Review: Limited Run
Bang Bang! (Siddharth Anand, India, 2014, 154 min)
Now Playing at AMC Star 18 Fitchburg and Marcus Eastgate
Edit 10/10/14: Bang Bang! will play a second week at AMC Star Fitchburg 18 (through 10/16/14), but its run at Marcus Eastgate has ended.
As you know if you follow our Facebook page, I’m a fan of Hrithik Roshan, and I’m a growing fan of Katrina Kaif, so this will not be the most objective review (then again, shouldn’t most of my reviews showcase my personal biases?). I will try to compensate for my fandom with some other takes on Bang Bang! through links at the end of the review. But I have to say that I left the theater with a big smile on my face, and with the urge to go straight home to write a review to encourage you to see Bang Bang! this week. As far as I know, it is the first Bollywood film to open on two screens in Madison (AMC Star 18 Fitchburg and Marcus Eastgate), so it seems likely that it will play more than one week. But just in case it doesn’t, try to budget some time to see it this week (and pace yourself, you will need to go in ready for a full ride). Despite its shortcomings (narrative logic, pacing) Bang Bang! is a shamelessly entertaining film—and I mean shameless in the best possible sense. Unlike some recent Bollywood blockbusters that have made it to Madison recently, Bang Bang! comes close to the right balance of action, romance, and music that makes Bollywood great, which probably explains its global success at the box office this weekend (it had the fifth highest opening day in Bollywood history).
Synopsis? You remember Knight and Day with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, right? Well, it’s that, Bollywood style. (Curiously, Knight and Day screenwriter Patrick O’Neill is acknowledged in the pre-credits rather than in the credits themselves.) But lets not belittle Bollywood for being derivative at this point; remember, the Kutcher/Heigel Killers came out the same year as Knight and Day, so Hollywood recycles as well. Also remember that Howard Hawks said, “I’d say that everybody has seen every plot twenty times. What they haven’t seen is characters and their relation to one another.” In Bang Bang! Roshan plays Rajveer, an international thief with many personal reasons for stealing the Kohinoor diamond from the Tower of London, and Kaif plays Harleen, a bank receptionist looking for a little excitement in her life who finally tries an internet dating site. Most of the pleasure of Bang Bang! comes from simply watching Roshan and Kaif, because we have indeed seen most of this material before (and I say that not having seen Knight and Day).
Besides being one of the most handsome men on the planet, Roshan is a pure entertainer. Yes, in Bang Bang! you get several obligatory shirtless scenes to showcase his perfect abs (nothing wrong with that), but you also get Roshan completely committing himself to the material, regardless of what he is asked to do. You’re never surprised at his gifts in the action and romance scenes, but he often surprises me in the music sequences. First, he can really move for such a muscle-bound guy. And second, his dancing exudes a joie de vivre that is so contagious that you can’t help but smile. Take, for example, the first big music number, “Tu Meri,” which takes place after Rajveer briefly assumes the identity of Harleen’s internet date. Referencing the YouTube video (which uses footage from the film) my favorite moves are at the :50 mark as he follows her in the street, and the 1:12 mark as he lunges forward with a staggered walk and claps his hands ahead of him to the beat. But throughout he just totally goes for it, and holds nothing back. I dare you not to smile when the fireworks go off behind his leap.
Kaif, in turn, is far better utilized here than she was in the disappointing Dhoom 3, which barely integrated her into the narrative beyond her big music numbers. While Bang Bang! has been rightfully criticized for limiting Harleen to a damsel-in-distress role, Kaif brings her own brand of contagious energy to the film. First, she is more than willing to be the surrogate for the audience during Hrithik’s eye-candy scenes, and she does so with a great deal of charm and humor. Second, even a damsel-in-distress role is more than just screaming, and Kaif is able to shift emotional gears very quickly as Harleen experiences her roller-coaster life after meeting Rajveer. And, like Roshan, Kaif is just fun to watch. Again drawing from a YouTube video that uses footage from the film, consider her performance the “Uff” music sequence. Especially in the first part of the sequence (before it goes nearly abstract) as Kaif begins the song and her new friends guide her back to the bench she gives a quick master class in facial expressions.
I have two regrets about the music sequences: there are actually too few of them, and they are front-loaded in the film. Both follow recent trends in Bollywood films that have made it to Madison. Back in the day, you could expect five to seven songs in a Bollywood film. Bang Bang! had three major numbers, and a fourth song in the closing credits sequence. Two of the three were before the interval, meaning the second half of the film is mostly romance and action. My suspicion is that studios are limiting the number of music sequences in films intended for international audiences; in other words, I blame you.
Bang Bang! is far from a perfect film. While I think we all expect action films, especially international intrigue films, to have sequences in which the protagonists and antagonists seem to have endless resources for chasing and shooting at each other, Bang Bang! does ask the audience to accept a bit too much for the sake of spectacle. When Rajveer and Harleen need to escape an island hideout, both they and their pursuers suddenly have as many watersports vehicles as they could possibly need, including some that can’t possibly exist. Nobody runs to the boats…they’re all just out suddenly out in the ocean with everything they need for a good chase and shootout. Rajveer’s gizmo is particularly amusing; from the trailer I assumed it was water jet pack with an attached hose. But no, it’s a free standing propulsion system that allows Rajveer to leap in and out of the water like a dolphin. Of the two sins here, continuity and plausibility, I’ll give Bang Bang! a pass on plausibility due to genre conventions. But there are a few too many instances in the film where creative continuity gets a bit too creative.
I also have to give a brief mention to the most ridiculous location for Pizza Hut franchise in the world. You can’t help but laugh at the establishment shot for this Pizza Hut, not only because of the none-to-subtle product placement (which is never subtle in Bollywood) but also due to its pure impracticality and absurdity. Needless to say, its location is a set up for a action stunt.
That said, I should make something perfectly clear: my appreciation for Bollywood is neither campy or ironic. With Bang Bang! I’m not taking a bad film and valuing it as kitsch. In addition to the performances, the quality of the filmmaking on the level of the image is very high. While Hollywood (and Indie films) continue to limit the color palette in the name of realism, one needs to go to Bollywood to find the most vibrant, colorful films being made today. Despite its narrative shortcomings, Bang Bang! is a purely pleasurable visual experience, which is what the movies are supposed to be.
As promised, I’ll conclude with some links to detractors of the film. Broadly speaking, there are two negative camps. I’d describe the first camp as intellectuals who are dismissive of Bollywood more generally, with Bang Bang! simply being another example of its stupidity: “Hrithik Roshan’s Bang Bang! is as mindless as playing air guitar,”; “Bang Bang! is empty packaging”; “The only difference between Bang Bang! and Race 2 or Dhoom 3 is that they have different titles.” But in the other camp, fans and followers of Bollywood have been critical of Bang Bang! as well. Filmfare, one of the more important Indian film magazines, had some harsh comments about the film (despite a 3 out of 5 star review):
Not that Bang Bang! isn’t well-made. Its technical craft is top notch. The cinematography, the action choreography and even production values are all Hollywood level. But the direction is near abysmal. The director needs a crash course in the grammar of filmmaking. Why are you wasting crores of rupees on triteness? You only had to emulate, heck simulate the original and you’d have had a winner. It was easier than retweeting Katy Perry. Instead you’ve allowed yourself to make rookie mistakes like inserting conch blow and Indian drum sounds in scenes of dramatic importance. What is this? The costliest Indian soap opera homage ever?
As with many types of films, your evaluation is in part tied to how many examples you’ve seen. I’ve certainly seen enough Bollywood films to know that Commando at the Wisconsin Film Festival this past spring was a dud, but I know that many people, for whom that was their first example, came out of that screening saying that they enjoyed it. I’m open to the possibility that part of my response to Bang Bang! is similarly conditioned by my relative lack of recent examples in comparison to critics in India, who get to (or have to) watch everything. But looking over the two camps of detractors, I generally do not disagree with many of the specific observations made by the latter camp, we just disagree on the relative weight to give those observations in our review. The former camp, who are generally dismissive of Bollywood, would likely write the same negative review regardless of what came up on the screen.
Coming tomorrow (10/6/14): Our Actors of the Week will be Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif.
