Such Bull!
Sometime around March, 2008, Bear Sterns, a big-league investment bank suddenly woke up one morning to learn of its unexpected decline. The firm was given to recklessness in the securities market. New York's Federal Reserve attempted an emergency surgery. None helped. The bank got sold off at $10 per share, down from its year-high of over $133. This was the first big news that convinced economists across of a looming Great Recession in America. The final news, if I may, is that of pop-sensation Kylie Minogue getting jiggy with Akshay Kumar, on a second-rate bhangra track called Chiggy Wiggy, in a third-rate Bollywood flick. It can't get worse on the US economic curve. I'm certain America will bounce back. This film though just refuses to. The song I speak of makes for an inspired moment in the movie. Akshay Kumar walks into a `ginormous' indoor stadium his buddy Sanjay Dutt calls "the `illeet' nightclub of Bahamas." Akshay casually sizes up a white girl, and goes, "Oh you are Kylie M i n o g u e,' before they begin heavy calisthenics on stage. The two gentlemen referred to play cool bumblers in the `hamas. They call each other Sethji (Kumar) and Sarkarji (Dutt): uncomfortably numb Van Blue Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, Zayed Khan Direction: Anthony D'Souza Rating: Damme and Vin Diesel with croaking voices. One's into orgies; the other, into a hot bikini (Lara Dutta). There is also a third gent involved (Zayed Khan). He is picked up for a clueless assignment of zipping across a city on his bike with a bagful of money that he loses along the way. Under debt of $50 million, he finds shelter under his brother's (Dutt) beach-home. You wonder what these three will do. Given an action director imported in from LA has done most of the work anyway. As you check into its jaws, you also sense a flick that is in parts Into The Blue (deep-sea diving, and treasure-hunt) and Torque (biking): neither that one could even recco for TV. The producers have pumped in multiple crores apparently. They must've thought up something of their own. Merely few comic scenes to punctuate this mayhem may have helped. Every once in a while, Sethji whispers to Sarkar ji the magic words, "Lady in blue," expecting the audience to shriek, "Woo hoo." This is when the characters don't repeat themselves: "Duniya ka sabse bada nasha: risk (World's greatest addiction: risk)". No one knows what this `Lady In Blue' business is about. It turns out a sunken ship with treasures in the ocean-bed that the British intended to return to India during transfer of power at Independence. Far-fetched as that may sound, the premise is convoluted even further: ship, captain, grandfather, father, God knows. The only minor gems I could spot in this huge aquarium is an instrumental or two of Rahman's, in an otherwise limp soundtrack. It's soothing still. What's around is just a random, action blow-ring. Pretty much everything gets pointlessly blown into bits, one after the other: apartment furnishings, beach villa, cars, trucks, bikes, yacht... Just so you know why some dumb economies just deserve a recession. mayank.shek...@hindustantimes.com
