rupak_speaking

KK Menon starrer "Rahasya" is the latest murder mystery I caught up with, but the problem is though I like watching detective movies, but always find it difficult to judge or rate them, maybe more intelligent people can..

This film 'Rahasya' was inspired by the Arushi Murder case, and so much so that the Talwar couple went to courts against its release. It relies heavily on the x-factor of K K Menon who tries to solve the case, and the outcome and treatment is more of Sharadindu Bandopadhyay's Byomkesh Bakshi novel flavour - dark and scandalous.

One immediate comparison which came to my mind is the film "Talvar" itself directed by Meghna Gulzar. I saw that film shortly after Irfan's lost battle against cancer. Though that film took the Talwar couple's side, but somehow I found more soul in that. So Rahasya is still engaging but not as good as Talvar. A 6-6.5 for Rahasya..

Nicholas Cage starrer "Knowing" reminded me of Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and also has similarities with Keanu Reeves' "The Day the Earth Stood Still". It has the touch of that Spielberg's 70s movie but certainly not the class of it.

But the unique thing about the movie was it was 'dark' throughout, never a light moment, neither Cage nor the child actors or the lady played by Rosy Byrne could conjure up a smile at any moment. The brooding MIT professor kept brooding throughout and the knowledge of the impending disasters didn't seem to help his cause.

As a viewer, can only pass a judgment but can't say what exact mix makes a movie from poor to average to good to great !!! 6/10.

Sitting to review 'Maidaan', I would split it in two parts, one is my immediate reaction watching the movie and the other the afterthought.

As a sports enthusiast and an Indian football follower, I went with certain expectations to the cine hall and found it to be jam packed on a weekend evening. The footballing actions were very well shot and the houseful crowd in the hall as well as the stadium on screen appeared to cheer every move, every save and every goal aided with able background music from Mr. Rehman. By the end of it, it was 'paisa wasool and more' for me as three hours whizzed past, I was satisfied and glad that at least the uninitiated got to know the story, our scorelines, and that those comebacks were not actually fictional...

But then in the coming weeks I heard it was not doing that well and surviving only due to lack of any alternative blockbuster running in the theatres and therefore tried to dissect the reason.

The main reason I felt was that they couldn't really build the emotional connect in a movie as long as three hours. Despite good background scores, the songs could have been better. People though cheered the footballing action, nobody was teary eyed with the sad outcome involving Rahim Sir's health. The question then I asked myself was what would one get, who is not interested in football in particular, out of this movie ?? The creators failed to answer that to adequacy out of whatever they tried to portray, neither with Rahim Sir's family connect nor the player connects, and federation politics was just limited to two antagonists.

They worked hard for the film assembling a cast who could look similar to our footballing heroes of that era, spent on locations, cinematography and the aesthetics part of it, but somewhere failed to deliver a wholesome entertainer unlike may be a fictional 'Chak De' or a real life sports drama 'Bhag Milkha Bhag', but was still a good attempt to bring Indian football's golden history to the fore.

6.5/10.