Dum Maaro Dum (2011)

Genre: Crime/Drama/Romance/Thriller/Mystery

Starring: Abhishek Bachchan, Bipasha Basu, Prateik Babbar, Rana Daggubati, Aditya Pancholi, Govind Namdeo, Muzammil S. Qureshi

Goa, India, the land of sun and sand, bikinis and babes, hippies and druggies and crime and murder. People from around the world come here to party and get high, but the party is just about to get disrupted by one big party-pooper. Lorsa Biscuta (Pancholi) is the drug lord of Goa. ACP Vishnu Kamath (Bachchan) is a corrupt cop in the anti-narcotics division. One day when his family dies in a car accident due to a drug-infused driver, his life changes forever and he swears to clean the streets of Goa. Laurence Edwardo Gomes aka Lorry (Babbar) is the average Goan youth who aspires to go to USA to study, along with his girlfriend. His dreams, however, come crashing down when his financial aid does not get approved but his girlfriends' does who has to leave him to pursue her academic career. A local drug peddler hears about Lorry's sob story and agrees to pay off his fees provided he carry some cocaine with him to the US. In an act of desperation, Lorry agrees much to his later regret. Meanwhile, ACP Kamath is cracking a whip on the party scene and Biscuta stashes his dope with a mysterious Michael Barbossa. In each part of Goa he is known by a different name. Nobody knows him, nobody has seen him and Kamath is out to search for him. Joki (Daggubati) is Lorry's well-wisher who is trying to prevent him from doing what he is about to do. His ex-girlfriend Zoe (Basu) went through the entire phase that Lorry is about to go through now and he doesn't want to lose another friend. The stories eventually merge to bring out a possibly predictable outcome. If you actually put your head to it its not hard for some people to figure the mystery out. Rohan Sippy's movies were always something and this movie too aspires to be different. Abhishek Bachchan and Prateik Babbar put together a fabulous performance, although Bachchan always seemed over-aggressive and too enthusiastic, it suited the role he was trying to play. The only flaw in the otherwise decent movie was the extended run-time. Bollywood is notorious for stretched movies and this one is no different. Possibly if the plot developed slightly faster with a more twisted climax, the movie would have been far more interesting. Great watch with some nice foot-tapping numbers.

Thumbs up: Good performances, nice plot

Thumbs down: A bit stretched

Rating: 7.8/10

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Bollywood, Crime, Drama, Good Movies, Mystery, Romance, Thriller,

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Fast Five (2011)

Genre: Action/Crime

Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, Matt Schluze, Gal Gadot, Dwayne Johnson, Elsa Pataky, Joaquim de Almeida

The Fast and Furious saga started of as movie with adrenaline rushing racing, crazy cars and hot babes. The past few movies (including this one) have, sadly, shifted their focus and cars have been quickly replaced by crime. Dominic Toretto (Diesel) is sentenced to prison for his crime in the previous movie but escapes shortly with the help of Brian O'Conner (Walker) and his sister Mia (Brewster). Before the police can get to them, the trio drive their way down all the way to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and meet up with Dominic's old accomplice Vince (Schulze). Reyes (Almeida) is Rio's biggest crime lord and Mia, Brian, Dom and Vince do a job with Reyes and his men. The job goes wrong and they attract enough heat to get FBI Agent Hobbs (Johnson) to come all the way down to Rio and sort business out. Dom wants to do one last job before they quit the business forever, one job where they take Reyes down for good. The movie did have some really amazing action and hugely destructive action sequences, yet the plot did not live up to the brands reputation. Whatever cars and racing was there, it seemed to be forced rather than blend with the movies plot. Two masterminds assembling a team for one big robbery, ever heard of Oceans Eleven? Amongst other faults, the attribute for which each team member was selected by Dom and Brian did not reflect in the movie. It is entertaining, no doubt, but not the Fast and Furious kind of entertainment. Felt more like a heist movie on steroids.

Thumbs up: Great mind-bogging action

Thumbs down: No racing, not too much of cars

Rating: 6.2/10

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Action, Average Movies, Crime,

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Thank You (2011)

Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance

Starring: Akshay Kumar,Sonam Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Suniel Shetty, Irrfan Khan, Celina Jaitley, Rimi Sen

The million dollar question, what is Bollywoods one and only formula to create a comedy movie? Answer; Akshay Kumar + a foreign location + tons of skimpy clad woman + husband-wife complications. Been there, seen it and done that. Raj (Deol), Yogi (Shetty) and Vikram (Khan) are three friends who do business together and who regularly cheat on their wives and have loads of other mistresses. To avoid getting caught, they watch out for each other and have a ball of a time. Raj's wife Sanjana (Kapoor) loves her husband to no end and refuses to agree upon the fact that he might be cheating on her. Yogi and Vikrams' wives, Maya (Jaitley) and Shivani (Sen) introduce her to detective Kishan (Kumar) who specialises in conducting sting operations against cheating husbands/wives. Meanwhile, Raj, Vikram and Yogi suspect that there is someone trying to bring out their secret to their wives and hence they too hire Kishan to find out who is uncovering their secrets. The usual confusion, mix-up and stupidity follows which gives you a week-long hangover. The plot is utterly ridiculous and the melodrama and unwanted craziness is just too much to digest. My condolences to everyone who had to bear the brunt of this movie and my sincere apologies for not posting this review early enough.

Thumbs up: Hmm, probably the tons of bikini-clad woman will win this one

Thumbs down: Everything, literally

Rating: 4.2/10

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Bollywood, Comedy, Drama, Pathetic Movies, Romance,

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Source Code (2011)

Genre: Science-fiction/Action/Drama/Romance

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaall, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright

Yep, another unbelievable American science-fiction movie. Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) is a US Army soldier who has been assigned in a new research project undertaken by the government. The device, developed by Dr. Rutledge (Wright), is capable of extracting the memory of a dead person limited to the last 8 minutes before death. A passenger train in Chicago was bombed and many more such attacks are to follow. Colter Stevens is asked to assume the identity of a passenger on the train whose memory has been extracted. He has 8 minutes to go back in time and assume the identity of the person and find the bomber, if the 8 minutes run out, he is reset back in the same scenario over and over again until his mission is completed, however, each reset means that the bomber in reality is slowly approaching his next target and Colter has very little time. He meets Christina (Monoghan) on the train who is an associate of the man whose identity he has assumed and falls in love with her. Apart from just deactivating the bomb, he wants to save the lives of every other person on the train, including Christina. In order to understand the format of the movie in more simpler terms, simply imagine yourself playing a PC game where each unsuccessful mission makes you reset the game and you try a different tactic. The movie gets boring with the same scenarios occurring over and over again with a very weak climax. The romance bit too didn't help too much but just made it a bigger bore. 

Thumbs up: Nothing in particular

Thumbs down: Boring plot and story

Rating: 6.0/10

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Action, Average Movies, Crime, Romance, Science-fiction,

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Balls Out: Gary the Tennis Coach (2009)

Genre: Comedy/Drama/Sports

Starring: Sean William Scott, Randy Quaid, Brando Eaton, Emilee Wallace, A.D. Miles

Most sex-comedies try to make a living out of the same limited objectives; show some stupidity along with unwanted nudity and this movie is no different. Gary Houseman (Scott) used to love the game of tennis but he felt that tennis never really loved him back and hence swore to give up the sport. After a failed tennis career, he became a high school janitor where he once again rubbed shoulders with his estranged sport which sparked his love once more. The tennis team was failing and wasn't getting anywhere and the tennis coach, Lew Tuttle (Quaid) appointed Gary to be the assistant coach after seeing his skills. With the subsequent death of Coach Tuttle, faculty member Steve Pimble (Miles) volunteered to head the tennis team although he knew nothing about the game. Gary and Steve now have the astronomical task on their heads to coach the tennis team and make them win the state champions, just as Coach Tuttle had set out to do. The sad part about the movie is that it had the enormous scope of being fun, but stupid jokes, scenes that don't contribute to the plot and tacky editing made sure that your fun time turns out to be not-so-fun. Sean William Scott and his acting was probably the only saving grace in the movie, had it been anyone else it would have been just worse. An average movie and don't expect fireworks.

Thumbs up: Sean William Scott

Thumbs down: Bad plot execution

Rating: 5.4/10

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Average Movies, Comedy, Drama, Sex Comedy, Sports,

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Limitless (2011)

Genre: Science-fiction/Crime/Drama

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Abbie Cornish, Andrew Howard

Another druggie movie? Maybe, maybe not. Eddie Morra (Cooper) is a low-life, aspiring writer who lacks inspiration and words to fulfill his book contract. His girlfriend Lindy (Cornish) dumps him because he cant support himself and his life is not going where he wants it to go. He meets his ex-girlfriends brother on the streets one day who used to be a drug peddler and now claims to be a consultant for a pharmaceutical company. He shows him a new drug called NZT which is due to be made legal in the market that enhances the brains efficiency and improves the persons working capacity. Eddie suddenly receives a shower of enlightenment and is able to write a book in four days and accomplish multiple tasks he couldn't do earlier. He realises that book writing is not going to make him filthy rich so he starts trading on the stock market and quickly gets employed in a stock broking company. He develops an algorithm which makes him determine which way the stock market is going and ends up making millions of dollars. Enter Carl Van Loon (De Niro) a business tycoon who wants to use Eddie's knowledge in helping him improve takeover deals and make him more money. Like any other drug, NZT too has its side-effects whose knowledge and consequences Eddie is unaware of. To answer the very question, yes this is just another drug movie with nothing real to offer. The only good part about the movie is the unique twists in the storyline. Even these twists aren't all that great but somehow manage to improve the movies overall impact and make it more interesting. A decent watch which could have been better.

Thumbs up: Decent improvements to the storyline

Thumbs down: Another run-of-the-mill drug movie

Rating: 6.2/10

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Average Movies, Crime, Drama, Science-fiction,

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