REVIEW: DANGEROUS ISHHQ

It's ishq. And it's so dangerous it needs a second h. 

It's a little tough to get a bead on Dangerous Ishhq while watching it. Cinematically, it's slickly put together, and while its narrative flies around all over the place laughing its ass off at anyone trying to make rational sense of things it does so agreeably and makes a lot more linear sense afterward (an “okay, we know this was nuts, but this is how we got to this ridonkulous point” montage at the climax helps a lot) than one ever would have dreamed twenty minutes earlier. This is why, even though it has moments and indeed whole sections of being a very bad movie, Dangerous Ishhq ends up being a perfectly acceptable, utterly shameless entertainment by the time the credits roll.

Karisma Kapoor (of the Kapoors), in her comeback role after several years away from movies, stars as highly successful model Sanjana, whose romance with industrialist's son Rohan (Rajneesh Duggal) is not only highly photogenic but very much the real deal. After a very whispery, gauzy bit of romantic business, dudes in masks break into Rohan's beach house with guns and kidnap him; they throw Sanjana against a wall and she cracks her head, falling unconscious.

When she wakes up in the hospital, Sanjana begins having what appear to be vivid hallucinations. On the advice of her friend Nettu (Diyya Dutta), Sanjana goes to a shrink, who tells her nope, it ain't hallucinations . . . SHE'S SEEING THINGS FROM PAST LIVES! When I say “Re,” you say “Incar-fucking-nation,” y'all. Look, you have to understand, this may read like I'm making fun, or like I'm being culturally patronizing, but I swear this comes from a wholly innocent, good place: whenever an Indian movie features reincarnation as a plot point, I throw my fists in the air like the Knicks just scored the winning basket in the NBA Finals. I fucking love reincarnation movies. I liked the reincarnation twist in Om Shanti Om even more than I liked the joke about Abhishek not even being in Dhoom 5, and that was a good joke. (Ed. Note: for non-Bollywood initiates, even though Abhishek Bachchan is the cop good guy in the Dhoom movies, he was way overshadowed by antiheroes John Abraham and Hrithik Roshan, respectively, in the first two, and in the forthcoming Dhoom 3, the antihero “bad” guy is going to be played by Aamir Khan, aka the one of the three Khans who's so awesome no one ever snarks at him like SRK and Sallu-bhai. Oh, also, Hrithik Roshan got to tongue-kiss Abhishek's real-life wife in the second movie, and it was a wicked hawt kiss too. There, aren't jokes better when you explain them?)

That parenthetical actually serves a critical point in discussing Dangerous Ishhq: the movie goes off on tangents just like that one, with little as apparently to do with the movie at large as that bit of snickering at Abhishek Bachchan has apparently to do with this review. But, just like Abhishek was briefly engaged to Karisma Kapoor—fuck yeah, interconnectedness of all things—all these reincarnation shenanigans actually have a bearing on the kidnapping case in the present day. When Sanjana brings her incarnation-derived insights in the case to lead detective ACP Singh (Jimmy Shergill, who owns) at first he's like “yeah, right” but he tries out a bit of intel that Sanjana derived poetically from her past-life regression and finds out it's real, he's like, huh, fancy that.

Completely aside from not wanting to spoil the plot, I'll stop thereabouts because if I told you what happens in the rest of the movie, you wouldn't believe it. Suffice to say, Karisma Kapoor gets to wear a lot of cool clothes, Jimmy Shergill fucks shit up left and right, and while nothing that happens makes a lick of sense, an audience able to find something sturdy enough to suspend their disbelief with should have an okay time. It's a nice-looking picture with pretty actors and a couple not-half-bad songs.

One thing that can't be alibi-ed away, though, is Karisma Kapoor's performance. It's not that she's bad for the whole picture, but her performance is all over the place, and she seems like she's asleep for most of the present-day stuff. It doesn't help that the character is written as kind of a dingbat, but Lolo's huge unblinking, expressionless eyes don't convey a ton. I feel bad, because she's one of those actors you want to be good, but she ain't too great with nuance. The big emotional stuff, she's better at; this is why, as shit gets crazier and crazier in the second half her performance improves a bit, and she has a lot of supporting help. Like Jimmy Shergill. Holy shit that guy rocks.

So, yeah, Dangerous Ishhq: the extra “h” in “ishq” is for “Hwhat the fuck?” but mostly in a good way. No idea how it'll play with mass audiences, but it'd be nice for Karisma Kapoor to have a hit, just because.

A DISPATCH FROM OUR ANDHRA PRADESH OFFICE

So, yeah, basic run-of-the-mill Telugu love story . . . then . . . WHAT THE SWEET LIVING FUCK? I actually want to see this without subtitles when it comes out, just because I don't want the experience to be sullied by actually knowing what's going on. (Oh, and this has no apparent connection to the Richard Kiel MST3K classic Eegah, as far as I can tell; maybe the thing with the bug is a metaphorical inversion of Richard Kiel's height or something.)

FROM THE HEART: DIL SE

In order to be a full-fledged, card-carrying movie star, you need to have at least one picture that, no matter who you show it to, even someone who doesn't even like you, there's only one possible response: “That was fucking great.” John Wayne had Red River, The Searchers, Stagecoach etc etc to point to when the “Hey, you're a drunk right-wing shithead and you're old” clamor got too loud. Elizabeth Taylor, even when she was threatening to become more famous for her multiple marriages than her work, could sit people down and be like “Watch National Velvet, A Place In The Sun, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and pour yourself a Shut The Fuck Up on the rocks.” Hell, even Keanu has the first Matrix. And yes, there's a lot of room on the movie star spectrum between the first two examples and the third, but that's the thing, no matter how annoying you are, no matter how dim the memories of your previous successes are, no matter how stupid the tabloid stories you get caught up in, if you have that one unassailable classic in your repertoire, you get to be a movie star. So it is with Shahrukh Khan and Dil Se.

Now, it's not even really like Shahrukh is in that bad shape. He's still the king. Ra.One made money, Don 2 made money and featured a surprising amount of legit, not-graded-on-a-curve ownage. But dumb shit like throwing a hissy fit and smacking Shirish Kunder around for no apparent reason other than Shirish Kunder being a sarcastic wiseass (Ed. Note: I don't mean that in a bad way at all; much love and respect for Shirish Kunder) can lead to a bit of SRK fatigue—at best—and can retroactively color one's opinion of his entire career at worst. It doesn't help that even in his good movies he has bits of schtick that he falls back on that can be almost catastrophically irritating (put it this way, if I never see the guy play a dork or a hick again I will not die feeling a sense of loss) even if five minutes later he saves the day by being awesome again. Can the king stay the king without being start-to-finish awesome in at least one movie? No. How awesome does a movie star's best role have to be to completely nullify all the shaky and inconsistent others? Very. With that in mind, I present you with this:



That right there is what this whole cinema shit is about. Shouts, of course, to A.R. Rahman and Gulzar, who wrote the awesome song, Malaika Arora for existing, Farah Khan for the choreography, and everyone else involved in the creation of that six and a half minutes of joy, because that is hands down one of the most exuberant and sublime sequences ever captured on film. And that's how the movie starts. That thing at the beginning, with Shahrukh in the rain, is the first scene of the movie, right after he meets the girl in the train station and immediately falls head over heels in love with her.

The rest of the movie maintains that sense of emotional size. Set in the buildup to the 50th anniversary of Indian independence, the story concerns Shahrukh—a radio reporter—working on a story about the precarious, and indeed fractured, state of the union, with some states on the brink of openly opposing New Delhi with violence. His having fallen in love with the mysterious Manisha Koirala, and her keeping him at at least arm's length, becomes an increasing distraction to his work. Even after his family arranges for him to marry Preity Zinta, he can't get Manisha out of his head and heart. Even after he finds out that Manisha is working with a terrorist organization planning to assassinate the President.

It's one thing to have a big, booming romantic plot, another to set that story in the context of national affairs and politics, but it's something else entirely to do it so well. Director Mani Ratnam does a number of things spectacularly well here: the number and richness of the levels in the love story, portraying his characters as less good guys and bad guys than people who do good and/or bad things for believable human reasons, and keeping a long movie from feeling excessively long. Not to be underestimated among his accomplishments here is getting arguably the finest performance of his career out of Shahrukh Khan.

That's the thing about this movie. SRK is so fucking good in it. All his considerable charm and massive charisma are on display here. But more impressive is the seemingly unaffected humanity, the increasing desperation and self-destructiveness of his love for Manisha Koirala, and the way that even as it increasingly leads him to abandon his work, family, and even risk his life itself for the sake of that all-consuming love, is that he remains emotionally affecting. At no point are we ever sitting there going, “Fuck's sake, SRK, let it go.” Rather, we're like, “Oh, man, poor guy . . .” This even as Preity Zinta is sitting there in an arranged marriage to some dude who's clearly in love with someone else; a lesser movie would have the audience siding with either SRK or Preity depending on one's personal loyalties or the skill of the movie's execution, but in Dil Se both of them have the audience on their side at the same time. (And whoa boy is the SRK/Preity relationship fascinating in this. They both love someone else despite having to be married to each other, but there's a genuine fondness there that feels palpably real.)

I won't spoil the ending for anyone who's yet to see it, even though the only DVD currently available is this fucktastically terrible transfer with slightly Alvin and the Chipmunksed sound that's all stretched out and fucked up on a 16:9 TV. Watching Dil Se is an almost Zen challenge on this DVD, and lemme tell ya: if this movie was this fucking good when I had to squint to read the subtitles and mentally slow down all the music in my head by about 12%, I can only imagine what it'd be like with a good 35mm print and good speakers. Holy shit.

But back to SRK for a second. He gets to be the king, he gets to pop up in people's corn flakes in animatronic miniature form hectoring them to go see Ra.One, he can be as pissy in the tabloids for as long as he wants, but he'll always be a movie star if only for Dil Se. It says something that among all the Indian film fans in my acquaintance, across all lines of taste, genre preferences, anti-SRK, pro-SRK, every last one of them is like, “Dil Se? Good fuckin' movie.” Just like Ed Lauter in True Romance talking about Comin' Home In a Body Bag. And all true cineastes know, that “good fuckin' movie” is the highest honor cinema can achieve.

Dude, just watch this one more time:



The advocate rests.

THE FIRST PERSON TO MENTION WHITNEY HOUSTON SHALL BE DISHOOMED TO DEATH BY SALMAN KHAN: BODYGUARD

I had the great pleasure of getting to see Salman Khan's latest, Bodyguard, for free last night. Things like getting to see movies before their release, and not having to pay, are things that no one should ever get jaded about. And neither is Salman Khan, the guy's just fucking wonderful, one of the greatest movie stars in the world in all the right ways. If one were to break down the Three Khans really simplistically from an outsider's perspective (Ed. Note: What? Why are you giving me that look?): Shahrukh is the ambitious, Hollywood-y one who makes shitloads of money, Aamir is the one everyone can look at and be like “okay, that guy is a really fucking good actor” (but who also, it must be noted, makes shitloads of money), and Salman is the one who does stuff like “Every year, I'm going to time my big movie so it comes out right at the end of Ramadan when everyone's in a good mood.” And thus Salman is the one everyone thinks of as their homie, Sallu-bhai, standup guy, the kinda dude who's always got your back in a fight—and who will own the holy fuck out of anyone who steps to you—but who when you get right down to it is a total sweetheart.

In that regard, Bodyguard is very much a Salman Khan picture. In it, he plays ace bodyguard Lovely Singh, “the one man who can make the opposition pee its pants” (an apt descriptor of Salman Khan in ownage mode if there ever was one) who is hired by rich guy Raj Babbar to keep his daughter (Kareena Kapoor) safe from some baddies in the white slavery trade who wish her harm. Only problem is, Kareena and her equally lovely friend Hazel Keech—

Hazel (Left), Kareena (Right)

—are self-conscious about the other kids at their high school (Ed. Note: yes, Kareena's 30 and Hazel's 24 and they both look 24, just shush) making fun of them for having this square-ass dude in a suit following them around. So Kareena starts prank-calling him and lo and behold after a while she falls in love with him, only he's in love with who he thinks is someone else.

The romantic plot of Bodyguard, which at first appears to be the subplot but then becomes the main plot—forget it, Jake, it's Bollywood—is a little frustrating, not because it's based on cultural assumption that don't translate (those I can roll with a little easier, actually) but because it's based on my least favorite rom-com trope ever: the plot that hinges entirely on the lovers lying to each other. That shit drives me up the fuckin wall. Fortunately the annoying part of the whole business—when Kareena and Hazel are making Salman look ridiculous—is mainly confined to the first half of the picture. After the interval, the tone shifts more from stupid rom-com screwball bullshit to a more sighing romantic tragedy thing where Kareena starts to see the consequences of lying to her one true love, which is easier to take, though still it's more of a relief when the romantic plot resolves in the way it should (Spoiler alert for anyone who just had a lobotomy: Salman and Kareena get together at the end of the picture) than it is a big romantic tear-jerker thing, which it easily could have been with their individual and combined star power.

By far the most entertaining parts of Bodyguard are the (sadly few and far between) action sequences. Herein we see one of the world's foremost purveyors of ownage kicking ass on a mind-bending, ripping up speeding tickets from the cops enforcing the laws of physics, thoroughly fucking rad fashion. The first one (and the first of ten trillion times we hear Salman's goofy-ass ringtone, a joke that somehow never gets old), when his boss calls him up and sends him to go own some bad guys in a warehouse who are holding some girls hostage in a cargo container, Salman swoops out of the train he's riding on and jumps on top of one going the opposite direction and rides to the scene of the crime on top of the train, just because there isn't enough room inside the train for his balls, I suppose (kinda reminds me of the climax of Wanted when Salman jumped out of the car and did an acrobatic 180 degree mid-air kick before walking up a staircase just because). Once at the fight, Salman proceeds to unleash ownage on a scale rarely glimpsed by mortals; director Siddique does a nice job of capturing the near supernatural badassery with just the right degree of perspective of “okay, this shit isn't possible, but yo, this is a Salman Khan movie, this is how he do.”
(Ed. Note: translation approximate)

The other major ownage sequence in Bodyguard comes right before the lengthy denouement, when Salman has to rescue Kareena from the baddies. This one is really something else:

1—The baddies chase Kareena with a fucking remote-control helicopter that despite moving very quickly never catches up with her even though she does not, to be kind, run terribly fast.

2—Salman makes said helicopter explode into a cute little fireball by throwing something at it; save your “but RC helicopters are electric and don't have any gasoline to turn into a fireball” protestations, this isn't the movie for them.

3—I'm probably missing some intervening step, but the rest of the fight takes place in some ancient ruin filled shin-deep with water, and Salman has to fight the baddies blind.

4—That entire sequence is fucking dope.

5—The way Salman's shirt comes off in this one is the funniest/most awesome thing I've ever seen. To put this moment into perspective, it was so awesome that a 50ish Indian woman in traditional formal garb high-fived me.

6—Salman owns the final baddie by punching him about ten feet through the air and impaling him on the wall, a fitting climax to an excellent sequence.

Once the ownage subplot is done with (not gonna lie, the ownage plot ending up being the subplot was a bit of a buzzkill) we're back to the denouement, in which an entire movie's worth of romantic plot is related in about twenty minutes that's way more interesting than anything that's come before; it's unfortunate that it has to be rushed, as I would far rather have watched a whole movie that was a love triangle between Salman, Kareena, and Hazell than just the last twenty minutes' worth.

Still, griping about tonal inconsistency is retarded with Bollywood movies, as that's what the entire structural model is built on over there, and even griping about plot lumpiness within that model is kind of beside the point here because there's a lot to like in Bodyguard. Salman carries this joint through a whoooooooole lotta slow parts just by being awesome, and Kareena is delightful when the script doesn't insist that she be an annoying, bratty teenager (it's not the cognitive dissonance involved with her so clearly not being a teenager, either, it's the script making her look bad). And yes, I am totally under the spell of Hazel Keech and her enchanting glasses, even though it's impossible to tell whether she can actually act, stuck in the “friend” role and given nothing to do until that one scene right at the end when the love triangle is established, though she does a perfectly fine job at that.

And the music is terrific. The theme song is in Jalwa territory in terms of catchiness, with a whistled hook that's just fuckin sick. Also, in a cameo as herself, the luminously lovely Katrina Kaif shows up during said song, leading into a funny bit where Salman, as her bodyguard, kicks a bunch of dude's asses who get too close to her, leading to the revelation that Salman's boss, as a man of taste, has a bit of a crush on her. As one does.

Overall, Bodyguard is recommended primarily for audiences for whom the mere presence of Salman Khan counterbalances any weaknesses a movie might have. I fall squarely within that demographic, and so need to clarify that all my bitching about the way the romantic plot is structured should not in any way be interpreted as my not having enjoyed the movie. Like all Salman Khan movies, and like the man himself, Bodyguard totally fucking means it. Would I prefer a little more action in his next outing? Sure, but the action in Bodyguard is sufficiently dope that quality makes up for quantity. It's not Bollywood for beginners, but it's a deeply satisfying intermediate course. Goddamn Salman Khan is awesome.