Dishkiyaoon

'Dishkiyaoon' has a super first-hour, but a dull second. It's an uneven, erratically paced film, that turns to be A Standard Gangster Crime-Drama.

Dishkiyaoon' Synopsis: An urban city boy dreams to be a gangster. In order to be one, his journey turns out to be a nightmarish adventure.

'Dishkiyaoon' had tremendous potential to be an absorbing watch, but a shaky Screenplay plays a spoilsport. To give the film it's due, the film begins on a strong note & the momentum is aptly handled in the first-hour. Its the second-hour that brings in the problems. The drama looks uneven & the pace is erratic. Also, the culmination is under-whelming.

Sanamjit Singh Talwar's Screenplay has some potential, but all of it disappears in the second-hour. His Direction, however, is well-done. Cinematography is excellent. Editing is uneven. Action-Sequences are average.

Performance-Wise: Harman Baweja delivers an earnest performance. He tries his best to justify the part. Sunny Deol is alright. Prashant Narayanan is the real show-stopper. He's outstanding. Aditya Panscholi is wasted. Anand Tiwari hams.

On the whole, 'Dishkiyaoon' is an okay fare.

The first few minutes of Dishkiyaoon feel straight out of a James Hadley Chase based film noir. A young gangster narrating the story of his willing descent into the world of crime to a senior, trading words of metaphorical wisdom while playing a nonchalant game of snakes and ladders. But the magic wears down real fast, starting right from Sunny Deol's hackneyed Haryanvi accent, to Harman Baweja's continued lifelessness.

Yes, 6 years after his disastrous debut, Baweja's comeback could not have been worse. In acting skills he is still no better than fellow star-kid Neil Nitin Mukesh. Actually worse, because Mukesh was at least able to carry off the much more intelligent Johnny Gaddar with his two expressions. In Dishkiyaoon, Harman is Vicky Kartoos, who wants to rise to the top of the Mumbai underworld as painlessly as possible. Juxtaposed against him is his mentor Mota Tony who quite swears by the gun. More eccentric gangsters with funny names abound. There is Rocky Chu.... (who thinks he looks like Sanjay Dutt), Khalifaa (who is proud of the fact that he does not carry a gun), Lakwa (obviously the polio afflicted one) and Gujjar (yes, everyone is proud of the caste card now). Dishkiyaoon is about Vicky finding his destiny, along with numerous plot twists, sudden homicides, along with the mandatory love angle.

Fancy names do not make an interesting movie, a good script definitely does. That is problem number one with Dishkiyaoon. While the premise is interesting, there is absolutely no character development. People just pop up to mouth punch lines and disappear. The treatment of the movie is curiously reminiscent of the recent 100 cr dud, Gunday- flat, emotionless, boring. People think any gangster movie works, such is the popularity of anarchists in today's world. Good acting does make up for script weakness sometimes. That is problem number two for Dishkiyaoon. Prashant Narayanan as Mota Tony and Anand Tiwari as Rocky Chu offer some redemption but it is too little. Baweja flaunts his torso, indulges in some free running, but that's about all he can do. To quote Yoda, the NNM force is still strong with him. Even Sunny Deol's short presence does nothing to improve things, plus he does NOT get to throw a punch. Really, this might be the first such movie that he has not raised his 2.5 kilo hand.

Girlfriend Bipasha Basu might have been moved to tears by beau Baweja's acting, but for the audience, the tears are entirely for a different reason. The gulf between him and Hritik is even wider than what it was 6 years back. And while the material was interesting, débutant director Sanamjit Sarkar Talwar has probably bitten off more than he can chew. In the hands of say Sriram Raghavan, this could have been sumptuous fare. 5/10

Actually when you watch something without any expectation & when that surprises you pleasantly (to an extent), you feel like letting people know about it – somehow that's how i felt after watching this film.

This is exactly not a review but just some after-thoughts on the film Dishkiyaaon which indeed had some good moments.

The Pluses – To start with, most of us erroneously judged the film by its trailer. Unlike a regular mindless action thriller, the film actually turned out to be a gangster noir, that had more brains than many of such films being made in Hindi in the recent years.(Not that we often see noirs in Hindi cinema) With a non-linear narrative, the film actually engages you without spoon-feeding, connecting the dots in the end. The action sequences are stylish and the cinematography is superlative. The dark mood & tone of the film remains intact till the end.

Coming to the plot, the film deals with the conspiracies & complex dynamics of the underworld (which is oft repeated) but it is more of character driven (that's rare in Hindi). The psyche of the various shades of grey gets highlighted with the characters. There isn't unnecessary revenge drama or melodramatic angle forced in to attract crowd.

Sanamjit Singh Talwar seems to have a knack for dark gangster films without any diversions in form of preaching morality. Credit should be given to him to traverse an unsafe convoluted path to tell his story. The characters' graph moves in accordance to the script specially the protagonist Vicky Kartoos who from his neglected childhood learnt that Ganghiji's formula doesn't work in today's real world & following which how he started idolising the gangster Tony & gradually winning his heart thus becoming a part of the system. The dialogues written by Talwar are as brutally honest as the characters & most of the times they are impactful.Special mention to this one – Gandhiji said non violence but did anyone listen. If he would have said it at a gun point then everyone would've listened.

In the acting department Prashanth Narayanan (as Tony) & Anant Tiwari (as Rocky Chu****) overpowered all the other actors with their brilliant histrionics. Specially Anant Tiwari who was last seen at his funnier best as geeky Bunny in the superb zom-com "Go Goa Gone",stuns you with the cunning, manipulative evil Rocky. There are able actors like Rajesh Vivek, Dayashankar Pandey, Subrat Dutta, Harsh Chaya, Aditya Pancholi who feels the gap with their limited screen times. Sunny Deol as Lakwa is pleasantly restraint though his accent fluctuates.

The minuses –

Even though Talwar showed potential as a debut director he lacks playing his brush thoroughly & giving it finesse. The execution is unfamiliar and doesn't move in the set track,agreed but in many occasions the proceedings looks haphazard & forcefully convoluted. There are some loopholes in the narrative which gets camouflaged by the slickness of the proceedings. Add on to it, this film deserved a better leading man. Baweja did try his best & looked Vicky in many scenes but overall he lacked the energy & ability to carry the film on his shoulder. Moreover pitted against strong supporting actors he seemed a little let-down. Debutant Ayesha Khanna lacks any acting prowess. Though their romance isn't stretched out yet that came as a jolting halt thanks to their inability to emote.

And even within a limited 2hour running time the film looked a way too long. The script demanded some fine editing. The director and editor tried to give a cool neo-noir look but succeeded only partially. End of the day talwar is No Kashyap, but he has potential & hopefully can come up with a better film next time.

Having said everything, the film isn't that bad as many are addressing. Probably the Anti-Gandhian idealogy didn't go down well with few. Anyways those who love dark gangster films & noirs (like me) go for this one with limited expectation and you might not be disheartened. Don't expect it to be classy noirs like Johnny Gaddar or Kaminey but at least this one is better than Abbas-Mustan's clueless dark thillers.

Overall Dishkiyaaon had a distinctive gun in the hand of a sharp albeit green shooter, a proper frame to aim but somehow it brushed past the target. Finally landing into 6 (somewhat) out of 10 zone.

A completely worn-out, seen before and over-used concept can become watchable only if it has something fresh to say in its execution breaking some previous norms. But the latest action thriller DISHKIYAOON directed by Sanamjit Singh Talwar (made on the same old backdrop of underworld dons), doesn't even have one single scene to impress you in any way.

Moreover the film actually looks like one of those old, stalled projects which has been finally presented as a complete film after re-editing all its available rushes somehow, as the producer's last resort. And this conclusion can easily be drawn by looking at the film's sloppy editing and its very first scene which right away introduces both Sunny Deol and Harman Baweja talking to each other in a quite lazy and uninspiring manner, simply ruining the excitement built by its interesting promos.

So honestly there is nothing to be written as a detailed review here. But yes, there still remain one unique manner in which the film can serve as something highly useful for all the professional institutes teaching film-making (with reference to only Hindi films).

Explaining it further, DISHKIYAOON certainly can be considered as one project which can perfectly be used to teach what is meant by 'Wrong Casting' or 'Miscasting' in a film to the enthusiastic students of cinema, undoubtedly. And the reason for this is that except Prashant Narayan & Aditya Pancholi playing their usual mannerisms, not even a single lead actor looks like the role he is playing and one can notice this big mistake in the film's opening sequence itself quite clearly. For instance, Sunny Deol (in his only few minutes appearance) turns out to be a complete misfit speaking in a Hariyanvi tone, Harman Baweja pretty unconvincingly plays a tapori having the persona of a rich brat, Anand Tiwari (trying hard) reminds you of a comic character ready to crack a joke every time he comes on the screen and Sumit Nijhawan as the head gangster seems to be a last moment change after a refusal by any other deserving candidate.

In short, what can you expect from a movie which has all its four lead actors, misfit for their respective roles and the director is more interested in only style and less content, talking about nothing new. So I walked out of the theater even before it ended properly and no I didn't stay for any sizzling act of Shilpa Shetty Kundra played along the end credits.

Well well well. Movie script is so good. Prashant narayan as TONY, Ankit as ROCY and KHALEEFA are the best thing in the movie. Sunny deol acting and haryanvi tone is vary bad. Herman is just average. But overall film is very good.