More movies

This blog, meant to be an outlet for my inner mind, seems to have become a veritable movie review page! If you haven't felt so already, I might just be giving you the reason to decide so. I'm writing about movies, again! Over the past month, I watched about half a dozen movies, most of them run of the mill, but two were outstanding. One was an English movie from the year 2006 starring Hugo Weaving and the other was a Bollywood flick. The contrast between the two movies could not have been greater, but then, they were from totally different genres and each shone in its own right.
The first one, the Hollywood flick, was V for Vendetta. I have not read the graphic novel by the same name, so I would not be able to comment about how 'true' the director of the movie has stayed, with respect to the original content, but the product looks very slick and well made, and Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith of Matrix fame), with his impeccable English and style of dialog has truly performed brilliantly. His face is never shown in the movie, as he is always masked. Many other actors who were earlier considered for this role had their reservations about the assignment, but Weaving has pulled it off like nobody else could have. Set in the 2030s, the movie is set in a world in which England is the sole superpower in the world, with the mighty US of A being reduced to a pauper state thanks to their itchy nuclear trigger-fingers and their 'Godlessness', as accused by a character in the movie called the 'Voice of London'. It chronicles the efforts of a man who is only known as 'V', to usher anarchy in the place of the totalitarian rule that has come over England, portrayed in the movie as the all-powerful state. The movie raises interesting questions and watching it was a treat after being forced to watch movie after movie showing Americans saving the entire world from Aliens, Monster Creatures, and Alien Monster Creatures. Whew!

The other movie, the Bollywood flick, was called 'Ek Chaalis ki last local' (The last local train, 0140hrs). It was rated very poorly by the critics of almost all newspapers, but I enjoyed the movie immensely. Over the years, I have learned to never depend on the reviews provided by the newspapers. In any case, tastes in movies, food, art and reading differ from person to person and I still don't know why so many people think that these reviews are sacrosanct. Reviewing is an art, wherein the person has to try his or her best not to bring in personal biases and personal opinions into the review. I never write reviews. I only write my perception of the movies in my blogs. This gives me the right to be as opinionated as I want to, but people writing reviews ought to refrain from that, but they seem to be carried away by the power their words wield. 'With great power comes great responsibility' goes a famous quote, but it seems to be ignored by these reviewers. So, let me stop bashing up these reviewers, and get on to what I loved about the movie.
The pace was really slick, with hardly a single slack frame in the entire movie (about 2 hours and 20 minutes of running time). The twists and turns in the movie are very well executed, meaning that one can never guess what is going to happen in the next frame! The comedy is spot on, the picturisation is stark and without any unwanted excesses and all the actors (most of them unfamiliar) have done a brilliant job. The characters of the Police inspector, the crazy gangster-woman, the myriad goons and gangsters have all been well sketched and the casting is perfect.
The story itself is highly original. It charts the crazy fortunes of the protagonist after he misses the last local train for the day at 0140 hrs from Kurla to Vikhroli (places in Mumbai, India) . The next train is almost four hours later, the first train of the next day, at 0430 hrs. As he ponders on how to get to his destination (Vikhroli) in the night, he comes across a beautiful young woman, who also seems to have missed the last train. Coincidentally, she too has to get to the same destination as the protagonist. Not having any success at hailing even an auto-rickshaw at that unearthly hour (0145 hrs), they walk off together into the night, hoping to get a taxi-cab else where. The movie is about the protagonist's adventures in the night that puts his life at serious risk on more than one occasion and ultimately leads to a windfall for him, as ends up with one and three fourth crore rupees (about USD 350,000) that originally belonged to a bunch of gangsters. The movie ends with the protagonist having the money and even the company of the beautiful woman, whom he succeeds at befriending. Very nice movie. I would rate this movie five on five!