indicoid

Jung is junk. One of the rare few films I've walked out of in a cinema. It's amazing what low technical values Sanjay Gupta films had prior to Kaante and Musafir. Technical values aside, it's also beyond my understanding how one of Bollywood's best writers - Anurag Kashyap - came up with a terrible plagiarised screenplay like this one.

Apparently, the film ran into some trouble with the producer and the director left the film midway. Which may explain why there are flashes of 'acceptable-to-good' shots here and there. The rest (maybe the bulk) of the film may have been 'directed' by the producer himself. I can't remember the music at all; all I remember about the songs are an aging Raveena Tandon and Jackie Shroff looking uncomfortable and ridiculous - sadly unbecoming, doing Grease moves in 2000.

If someone described this film to me, I'd probably hate it. It's mushy, illogical, riddled with clichés, has a dose of patriotic jingoism and has silly things thunder and lightning when someone does something dramatic. In a nutshell, it's everything that Hindi films are laughed at for. It undoes everything that films like Dil Chahta Hai, Lagaan, or even Kal Ho Naa Ho have done for Bollywood and brings it all back to square one.

Unfortunately (because I wish I hated this film), the film does what it set out to do. It pulls shamelessly at the audience's emotions and ultimately evokes the desired effect.

So yeah...it's a terrible movie which I couldn't help liking.

Cinematography - It's Anil Mehta's worst effort ever. I was quite appalled - in fact I believe certain portions like the helicopter sequences were so bad that they couldn't possibly have been filmed by Anil Mehta. Probably some incompetent second unit. Bollywood has come a long way in cinematography with films like Khakee, Mission Kashmir, Asoka and even B movies like Qayamat - so Veer Zara's Manmohan Singh-like camera-work is unacceptable to me. Btw, to the uninitiated, Manmohan Singh is Yash Chopra's previous resident cinematographer. He was terrible.

Sound - Good effort to use sync sound but I can't really critique it as the Dolby Digital cinema that I watched it in played the film in Dolby SR for some reason.

Special effects - Some were pretty OK, but I think Chopra tried to cut some costs by not creating the effects at full film resolution - so the whole print changes colour and resolution whenever a composited effect is coming up. This cheapo SFX glitch was a hallmark of Bollywood films from 1996 (Indian/Hindustani starring Kamal Hassan) to around 2000). I thought that problem was over but thanks to Chopra who'd rather pay millions to SRK and AB and the rest of the overpaid 'stars' than provide good technical support, we have it again in a major Bollywood film.

Music - I thought it was between OK and mediocre. Yeah yeah...i know its Madan Mohan. Do we have an obligation to revere anything by anyone who is old or dead? He's no A.R. Rahman or Ismail Darbar for sure.

Acting - Acting was decent all round - though Zinta was highly unconvincing as a 50 something year old. SRK hammed here and there but got away with it. Rani was a pleasure to watch.

While the film works on the emotional level very well, it's like saying that a porno works very well on the sexual level. I believe that if you want to make a melodrama, go all out and use technical and aesthetic devices as rhetorical elements creatively and eloquently to persuade an idea to the audience. It shouldn't be a half-baked effort. I'd advice Chopra to pick up some pointers from Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

At the end of the day, the film is a third-rate effort that will inevitably work at the box office because of an infallible formula, star power and rigorous studio backed publicity.

And did I say? - I kinda liked it

If someone described this film to me, I'd probably hate it. It's mushy, illogical, riddled with clichés, has a dose of patriotic jingoism and has silly things thunder and lightning when someone does something dramatic. In a nutshell, it's everything that Hindi films are laughed at for. It undoes everything that films like Dil Chahta Hai, Lagaan, or even Kal Ho Naa Ho have done for Bollywood and brings it all back to square one.

Unfortunately (because I wish I hated this film), the film does what it set out to do. It pulls shamelessly at the audience's emotions and ultimately evokes the desired result.

So yeah...it's a terrible movie which I kinda liked.