Zentaurion

I've just finished watching it and I don't think I've ever love-hated a movie more than this. I feel horribly depressed because of it. I feel like I need to reach out to someone, anyone, and give them a hug.

This is partly because the film is actually very painful and awkward to watch. It has this very wretched way of not showing what's actually going on but just shows the characters either being very emotional or very cryptic. Plus you get these fade to black transitions just when it looks like characters are about to open up to each other. The visuals are also intentionally depressing.

But it's all very well-crafted. And once you are prepared for the emotional tone of it, it is very rewarding to see the finer details in the acting and the story. And like similarly depressing yet cathartic films such as The Crow or The Road, this film makes you connect with the human beauty expressed within it such that it will haunt you with thoughts of what the characters are going through. This is no doubt thanks to the acting of one Aishwarya Rai, who is maybe at her career best here, portraying a living, breathing character like she's done never before or since. Ajay Devgan is good too, though the amount of restraint he imbued the character with is more infuriating rather than sympathetic, he almost comes across as the antagonist in this story. Something you might not agree with, but gives you something to think about as you come to terms with the story.

The rest of the cast is great too, bringing realism and gravity to the story and helping round out the main two.

In terms of being an emotionally wrenching experience, I'd put this film up there with Graveyard of the Fireflies. If you give it a try, you'll never forget this film and will feel an emotional wrenching wherever you remember it. This is art of the highest order.

EDIT: On further reflection I have to add that Ajay Devgan is actually also great in this movie. I found his character harder to appreciate because I wasn't prepared for it in the first viewing. As a fan of his work I was expecting him to play a more stoic, even aggressive character, so it was difficult for me to accept the more emotionally vulnerable character he was depicting so well in this film. I will have to make the time to watch this film again just to better appreciate the more delicate depth of it.

I just got out of seeing this and feel very disappointed. If this movie had come out a year or two after the original, then fans would be decrying it as a cheap, rushed sequel to cash in on the original. It's bewildering to see how they got the same result after all these years. The problem with it is it's too much of a sequel. If these were videogames, then this movie could be termed a mission pack DLC. It brings nothing new and the only way you could enjoy it is you want to feel nostalgic about the first movie while keeping your brain switched off. There's so much they could have done to make it a movie of the same level as the original, but whether out of reverence, or being chickenpoop, they've chosen to just rehash everything you've seen in the original Predator.

It's starts off very good and the characters are very well defined, with a solid cast. But they are not given enough to do, and only some sparse lines of camaraderie pass for character development and hence you don't get a feel for wanting to root for any of them to survive. Brody is solid with his role, but he is nothing to compare to Dutch. An Oscar wining actor, he is given nothing to do expect look hard. The rest of the cast is good too, but similarly wasted.

What really comes out bad are the predators themselves. This is the first proper sequel to the original and the alien villains of this movie still have the same features and flaws as before. The whole movie is a waste of potential, and the predators themself are indicative of this.

There are some very bad effects in one scene, and show what overall lacklustre effort went into it.

Good for a one time viewing, but I don't see myself coming back to it in the same way as the original. It's definitely better than the AvP movies, but still not good enough.

This movie has a very grandiose ambition of touching upon the hurt and disenchantment caused to people of a certain colour, who are mostly American by nationality. It also touches upon the self-alienation brought upon many by the events of September 9/11.

At the core of the movie is a story and a script with deep and universal symbolism with characters that represent innocence, mistrust and hope.

Caked over that promising central basis of the film is unfortunately a lot of bad direction, loose screenplay and a wholeheartedly bad, unnecessary and wretched use of music and emotional drama. What could have been a resoundingly powerful journey of poignant cinema, instead comes across as a commercial hijacking of sensitive issues.

At its heart, it is still a film with a positive message from the production company, but in terms of execution it shows all the limitations of the cast and crew behind it.

It is nevertheless a bold venture in it's scope of spelling out a genuine emphasis on the morals of unity and hope by weaving the different issues and obstacles depicted in the story into one cohesive whole that might take audiences a long time to be endeared to, on the same level as the previous films from Karan Johar.

The movie is in many ways similar to the main character, who can apparently learn to fix anything. He is a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. And as such, is the movie. There is too much scope on covering all the different issues, and not enough emphasis on a coherent narrative with steady characters.

There is none of the fun factor of the 90's Dharma movies. The music here is dry and dull, possibly to infer a sense of the austerity of the faith of the main character.

Overall, a movie not to be missed because the story here makes it unmissable. And that's a line which is too cheesy even for this movie.