Tashan:Raste ka maal and the cheap thrill machine

Don’t knock on the door marked ‘Deep meaning’. Screw ‘plot’. Damn ’subtlety’. Fuck ‘Logic’. Bring on ‘the Goodluck’, ‘The Ishtyle’, ‘The Phormula’ and for the next three hours the traffic at the station is a one hundred percent masala, tadka, deep fry, jhankaaar… it isn’t all very good for you but you could do worse. I mean Jodha Akbar was a mammoth four hours of a real Emperor trying to get it on with an arguably fictional Princess while admiring her ‘malpuas’. After an amazing 2007, ‘Tashan’ is probably the only film after ‘Mithya’ to look in the direction where Bollywood was pointing at the end of that year- forward.

Sure it’s what Kader Khan would call a ‘Khokla Bambu’- all gas but Terry Southern, I believe, has a better phrase to put things in perspective- a groove and a gas. Cue Sin City credits. Acharyaji paying due respects to Rodriguezji and the OST screams in up-up-and-away tempo- Tashan Ve, Tashan Ve. Funky Red Trash Mercedes in a desolate White Blasted Ladakhi Highway. ‘Highway to Hell’ by AC/DC blares before suddenly flicking to Side B- Kabhi Kabhi Mere Dil Main Khayal… back to ‘Hell’ back to ‘Kabhi’. Mercedes swerves dangerously. A roadsign bounces off like Wily E Coyote slammed into it. In a bad Hot-Wheels-adverts-have-better-CGI-moment car falls into a cliff. Obviously the cliff, a geographically oddity, comes out of nowhere. Slow Motion- To the tune of Kabhi Kabhi. Underwater blue. And then Saif Ali Khan opens his mouth, breaks the proverbial fourth wall and starts talking to the audience.

To say it’s a bit of a downer after so much Tashan Ve, is an understatement.

Just why we need Saif Ali Khan calling himself Jimmy Cliff do a running commentary, a smarty-two-shoes one at that, throughout the first half is something I couldn’t grasp? And that too when he was last seen in Race? It may be the horse, but if anyone has seen ‘Race’, you may remember the scene in Race where he rode a horse in the beating rains all the way into Bipasha’s toned arms. The look on his face was trauma for me. Something I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for. And while he does get better in ‘Tashan’ and has a few nice moments where one can see beyond all the tabloid to the buffoon in him that was ‘Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega’, he’s gotta long way to go for redemption and the ‘watch out babes’ narration certainly didn’t help. So anyways, he’s call center employee who’s cosy with the girls and teaches English as a day job and is done with dating ‘dumb chickx’ and is looking for the ‘right one’. I swear I thought the pic would derail in cheese inc. after that uber-cool start and was losing all hope when Kareena came in.

Enter Anil Kapoor as ‘Bhaiyaji’. Enter sidekicks ‘Pintu’ (Manoj Pahwa) and ‘can’t-remember’(Sanjay Mishra). Acharyaji gets it going. Bhaiyaji wants to pep up on English before a meeting with a foreign delegation and suddenly it’s abandon ship all ye who seek sense or even propriety in the dialogue. Is it a spoof on ‘multiplex cinema’? Is it a comment on the ‘urban-rural divide’? So much for the ‘blah’. It’s a groove and a gas. The dialogue becomes a weird concoction of De Niro meets Ajith with Anil Kapoor chewing into his role with a flamboyance that he has rarely been allowed to employ. He even does the ‘Khush to Bahut Hoge Tum’ soliloquy from ‘Deewar’ and while it’s a rollicking scene, it’s also a moment where we can acutely identify the problem in Acharyaji’s direction. He found it necessary to feature a poster on an easel behind Anil Kapoor just like Pintu interrupts his speech to impress on the audience that ‘Bhaiyaji’ translated ‘chaukat’ as ‘fourkat’. I mean, if you want to do that you get Kader Khan in or it’s an embarrassment. I guess it’s the Jimmy Cliff side of Acharyaji.

Between English lectures, Jimmy falls for Puja and they cook up a plan to abscond with Bhaiyaji’s money only to learn that he’s a gangster (tough guess) and Puja who has a Tashan of her own runs off with the loot while Jimmy goes to submit his leave application. And then Bhaiyaji faced with the problem of how to retrieve his moolah finds his ‘answer’ at Ganga Kinare, Kanpur. Yippe-kai-yeah!

Cut to Kanpur. Minimum Fuss. Enter Akshay Kumar. And now this is what I am talking about. A hundred seetes and a standing applause across the hall. In a packed hall this is insane. For the first time the madness in the movie translates to delirium. This is the ‘Bachan Pandey’ side of Acharyaji and it’s something you can’t have enough of. The extended ‘Ram Leela ka Manch’ entry is possibly the funniest myth-spoof scene this side of ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron’s climax and director taps into the local milieu and flavor with relish. His version of Kanpur is a carnival, an overblown gaon-ka-mela, a colorful place of small-town kitsch and blink-blink-blink-blink wedding lights. Bachan is the numero uno local ruffian/ recovery agent and an ardent devotee of Hanuman and Bhaiyaji. ‘Bhaiyaji’ is local legend and when called to be of service Bachan is only to too happy to oblige.

Like McLane says,”Yippie-Kai-Yeah-Motherfucker!”

But it’s not a movie going down smooth. There are moments that irk. Kareena Kapoor. The painful ‘Falak Tak’ song sequence. The childhood tales that go too deep and are wrought with too much emotion than you care to invest Almost takes the balls of Akshay Kumar and reduces all excitement to void.. But there are other moments. The flashback sequence showing Bhaiyaji’s ascendancy to power, with Anil Kapoor in Lakhan style yellow ganji cycling through the streets of Kanpur trying to defend his mentor from knife wielding assailants. The advert given in the paper when Puja disappears with the money- vapas aa jao puja beti. Bhaiyaji pareshan hai! Anil Kapoor’s den- his Lanka and his gangster-mobile limo and the raised rifle salute that he receives from his goons. The recurring Ramayan motif. Yashpal Sharma’s inspired ‘Jokes Apart’ cameo. The fight sequences with Akshay Kumar’s parkour-as-filmed-by-Shankar. Saif Ali Khan’s ‘Bang-Bang’ monologue. Akshay Kumar’s chachi and her affair with the local cop. The electrocution machine with the monstro-bizzaro fuse. ‘Dil Dance Mare’ with those over-the-top-and-I’m-still-not-high lyrics and visuals. The poker-can’t-get-any-straighter-moments like Puja explaining her ‘karz ka bhoj’ to Jimmy- interest hi ek karod ho gaya hain! And those neon reflections Acharyaji catches off the surfaces of RAY BANs.

And now for a few moments and three cheers to Ayananka Bose. I have to confess that till date I used to attribute all those vertiginous moves the camera made in ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ to Shaad Ali but seems there was more than one brilliant mind at work. A relative newcomer, Bose has developed a style distinctly her own- one that lovingly captures exotic kitsch, is never authoritative and amazingly dynamic. Very much like the Beatles put it in ‘Dear Prudence’- Round. Round. Round. Round.

Now that’s what I call Technicolor Tangerine. The Great Disco From Under the Lungi.

One can always argue that Shaad Ali would’ve caught the mela kitsch with lot more verve and that Sriram Raghavan channels the Rajiv Rai with a helluva lotta more phunk but for what gives it those ones, Acharyaji brings something uniquely his own to ‘Tashan’.