Director: Ram
Gopal Varma
Genre: Action,
Adventure, Comedy
The next movie in
our list was supposed to be Dis - en historie om kjærlighet (in
English: A Story About Love) (1995), a Norweigen movie which has the
strangest first 2 line summary I’ve ever seen on IMDb: ‘Two young
people stand on a street corner in a run-down part of New York,
kissing. Despite the lawlessness of the district they are left
unmolested’. Wow, that really is a rough part of New York in which
a couple having a quick smooch, can result in that level of abuse!
Unfortunately it
appears this movie was not on general release in the UK and was not
readily available online. Therefore we were about to go back to our subs bench in
which we have to replace a movie we can not find, with 2 bad movies
as punishment, when Wes had a breakthrough….
Back at #34 we
were supposed to watch the Indian movie, Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag
(2007), but we could only find the Hindi version.
As neither of us speak Hindi, (after a couple of sherbets we can
barely speak English!), we had to drop the movie and take on 2 others
as punishment. Removed from our list, I thought no more about the
movie until Wes managed to find some English subtitles.
Therefore it
turned out we could watch this movie after all and we just needed an
opportunity to get it back onto our list. With the A Story About
Love proving as hard to get hold off as a greased up baboon, we
decided now was a good time to put Aag back onto our list……
Aag is only the
second Indian movie I have ever seen, the first being Sura, (2010),
which also appeared on our list, (see review here). I actually liked
Sura and ended that blog by saying if the opportunity arose, I would
try to watch another film from India. But the issue I had with Sura
is the length of the movie, which my concentration and bladder
struggled to cope with. I was a bit annoyed because the story could
have been told in 30mins and I felt like my time was being wasted.
So how would Aag
compare to my first experience of Indian cinema? It was time to find
out…..
Smug bastard
Heerendra (Heero) Dhaan, (Ajay Devgan) and Silas from Heroes
lookalike winner Raj Ranade, (Prashant Raj Sachdev) are former
bodyguards who are forced to find alternative employment, when their
politician employee is jailed for claiming expenses for a duck
castle, (I may have made some of that up!).
They hook up with
a man with an unbelievably high pitched voice called Rambhabhai,
(Rajpal Yadav), who manages to get them work with local gangster,
Shambhu. Things don’t get off to a great start when they
are arrested by Inspector Narsimha, (Mohan Lal), almost immediately and
are asked to betray their new boss and to help Narismha arrest him.
As men who do not
let their friends down and with a new sense of loyalty to Shambhu,
they do the right thing and promptly stitch Shambhu up like a kipper.
Narsimha returns the favour by arresting Heero and Raj and the pair
end up in jail!
Karma promptly
bites the Inspector on the butt as evil sod, Babban Singh, (Amitabh
Bachchan), kills his wife, and son, Subbu, (J.D. Chakravarthi) and then
makes it tricky for him to play the piano again by cutting his hand
off. Narismha is a bit miffed by all this and when Heero and Raj are
released, he asks them once again for a favour and to hunt down and
kill Babban.
Having memories
like goldfish, Heero and Raj inexplicably agree
to help!
They base
themselves in a town called Kaliganj and begin the fight with Babban.
In fact they manage to capture him and throw him in the slammer
within the blink of an eye. Was that the end of the movie?, I hear
you ask? Unfortunately no as some crocked cops help him to escape
and we have to endure another 2 hours.
Babban seeks his
revenge by kidnapping Heero’s love interest, Ghungroo, (Priyanka
Kothari) and threatening to kill the townsfolk unless they give up
Heero and Raj.
Will the good
citizens of Kaliganj rat on Heero and Raj? Can they save Ghungroo?
Can someone please nudge me to make sure I’m still awake?
Seriously, it
took a lot of caffeine and will power to get through this one!
Aag is based on
the movie Sholay, (1975), which unfortunately I have not seen, (and
clocking in at 4 hours, it’s unlikely I’ll ever see!). Judging
by the plotline of Sholay which I read online, Aag is not just based
on Sholay, it is a carbon copy and actually Varma was fined $15k for
essentially stealing the movie idea, replicating the storyline and
then spitting on the original.
However, Varma
forgot to steal any action, excitement or drama from Sholay, (judging
by the reviews, Sholay is a cracking movie, Aag is not). What we
ended up with was an incredibly dull overly long movie. So what went
wrong?
Well let’s
start with the positives. There is a fantastic display of moustaches
on offer. All shapes and sizes are available, nice thick busy ones,
thin but effective ones and my personal favourite, full on ginger
mutton chops with a peak cap combo. Very nice indeed!
And that is the
only good thing I have to say about this movie.
The main problem
with this movie is that the 2 main characters, Heero and Raj, are not
likeable in any way shape or form. The reason why I managed to get
through Sura is because he is actually a nice character who you warm
to and who you want to win in the end. Heero and Raj are just
arrogant, grumpy and dull and have no appeal whatsoever.
Heero’s
attempts to woo Ghungroo is a good example of his brashness. It
starts off by him telling Ghungroo, (who is a Rickshaw driver), that
women shouldn’t be allowed to drive Rickshaw’s and that it’s a
man’s job, (Emmeline Pankhurst, he is not). At a
festival party he reverts to calling her names and wishing he could
kill her to try to win her heart. But most disturbing is when he is
teaching her to fire a gun, in which he grabs her whilst she’s
aiming, pulls himself onto her, rubs himself on her like a dog on
heat and proceeds to try to lick and bite her neck off.
At best, he looks
like a clumsy out of date character, at worse it could come across as
assault.
Raj seems to
serve no other purpose that to grind 2 metal balls together
throughout the movie, (judging by the high voice, I suspect they were
Rambhabhai’s) and looking as if someone has just farted in
his soup.
Babban is also a
dull character. He is supposed to be this feared ganglord who
murders, threatens and intimidates, but just walks around looking
like he needs a shave and has worn too much eye liner. His main form
of intimidation seems to be breathing out sharply to which his
‘victims’ just look a bit disgusted, rather than frightened.
Feared ganglord?
Babban is more like a tramp with halitosis.
The songs in this
movie ire me, and it’s not because I hate musicals. In Sura, the
songs kind of kept the plot going and were usually about Sura and
what a great guy he was. They were quite entertaining, however in
Aag, they just seem to be about how smug and arrogant Heero and Raj
are, (we can see that, we don’t need a song) and just seem to be
used for filler.
And that’s the
overall problem, there is an awful lot of filler in this movie and at
3 hours long, it could have so easily have been told in 30mins.
This is similar
to my experience with Sura, but Sura had a charm to it that made me
forgive it’s lengthy storytelling. Aag does not have this and you
really notice the 3 hours creeping by, like a lengthy root canal
whilst watching Birds of a Feather.
So how was my
second experience with Indian cinema? Unfortunately nowhere near as
good as my first!
The novelty had
worn off, I knew the format and so the story had to be interesting;
it wasn’t. The characters had to be endearing; they weren’t. It
had to draw me in; it didn’t.
If you do find
yourself with 4 hours spare, then check out Sholay instead as judging
by the general consensus in the reviews, this is a good movie. Do
not be tempted to save yourself an hour and attempt to watch this
pale imitation, you will be disappointed.
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