Expend4bles: Pension Fund Masquerading As An Action Franchise |
This is #CineFile, where our critic Rahul Desai goes beyond the obvious takes, to dissect movies and shows that are in the news. |
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| | Cast: Stallone, Statham, Megan Fox | | |
| BEFORE I begin, as a Bollywood enthusiast, it is my solemn duty to reveal that China Gate (1998) is the OG Expendables. I said what I said. Now that I’ve gotten this piece of unnecessary trivia off my tired chest, let’s get to Expend4bles — or Expend0bles, or Expenda8les or Expendables 4 — or whatever they call this pension fund parading as an action franchise. The makers have thought for years that they’ve pulled a fast one over the audience with the meta title: “Your criticism is pointless if we already call ourselves the expendables, right?” Well, I have news for director Scott Waugh, who is incidentally also responsible for the other worst film of this year (Hidden Strike). Expend4bles (God, that’s annoying to type) is so bad that Sylvester Stallone retires from it. Expend4bles is so bad that it unfolds like a copy of the other, other worst film of the year, Meg 2 — where a Jason Statham character again saves his hapless team from a traitor on a metal vessel in the middle of an ocean. The film is so bad that it’s a scientific miracle — it expands time, making seconds feel like minutes and 106 minutes feel like 10 hours. It also distorts the very concept of rhythm: The beginning of the film feels like the end, the middle feels like the beginning, and the end feels like neither. ICYMI | Jaane Jaan: Sujoy Ghosh's Moody Thriller Works — Until It Doesn't It’s also probably the only film ever to have been written in sync with shooting schedules: First, Stallone disappears from the whole film, then Statham disappears, while the team led by Megan Fox hijacks the screen, then Statham reappears and the team vanishes for a while, then the film itself ceases to exist while the trauma remains. It must have been a stretch to have the entire team in one scene — so many ambitions, such little time (literally). Also, a polite word about the team without Statham and Stallone — incompetent as heck. They’re like a bunch of bored high-schoolers whose only job is to get caught, taken by surprise, held at gunpoint, get locked up, or make jokes that don’t land. |
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The Great Indian Family: A Progressive Film That Demands Your Attention |
VIJAY KRISHNA ACHARYA’s The Great Indian Family, an endlessly moving film that is suffused with good humour, trains its lens on adults but speaks in the easy language of a child. It talks about inclusiveness and the redundancy of slotting people in the tags of religion but does so with admirable frankness and zero moral high ground. The didacticism is in the thought and not in the execution, making it accessible without diluting the intent. Acharya’s film is an angry critique on who we have become, conveyed in the affable tone of who we used to be. It is about the child who knew no better and adults who should.
Take for instance how far the filmmaker goes with his one-line premise: a Hindu man discovers one day that he is Muslim. In the current climate of political extremism, it is a gutsy proposition to explore no matter how one decides to go about it. Acharya, who has helmed spectacle films like Dhoom 3 (2013), Thugs of Hindostan (2018) in the past, opts for heavy embellishments to craft a story for easy understanding. — ISHITA SENGUPTA |
| Sukhee: A Self-Defeating Narrative On Empowering Homemakers |
SONAL JOSHI’s Sukhee is the latest Hindi film to be infatuated with the idea of a ‘homemaker’ without knowing what to do with it. It joins an increasing list of outings that intends uncovering the feminist undertones of a profession that traditionally has been looked down upon. But in doing so, it also sees it as a problem that needs solving.
Sukhee (a woefully miscast Shilpa Shetty) is a homemaker who lives with her daughter, husband and his grandfather in a (fictional) place called Anandkot. Her life, we are told, is stuck in a selfless routine. She tends to the elderly man, does her daughter’s homework and looks for attention from her husband. She was not always like this. Sukhee was a fun-loving, curse-knowing girl who got subsumed in domesticity post marriage. Soon an opportunity to relive the past in the form of a school reunion in New Delhi opens up. Her group of three friends call her and Sukhee is ready to go. Except, her husband Guru (Chaitannya Choudhry), a quilt-selling small-time businessman, says no. She takes her bag and leaves for Delhi. — I.S. |
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