when you title a movie “shootout at lokhandwala”, and it begins with the grim spectacle of sepia-d bullets and blood, i kinda expect more than songs and melodrama. maybe i shouldn’t, but when a movie like ’satya’ can be made…
S.A.L isn’t a bad movie. it suffers from the same problem as so many hindi movies i’ve seen recently - it had the potential to be so much better. the set up is classy, amitabh grilling the cops about the shootout, and the flashback to how the ATS is set up hits you. brutally.
we are then intro-ed to maya dolas. the gangster due to whom the shootout happened. enter vivek oberoi looking like a cross between captain sparrow and his ‘company’ self. exit believability.
saif in omkara was the despicable langda tyagi. vivek in SAL is the weird looking character reminiscent of.. well.. himself. we then have his eventual right-hand man, buwa, or tusshar kapoor. and for all that he tries to look dangerous, he manages a feeble leo di caprio from titanic - not ‘the departed’. and once your primary villains look a pair of pretty boys, your movie is pretty much going down the wrong end of the tube.
now, there is a possibility they’re going to stick to the down and brutal. make it hard-hitting, even if the characters don’t really convince you. there is a possibility that the pretty boys are convincingly dangerous when need be. apparently, maya and gang danced in bars having sound-stage lighting. they sang ’shake your ass baby, we are the bhais’. they walked around in stylish jeans and sunglasses, shaking their manes just so. a tad too filmy, shall we say. a tad too much style in our still christened “pretty boys”. and did i mention unbelievable ?
while our erstwhile gangsters run around cavorting and coercing, we have the cops. and the pointless interludes into personal lives, which could not have been more overdone by distributing circulars during the movie detailing the exact problems each one is facing. each interlude is “fixed” in some way, but not without a pointless confrontation in each case. i stopped asking ‘why ?’ a while back anyway.
eventually we are hit the actual shootout. first they fire the “rumored” 3000 bullets. and one rocket. end guntime. then, with mumbai’s arsenal within the one square mile of the complex in question, we are still treated to fisticuff fights inside the apartments. no quick encounters these. each of the primary cops have to beat the crap out of the opposing gangster member(leader on leader, corresponding sidekick to his own), and then blow their head off when they drag them down. forgive me, if i’m more than a little incredulous when each of the gangster manages to reel off a long phone call “back home”as well: begging forgiveness, promising return etcetera etcetera.
finally, the grand finale. the doubting anthony gonsalves has to redeem the ATS for the genocide. which is simply done. one dialogue, one question, all pat. everyone goes home, probably happy.
now, thinks you, why does SEV think this could be a good movie ? why did he bore me with this long detailed analysis of the cliches and problems in the movie ? why isn’t the review more funny ?
well.. i don’t want to answer you. i would rather you went, watched, realized, got frustrated, and cursed your lack of common sense. but i’m a little nicer, so…
its simple. the glimpses one gets. the questions that are raised about the way it happened, then diluted.. or raised as an after-thought. the frenetic action sequences. sanjay dutt’s hulking presence. sincere, yet failed, efforts by sunil shetty and arbaaz. the sheer brutality that is so true of the early ’90s bombay underworld. its all there.
however stylized.. however creatively filmed.. SAL eventually is just another hindi movie. with music, melodrama and sadly… only too little menace.
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