Boom

I had earlier seen Bombay boys by Kaizad Gustad, hence this prompted me to rent out the video for Boom. The name itself is pretty unusual for a bollywood movie and the cast is the best that bollywood has to offer. Jackie as "Medium" again shows Jackie's potential as a versatile actor and Javed Jaffery as "Boom Shankar" is his usual eccentric self. No wonder Kaizad decided to name the movie over his character, Javed Jaffery lends the comical edge to the otherwise dark-sided movie. 3 gangsters bade, chote and medium rule the fashion industry helped by boom shankar. In a world where everyone is being terrorised by the 3 brothers 3 models are forced to work for them. Taking advantage of their beauty and charms, supplemented by their utter distrust of each other and aided by Boom shanker - these 3 models fool everyone including Boom shankar himself. Madhu Sapre along with the Kaif lend the bitchish touch the models character, showing why beauty is skindeep. As expected this movie was treated like a shocker by the indian cinema houses, because by any bollywood standard this movie is ground breaking. For the simple reason that it does not follow the nuances of a commercial bollywood film and follows on Quinton Tarantino's path i vote this movie as a must see for every hindi film critic.

I think Boom is a very weird film for Bollywood.'cause the Bollywood audience is not ready for a film like this.It contains too much vulgarity. If it had nudity the movie might be accepted 'cause it does have some pretty faces.But even the pretty faces,excellent performer like Amitabh, Jackie, Gulshan & Javaid, and great visuals could not save this Diamond bubble of a movie,which just burst with a BOOM.(Pun Intended).The ending although had a nice twist but was very stupid.An actor like Amitabh shouldn't have signed a movie like this.Jackie looked like he had been watching The Untouchables & Scarface while shooting for this movie.Zeenat Aman had no role to talk of.Bo Derak Was a joke.She was there for even less then 30 seconds.The models acting was like wooden,Xcept Madhu Sapre,who was just passable.So who should see movie ?.Well definitely not the family audiences.Only Die Hard fans of the cast members should see this movie, and even they would feel cheated as the big names have the smaller roles.

Gustad is a lucky director in that he got to do a big film after the mediocre Bombay Boys. For Boom he got the likes of Bachan, Shroff, Zeenat Amaan et al and had the deep pockets to shoot at Burj Al Arab and pretty much wherever he wanted in India and Dubai. He also had the names of Bo Derek and Padma Lakshmi (Salman Rushdie's model girlfriend) to play up in the marketing campaign... and what did he do with all this! He sank it all.

He has three cuties in the cast who are raring to bare it all, and did quite often; he got tremendous performances from the lower league actors, Gulshan Grover and specially Javed Jaffrey; there's the ever sellable cocktail of sex, drugs and money; and despite everything there ARE quite a few laughs in the film. So what went wrong?

The story. Or rather the lack of it. It seems Gustad was shooting on random notes rather than a script. The result is a series of shots - some beautiful, sexy and very funny, others irrelevant or incomprehensible, or both - put together in a jumpy fashion, and served up with a lot of glitter to make it look like a feature film. Sound levels are particularly bad, and some of the dialogue is lost either in strange accents the actors are putting on, or in the sound quality. Seems like the flick was only intended to be watched, not heard.

I watched the movie against many an advice, but I'd like to recommend it to all those who are interested in movies. Just to guage how so much can be squandered to produce so little, if for no other reason.

Boom was a great concept with a great soundtrack. The publicity was great and of course what a great title. The title track with Ila Arun/Talvin Singh saved some of the film.

It seemed that most of the film was shot in daylight, which already compromises the dramatic quality of the film. The director used master shots with wide lenses, which again compromises drama and character build up. It seemed that the script was so loose that nothing seemed to stick. There were no character arcs and the movie came to an abrupt end. Even if violence and flesh are the idea, there are ways to make it tantalizing and provide for tension. Moreover Kaizad's characters were not believable because he spent little time on each with very limited staging. If a character spends all his time in one room, or doing just one thing, we cannot be too interested in him. What we call 'Emotional Dynamics'.

The motivation was missing, why were the Dons after the models, when they didnt have the Diamonds? The limited locations and bright sunlight really dampened the quality of the film. The only dramatic light was with the Shroff character. The film had tremendous potential and a great concept in the making but I guess they were in hurry to get the film made.

I think Kaizad is a passionate filmmaker who has the guts to break new ground, but in doing that, it is not wise to try and break all the basic rules of story telling.

This movie was absolutely repulsive. I don't know why stalwarts Amitabh and Zeenat chose to act in such a movie. The direction is completely pathetic. All the actors are just rambling on whatever is in the "script" and are making no sense whatsoever. They are mumbling jibber-jabbish, for a lack of anything better to do, that contain random multi-syllable English words in an effort to sound Western. Random scenes of sex and violence are dropped in, and continuous use of vulgar language (like every sentence has f... in it) is used hoping to attract people to the theaters. Money has been wasted on the most ridiculous things, such as using 400 carats of real diamonds, paying for accommodations in the world's most expensive hotel, and a special appearance by Bo Derek. What is she doing in this movie? She is in it for not more than five seconds. Oh, I think someone forgot the story. The "plot" has so many loopholes that it isn't supposed to make sense. You're just supposed to watch the sex and enjoy listening to the f-word. Whoever made this movie is a perverted psychopath. He is trying his movie to look Hollywood, and as a result, looks like a complete idiot.