Originality is a rare concept in Bollywood. Every movie that the world’s largest film industry churns out has usually predictive, borrowed and an oft-repeated script; yet once in a while, like a whiff of a fresh air, releases a movie that grips the core of one’s imagination. The latest Indian movie ‘Kaminey’ (Rascals) by Vishal Bhardwaj is one such movie. So fastened your seat belts, get ready for the wild ride and enjoy the two hours of edge-of- the-seat entertainment.
‘Kaminey’ is about twin brothers, Charlie and Guddu [Shahid Kapur] (no, they were not separated in the village fair). Three years ago the two brother who have nothing in common set on different paths and vow not to see each other again but life put them face to face in an unexpected turn of events.
Charlie, who lisps as he pronounces ‘S’ as ‘F’, have a deadly formula of shortcut for achieving things in life. One night he finds a guitar case with cocaine worth of 10 crore rupees that can set him as a professional bookie. But life never offers anything so easily and he gets himself into a deep mess. His twin brother Guddu, who stammers, works as social worker and spreads awareness about HIV but ironically ends up impregnating his girlfriend Sweety [Priyanka Chopra]. Guddu after a little reluctance marries her. But to his dismay Sweety turns out to be a sister of a local goon cum aspiring politician Bhope Bahu [Amol Gupte] who is hell bent on making Guddu’s life hard. The two brothers strive to save their necks and of their loved ones and in the process they suck deeper into the world of bookies, drug mafia, corrupt cops and gangsters.
The performance by Shahid Kapur as twins is top-notch. Forget ‘Ishq Vishq, Vivah, Jab We Met and Kismet Konnection; this is undoubtedly the best performance of his career so far where he finally managed to shed his chocolate boy image and emerged as a rough and tough man. He masters the speech defect perfectly. You can’t help falling in love with Charlie’s lisp. Every time he pronounces ‘saale’ as ‘faale’ and ‘dus’ as ‘duf’ a smile is bound to appear.
Priyanka Chopra has a short role as the screen is mostly dominated by Shahid Kapur but she does leave an impression in a role of a feisty, Marathi girl. She gets loud as required by the script but doesn’t go overboard. The surprise package is a diabetic thug cum aspiring politician played by Amol Gupte (the writer and creative director of Taare Zameen Per). His filthy look and uncouth personality is a treat to watch.
The music is ‘Dhan Te Nan’. Yes, the movie has other soothing tracks but it is the ‘Dhan Te Nan’ that topped the charts and could be heard playing everywhere. The song can more or less fall in the same league as ‘Goli Maar Bheje Main’ from the movie ‘Satya’. When I listened the song first time, I thought to give it a miss but when I heard it the second time the music grew on me. It is not easy to ignore Gulzar’s lyrics anyway. Every popular piece of work tends to invite some sort of controversy and this song was no exception. The song has lyrics ‘Til Til Tara Mira Teli Ka Tel’; the Teli Samaj found the lyrics disgusting and demanded them to be changed. Vishal’s reaction to the controversy was that he’d change the lyrics only if the hundreds of phrases related to Teli Samaj were removed from the Hindi books.
Vishal Bhardwaj, the director, writer and composer of the movie deserves accolades because stories like those are easy to conceive but in the process of filming focus can be lost easily and the end result is a sheer disappointment. He came in the limelight in 1996 with his popular song ‘Chappa Chappa Charkha Chale’ from the film ‘Maachis’ (again the Gulzar-Vishal combo) and now he don’t need any introduction. His iconoclast movies such as: Makdee, Maqbool, The Blue Umbrella, Omkara and Blood Brothers (a short movie about HIV awareness) speaks volumes about his caliber and have already established him as one of the finest filmmakers.
The movie is definitely worth a watch. IF you like pulp movies.
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