the hoods kidnap a scientist, Dr. Ramesh, whom they torture into revealing the secret of his newly developed paralyzing serum. They then set to kidnapping a series of pretty college girls whom they drag back to their underground lair for purposes unknown to me. It is at this point that the baffled C.I.D. calls in Agent Raju, who comes wheeling onto the scene on his motorcycle to the accompaniment of peppy surf guitar.

Of all the kabuki-esque mustache farmers on display in C.I.D. Raju, you’d think that one would be the ubiquitous Superstar Krishna, who was apparently exercising his omnipresence elsewhere at the time. Instead, Agent Raju is played by a younger, though no less dolled up, actor whose name I am unsure of. This is of little matter, though, because, not long after he is introduced, Raju disappears from the film for the better part of an hour, leaving his sidekick to take on most of the heavy lifting. Also on hand to pick up the slack is 4DK favorite Vijaya Lalitha playing Lita, who is, I believe, the daughter of the local magistrate. Many attempts on Lita’s life are made by the gang, all of which allow the scrappy Lalitha to demonstrate her fondness for flying scissor holds.

Oh, and don’t think you’re going to get out of this movie without seeing an item number from Jyothi Laxmi.

Which brings us to C.I.D. Raju’s supernatural content. As all of the above described action takes place, we learn that the cowboy gang’s lair, while equipped with all the standard sliding doors and hidden chambers, is also infested with spooks, chief among them a fanged brute with Reggie Watts hair and one bulging eye. There is also a scene in which one of the gang confronts one of the girl captives, who reveals herself to be a witch with long, Wolverine-like talons (a side effect, perhaps, of Dr. Ramesh's serum?). Each of these sequences is followed by that old haunted house movie chestnut in which the only person to see the monster is later embarrassed when he/she brings a posse of disbelievers back to the spot of the sighting, only to find that the monster has moved on. Wah-wahhhh.

The film’s spookiness peaks when Lita—after being, by all appearances, successfully killed by the gang--returns as a vengeful ghost. This leads to a sequence in which a squadron of police officers watch in astonishment from an adjoining rooftop as Lita, singing a mournful tune, repeatedly explodes into a cloud of white phosphorous before reappearing. It is a truly dreamlike moment, one that speaks well of Doss’s skills as a filmmaker and visual stylist. It is also commendably free of panty shots.

It also speaks well of Doss’s skills as a filmmaker that C.I.D. Raju is a very entertaining film, even when watched by someone who has no idea at all what is supposed to be going on it it. Those scant moments in which there is no chase, fistfight, hip swiveling item girl, or monster reliably contain some quirk of fashion or mid-century interior design that is equally compelling. Notable among these visual bonbons are the gang’s chain smoking, plaid skirt wearing gunmoll and the odd, ceramic baby statue that adorns the Magistrate’s coffee table. This is not to mention the grating comic relief turn by Raja Babu, whose every bit of shrill physical business is accompanied by weird sci-fi sound effects, because, well, we are never to mention that, ever.

C.I.D. Raju ends, as is traditional, with an all-hands-on-deck dust-up involving every member of the cast that is filled with kung fu and gun violence. As much as you might decry its predictability, I think that, were the cast to instead join hands and sing us out to “Kumbaya”, we would find ourselves left with a profound emptiness. Such meatheaded spectacle is exactly what K.S.R. Doss was brought into this world to provide. In return, we can offer him only a drunken mind and a complete annihilation of disbelief.