Glorious kill

There’s a certain duality about Quentin Tarantino – the idea, and not necessarily the filmmaker himself – that reinforces faith in his work. At least, among those who have followed him as an adroit dissenter building films around thugs in suits, whistling assassins, highway stalkers and other fascinating oddballs.

Tarantino represents an unlikely, engaging mix of sensibilities. He’s an impossibly deft writer, able to beef up the blandest of stereotypes with delicious quirks and attitude; someone who can have you hooked even to what appears to be wordy, drawn-out sequences. As Bill runs The Bride (Kill Bill Vol 2) up to the five-point-palm-exploding-heart-technique, he punctuates the narration with slow blows into his flute. It’s a pause-peppered monotone you don’t want to miss.

"Once upon a time in China, some believe, around the year one double-aught three, head priest of the White Lotus Clan, Pai Mei, was walking down the road, contemplating whatever it is that a man of Pai Mei’s infinite power contemplates; which is another way of saying, Who knows?"

Tarantino, concurrently, channels a free-spirited bludgeoner with a thing for the base, extreme torture and indulgent camp. Though detached as he is from his foul, murderous players – as reflected in the sorry, abrupt ends they largely meet – it’s hard to miss the relish with which he colours these men, as they hit orgasmic highs after head-on car collisions (Death Proof), rent out comatose women to freaks looking for kinks (Kill Bill Vol 1) and quotes Ezekiel before gunning hapless boys down (Pulp Fiction)

This dichotomy – both of instinct and intelligence – makes Tarantino an interesting artist, greater than who he is for ambition and universality. It also helps him connect with an urban viewer grappling with extreme instincts that seem to be in conflict with a moderate self shaped by social manner.

Inglourious Basterds also feeds off this trait. The premise – a band of violent Jews out to hunt down the Nazis in occupied France – is right up the filmmaker’s alley. Led by Lt Aldo Raine (a hammy, yet effective Brad Pitt), the boys clobber and kill through the towns, even as Col Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz in terrific form) tries to close in. Playing out in parallel is the double-life of Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) as she plots to avenge her family, eliminated by the ‘Jew Hunter’ colonel. The Basterds and Shosanna, on their own separate paths, are undercover at the premiere of a propaganda film made by Goebbels. The catch? Hordes of Nazis caught unawares on a happy film night.

The Tarantino essentials – randomness that tantalizingly builds imminent action, the bleakly comical (Goebbels’ eyes well up when the Fuhrer himself lauds his film), absolute detachment from the kill after the act (Raine steps on a dead soldier as he walks to make conversation) – are all there. Strangely, I was hoping for an off-hand reference to the Big Kahuna Burger. Bad idea.

Basterds, however, is short on characters. That’s a downer, considering what Tarantino has done with history – no spoilers here – and it shouldn’t have hurt to probe more into men on the fringe, like Sgt Donny Donowitz a.k.a Bear Jew (Eli Roth, all manic and fired up). This is one of Tarantino’s more organized efforts and its straight structure, at one level, may appear conforming to the tradition of other films made around the Third Reich. It only appears to.

Shosanna’s steely, audacious shot at retribution and the Basterds’ go at the Man himself make a stunning, outrageously imagined climax. As Donowitz fires at screaming, hopelessly cornered men and women, the action shifts to slow-motion. The gunshots are now separated by longer intervals. They are music on a close-up of Roth’s face, that’s at once tense, evil and aroused. Quentin Tarantino’s back. That’s not a bad thing, really.

Actor, again

An hour into Bhramaram, there’s a chilling, unhurried scene that captures the manic edginess of its protagonist. The man (Mohanlal) walks into a bar with a dopey, apologetic grin. He eases out for a drink with his “friend” (Suresh Menon) who’s already downed one or two. He sniffs off the glass and ascertains – with a bit of derision – that it’s whiskey. He asks for rum, two at a go.

The friend, still grappling with the swinging temper that seems to propel this stranger, says something that upsets the man. Drifting to a wise-man drawl, he tries to reason with the friend. There’s no hostility. He just talks. The friend insists. The drinks are on the table. The man swills them down raw, in one shot. Now, he’s a menacing hood who wouldn’t flinch before the kill. In about two minutes, it’s a Mohanlal master class.

Writer-director Blessy’s latest is an engaging experiment with the road-thriller genre. Bhramaram, even with its scraggy pace and modest production values, is a riveting detour that also feeds off some top-class writing. But what really gets it going is Mohanlal. This is the finest at work. The actor sheds the superstar buckram for a character that calls out for all the showy tics and sundry voice tricks that we’ve come to attach with “psychotic” men on screen. Mohanlal, though, is another breed. This is the smashing reinvention of a supremely gifted actor who’s far from done. I'll keep the faith.

New bonding

The burn mark on Camille (a fetching Olga Kurylenko) underlines the change. The world's longest running spy-film franchise, now, comes with a grim real-worldness. Suckers for the old, happy swagger can make do with Sean Connery re-runs. Casino Royale had famously effected the bleak drift for double-o-seven. Quantum of Solace -- the 22nd film instalment featuring Ian Fleming's debonair agent -- takes the mode forward.

James Bond (Daniel Craig) is nursing wounds of betrayal by a woman. That's a sort of first for the super-stolid agent who has his girls and work all sorted out, as smooth as his Martini stir-ons. The heady chases and action set-pieces -- erected on a pan-global sprawl, from Haiti to Siena to Kazan -- work well within the franchise's trademarked template. But it's hard not to pit Craig's bare-knuckle rage against the cocksure poise of Connery. The spy who could kiss his women with all the heart and move on with baffling detachment is, now, someone who forgets the hard way. A killer, bloodied and not done.

The shift in Bond's bearings also, in parts, reflects his new beat. He's on the trail of Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric, flashing moments of edgy evil) who eyes potential in the business of water, in the drylands of Bolivia. Bond has had a rather interesting assortment of antagonists: from metal-mouthed hitmen to egomaniacal media czars. It was, perhaps, also a given that the MI6 agent would have a sham environment crusader like Greene to battle in these days of meltdowns; of the glaciers and otherwise.

Quantum of Solace is, often, a patently snappy Bond vehicle. But what really powers it is the clever, yet intriguing positioning of its protagonist. It's a choice of the maker (Marc Forster from Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland) and his writers (Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade) who sift through the darker half of their lead player, that may put the formula-seeking purist off. But it's a supremely engaging detour that deserves a look-in not blinded by endorsement of the cult, as against the film. The name's still Bond. Only, he's getting real.

Goosebumps

A day off work. Vodka-high. Fist of Fury on the television. This is the real deal. Damn the pretenders.

Singapore and all that

Legislation, combined with persuasion. Take that for a potent, inclusive development model. The city-state of Singapore -- all of 700+ sq km -- offers a distinct look at political savoir-faire for those who care. The development is top-down: The state advertises, legislates and implements. The people fall in line and endorse. Things work.

The state jacks up car prices to get more people on public transport. The state beats its water concerns by recycling water from the sewers and branding it NEWater for potable use. The state lines up massive public housing blocks (where more than 70% of the population lives) in the central district. The state, also, sexes up integrated water management projects by promoting them with a leisure-and-high life feel-good. The state is, also, opening a casino and is calling it an Integrated Resort. There was initial resentment over the casino. That's where the persuasion helps. Things work.

The city sits easy and quiet on its spotless roads. On the flanks, the Young Rich hit the teeming, noisy malls and splurge. You are warned ahead of traffic snarls. You are told how long would it take for you to get where you are getting. The MRT is a cruise. You get change after the cab ride. Life moves like clock-work. Sometimes, things are better when not working. Really.

The brilliant Tan Dun was in concert at The Esplanade, playing his Academy Award-winning score from The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. There was some divine beef, Indonesian style (Garuda Padang, Orchard Road), Guinness and exotic wine (assorted parties), a staggeringly beautiful skyline (view from the Pan Pacific hotel room) and some hurried shopping (Marina Square, Farrer Road and Little India). The best deal? Saravana Bhavan, near Mustafa Centre. A spicy, full meal. Burp. That was contentment.

Ten is a crowd

Christian Fletcher: Remember Hiroshima?
Shingen Narahashi: Remember Pearl Harbour?

As two of the 10 avtars – Kamal Haasan, mightily affected as an American mercenary and Kamal Haasan, with rehearsed gravitas as a Japanese martial art ace – exchange this during the climactic fight in Dasavatharam, it’s hard to miss the point. Haasan is playing to the gallery. He wants you to take note. Fair trade.

But what, truly, tanks Dasavatharam is not the corniness of it all. It’s not the supremely shoddy graphic-work. It’s not Michael Westmore’s laboured, prosthetic faces. No, not even The Bullet That Cures The Cancer. This super-hyped return of the chameleon actor-star is done in by its ambition.

Dasavatharam has an engaging premise that makes for a rollicking road movie. White hitman follows Indian scientist who flees with a deadly virus, in a cross-continent trail. The thread, though, gets thinned out as the actor-writer pursues the blurred and the superfluous, with an apparent nod to the Chaos Theory. In the process, Dasavatharam gets populated with the rest of the avtars, spun in for the all-lead-to-one effect.

RAW sleuth Balram Naidu – perhaps Haasan’s best turn here – has terrific possibilities as a stand-alone protagonist. There are also moments that carry the stamp of a writer who hasn't quite lost it yet. These are still parts of an underwhelming whole. Some of the avtars look straight out of a badly done school pantomime, ill-propped and cramped for movement. The CGI boys go berserk with their toys, belting out practically anything – from butterfly wing-flaps to the Tsunami – with a certain B-movie tardiness that you don't attach to the costliest (check) film made in the country. And Himesh Reshammiya has, probably, scored his last for a film down south.

But as always with a Kamal Haasan film, the fun is on the ringside. While many fans have been left shocked at this assault, the more trusted ones are out there, diligently decoding the method behind this madness. Last heard, the jury is still out on if Vincent Poovarahan – an interestingly etched Dalit leader – is a throwback to the well, varaha avtar. And if the kurma avtar has a parallel in the vaishnavite priest Rangaraja Nambi, who's left bound to his deity in the depths of the ocean. Loaded questions, really. But after an outrageously indulgent lead-man trip, do you care enough to dig deep?

Jodhaa Akbar

Understatement is not what you look for in an epic romance that’s set in a period identified with pomp. Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodhaa Akbar – despite its spectacular premise and ethereal-looking actors – has its neat share of hearty, everyday blips.

Emperor Akbar (Roshan) is stopped before his feast, to be told by Princess Jodhaa (Rai) that the food is low on salt. After his first look at the demure princess, the Emperor strolls down the palace corridor like a lost teenager, as curtains swirl to A R Rahman’s rapturous score. Jodhaa and Akbar cross swords in a duel that would decide if the Princess of Amer would return to her shauhar’s palace that she had left after a fight.

Gowariker’s detailing works fine in these little touches. What really fails Jodhaa Akbar is its compliance to convention. And it’s not just the classical three-and-a-half-hours run. It’s the clunky writing, underwhelming battle sequences (watch out for those cannon balls and deadpan soldiers) and an inefficacy in tapping into the minds of its protagonists, who are already out there on the pages of history.

The story of the feisty Rajput Princess and her politically arranged marriage to the Mughal Emperor, as conceived in the screenplay (Gowariker and Haider Ali) is not quite a story that had to be told again. Not with this grandstand splendour, at least. The set-piece battles and songs are shot like fancy pageants – the rousing Azeem-o-Shahenshah has giant drums and a crowd of minions genuflecting to the all-conquering Emperor – but Gowariker gets it wonderfully right with Rahman’s terrific Khwaja mere khwaja.

Roshan, the stray affected bits notwithstanding, is in top form. Rai puts in a fairly restrained turn as well. But it’s the fringe players who get a better deal from the writing. Particularly engaging is Maham Anga, the Emperor’s overbearing badi ammi (played with spunk by Ila Arun) and Sujamal (Sood), the failed, tragic prince.

Jodhaa Akbar is mounted on the epic romance staples. While the love story, by itself, is engaging, it doesn’t come with the perspective that could have made this a worthier effort. Despite the all-out sincerity of the lead actors, their presence primarily works as a smart product placement tool for the eyeballs. Precisely why the camera closely freezes on a sweaty, topless Roshan, almost calling out for the gasps.