Anaamika

Cast: Nayanthara, Harshvardhan Rane, Vaibhav Reddy, Pasupathy, Naresh, Thagubothu Ramesh, D C Srivastav

Direction: Sekhar Kammula

Genre: Thriller

Duration: 2 hours 7 minutes

Story : Anaamika Sastry (Nayanthara) comes to Hyderabad in search of her husband Ajay Sastry (Harshvardhan Rane), who vanishes without a trace. Parthasarathy (Vaibhav Reddy), an honest cop, empathises with her desperation to find her husband and vows to help her. As the duo try to unravel the mystery behind the sudden disappearance of Ajay Sastry, they find themselves inching closer to a big conspiracy which puts their own lives in danger.

Movie Review : Anaamika is an unlikely film from the stable of Sekhar Kammula and him making a thriller is surprising, to say the least. For a change, the director resists the temptation of imbibing some of his favourite themes like social inequality, coming-of-age theme and innocence. This in turn gives a distinct tone to Anaamika compared to his previous films; however, the film leaves a lot to be desired, in terms of eliciting an emotional response from the audience.

The film's opening scene, which is set in the bylanes near Charminar, sets the tone for a gripping drama, but before we get sucked in to the drama, Sekhar Kammula takes his own sweet time to establish the characters. Soon after Anaamika Sastry comes to Hyderabad, the film slowly into a laborious exercise, where we are told what exactly she does on a daily basis. The only solace during this process is M M Keeravani's scintillating background score, which keeps us hooked on to the screen despite the sheer lack of drama for nearly half the film's running time. Moreover, most part of the film's first half unfolds within the precincts of a police station and a hotel, which in turn restricts the characters and storytelling.

Then there's Parthasarathy (Vaibhav Reddy), the only police officer whom Anaamika can trust, who goes out of his way to solve the case, much to the displeasure of his senior official. The film's most interesting character, however, is another police official named Khan, an encounter specialist played with aplomb by Pasupathy. His frustration can be measured from the puffs of smoke he exhales every minute and surprisingly, he's the most intense character in the film. The second half is a redeeming factor and almost immediately the story moves ahead with enough speed, to make up for all the lost time in setting up the story.

Comparisons are inevitable when one remakes a critically acclaimed film like Vidya Balan starrer Kahani and in the case of Anaamika, Sekhar Kammula almost gets away because he deviates from the original plot to a large extent. Nayanthara is no match to Vidya Balan, but she does a decent job in portraying the role of a woman who is helpless. It's tough to understand what's going through her mind and when the big twist in the film is revealed, we are left wondering how she figured it all out.

Anaamika is by no means a solid thriller, but it's a good effort from Sekhar Kammula who is enamoured with the idea of a helpless woman struggling to find her husband in a city which has learnt to embrace all its contradictions. The only thing missing in the story is edge-of-the-seat drama and that makes all the difference. Watch it if you haven't seen Kahani.

kahin hai mera pyar

Cast: Abhishek Sethiya, Sonia Mann, Sanjay Kapoor, Jackie Shroff

Direction: Mahesh Vaijnath Doijode

Genre: Romance

Duration: 2 hours 10 minutes

Story: Obsessed with a woman he has never seen, an artist paints a picture of her in his head and puts it on canvas, believing she exists. Does she?

Review: The film has a decent premise. It starts off as a story about people who are destined to meet. However, in no time, the tale of eternal love and serendipity turns into a soppy love triangle, hints reincarnation, gives references to Adam and Eve and basically loses the plot.

If an overdose of poor acting, silly dialogues ('Meri shaanti hamesha ke liye shaant ho gayi'), pointless songs, forced incidents and badly choreographed stunts were not enough, you are forced to see Sanjay Kapoor do the tandav wearing fig leaves (posing as Adam)! He has his secret motives. You give up trying to make sense of the proceedings by then.

Son of God

Cast: Diogo Morgado, Greg Hicks, Adrian Schiller, Darwin Shaw, Sebastian Knapp, Amber Rose Revah, Roma Downey

Direction: Christopher Spencer

Genre: Biography

Duration: 2 hours 18 minutes

Story: The film traces the life of Jesus Christ, from his birth along with his teachings as a Prophet, to his crucifixion and resurrection. 

Review: At the outset, it's important to say what Son of God is not. Adapted from a TV miniseries, in tone and character, it is not at all like Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. Son of God has none of Passion's unflinchingly powerful and charismatic depiction of Christ's last days and resurrection.

Tarzan

Cast: [Voices] Kellan Lutz, Spencer Locke, Jaime Ray Newman, Mark Deklin, Joe Cappelletti

Direction: Reinhard Klooss

Genre: Animation

Duration: 1 hour 34 minutes

Story: Tarzan and Jane's budding romance and idyll deep in the African bush is disturbed when the industrialist William Clayton arrives with a small army in search of a powerful energy source of intergalactic origin. 

Review: The telling of Tarzan's (Lutz) tale in this version begins many, many years in the past when a meteorite crashes on Earth with cataclysmic results. Dinosaurs, leaping lizards and all the other prehistoric creepy crawlies wind up kaput. What remains, hidden for millennia, is the marauding chunk of rock in Africa

Brick Mansions

Cast: Paul Walker, David Belle, RZA, Catalina Denis, Ayisha Issa

Direction: Camille Delamarre

Genre: Action

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes

Story: Set in a dystopian Detroit, an undercover narcotics cop teams up with an ex-con to infiltrate a ghetto to diffuse a bomb and bring down the most wanted drug baron. 

Review: Brick Mansions, a remake of French film District B13 (2004), is special, for it happens to be the late Paul Walker's final finished role. Sadly, it turns out to be one of his most forgettable films for he sleepwalks through the hastily-made generic action caper. Walker, who plays an undercover cop 'yet again', is not the only actor to look uninterested, rapper RZA looks least menacing as a drug lord as well

Angry Young Man

Cast: Ajay Sinh Rathod, Prachi Sinha

Direction: Ramesh Rout

Genre: Action

Duration: 1 hour 53 minutes

Story: An ode (of sorts) to superstar Amitabh Bachchan of the 70's, the film is a revenge drama that comes across as a rehash of various hits like Agneepath, Ghayal and Ghulam to name a few. 

Review: Years after his righteous parents were brutally murdered by a mobster for opposing his illegal activities, Arjun (Ajay Sinh Rathod) enters the Mumbai underworld to seek revenge. He becomes a hitman for a local gang leader in order to settle old scores with his real enemy. When he doesn't indulge in slow-mo fist-fights with the bad guys, he looks after the poor and needy. 

Enters 'I am so cute' Sarah (Prachi Sinha), whose character is a cross between Basanti of Sholay and Asin from Ghajini. The talkative girl falls for the brooding hero, who's in no mood for love. He is obsessed with fighting injustice instead. What lies ahead for the two - one driven by relentless love, the other by his troubled past? 

An indestructible hero, vengeance, a love story and painful flashbacks...though this film has no direct reference to Bachchan, it clearly looks inspired by his cult classic Agneepath. The newcomers act well, stunts look realistic and the songs do not interrupt the narrative. 

However, the film lacks novelty. The story has been done to death and characters aren't established enough for you to feel for them. Stunts are given more prominence but after a while, they look repetitive. Modest production values make the film look like a blander version of its predecessors. Overall, the film lacks intensity. The happenings fail to evoke a reaction and there lies its failure. 

Action junkies may not mind watching this one. For the rest, revisit Vijay Deenanath Chauhan instead.

Ne Enge En Anbe

Synopsis: Anamika (Nayanthara), a young woman, comes to India in search of her husband Ajay (Harshvardhan). Even as a hit man is taking down the people she goes to asking for help, Anamika is told by Khan (Pasupathy), an encounter specialist, that her husband is in fact Milan Damji, a terrorist mastermind... 

Genre: Thriller

Movie Review: Let's cut to the chase. If you have seen kahaani, you will find Nee Enge En Anbeunderwhelming. That Sekhar Kammula is not interested in a frame-by-frame remake of Sujoy Ghosh's film and wants to stamp his fingerprints over this film is established the moment he introduces his heroine. Unlike Vidya Bagchi in Kahaani, Anamika, here, is not a pregnant woman to instantly earn our empathy and trust; she is an ordinary young woman who claims to have come from the US to India (Hyderabad, in particular) in search of her missing husband, Ajay Swaminathan. It shows that the director isn't worried about putting himself in a tighter spot and is willing to do his share of heavy lifting. In fact, he effectively shows how such a young woman could also be vulnerable — one cop wants her to share his bed in exchange for information on her husband, while another berates her and blames her after noticing that she has failed to button up her top. 

Anamika is helped by Parthasarathy ( Vaibev), the only Tamilian in the police station, who develops a crush of sorts over her. Meanwhile, she is told by encounter specialist Amjad Ali Khan that Ajay is actually Milan Damji, a terrorist, who masterminded a horrifying bomb blasts months earlier. Anamika refuses to accept it as she sees this as a cover-up by the police to hide their inefficiency. Meanwhile, a hit man is murdering the people she had gone to asking for help, and everyone is interested in a hard drive that could be the key to solving the whole mystery. 

While the audacity to deviate from the original is appreciable, the deviations that Kammula and his co-writer Sai Prasad bring in to the basic plot of the original are what, sadly, let this film down. The Hindi version was essentially an elaborate act of cinematic rug-pulling and yet, it always felt plausible (at least while we were watching it) and also explained the hows and whys in a convincing manner. Here, the final reveal only leaves us with more questions that need answers — from how did Anamika realize the true nature of the villain to why do the cops, led by Khan, never discuss the possibility of capturing Milan Damji alive and why do the terrorists, knowing that she's on to them, leave Anamika alive (bafflingly, we are even shown a flashback of Damji murdering a woman who had identified him in the past). 

The film's setting doesn't help as well. It is understandable that the filmmakers decided to set the film in Hyderabad as they were making a Tamil-Telugu bilingual but it alienates the Tamil viewer because we are never truly able to get the local flavour, despite the rousing score in the climatic Durga puja and the numerous zoom outs that Kammula resorts to show us the teeming locality in which Anamika stays. The lengthy Telugu and Hindi dialogues become too much of a strain beyond a point. The mismatched lip sync in scenes when we can make out the actors speaking in Telugu doesn't help either. There is even a laugh-out-loud instance when Sarathy, who is chasing the hit man, tells him, 'Aye nillu, odaathe'! 

The performances, too, are just functional. Nayanthara, especially, doesn't internalize Anamika and fails to provide the character the minute shades that Vidya Balan gave to her Vidya Bagchi. So, be it when she is pleading with an Imam to provide some information or while running away from a cop who tries to feel her up or when facing a hit man on her doorstep, her acting seems all surface. The one scene where she does score is when she takes on Pasupathy and we are able to feel the character's righteous anger. Even here, she is overshadowed by Pasupathy who is very good in a role that isn't as clearly drawn as Nawazuddin Siddiqui's Khan in the original. The actor is all fire and brimstone initially during the scene, taking out his anger and frustration at not being able to capture Milan Damji on Anamika but once he sees it in her eyes that she is genuine (after her outburst), he mellows down in a manner that is remarkable