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Film:
"Big Brother"; Cast: Sunny Deol , Priyanka Chopra , Farida Jalal, Sayaji
Shinde, Danny Denzongpa, Govind Namdeo; Director: Guddu Dhanoa; Rating:
* The
best part of Guddu Dhanoa's delayed eruption of exacerbated violence is
the Sultan Khan-Zubin Garg music video played with the end titles.
But by then it's too late.
Assorted
villains appear in various stages of this cut-n-paste bone-crusher.
They represent various phases in the narrative's gasping, wheezing
existence. They also try to cover up for the film's outdated pre-"Lage
Raho Munna Bhai" thesis of social justice.
Sunny Deol still
throws a mind-boggling punch. This is a film where Sunny's legendary
punches go a lot deeper. Goons, who throw acid on hapless girls' faces,
are buried alive in the sand with one punch.
Wanna one-way
ticket to dhoom-filled doon? Check out the rapes, murders, lynching and
looting in "Big Brother", you could fall over your chair just hearing
the hyper-strung insistent and cacophonic soundtrack that qualifies the
constant search for brute force.
The film has two seamless
halves done as an ode to the spirit of the vigilante. The hero,
ironically named Gandhi, believes in a high for a high and an uncouth
for an uncouth.
The narrative is plastered with reporters
pressing microphones into our hero's face until he doesn't know where
to look. Certainly, not the mirror where Sunny would have seen two
looks that the plot has given him - one with a dishevelled wig and the
other with a more manageable hairpiece.
In both cases Sunny
towers over the proceedings. Surprisingly, the second-most important
character is mama Farida Jalal, whose one stern twitch drives Sunny boy
into a wild orgy of revenge.
Priyanka, though hardly there,
wears her middle class saris and coy glances with surprising aplomb and
a look of respectful detachment. She has been better photographed here
than in all her other recent films.
Among the villains Sayaji
Shinde has the best lines. And he uses his cheesy character to butter
up the dry script, giving us a kind of running commentary on the trite
conventions of Hindi cinema, mocking them while using them to carry the
creaking saga forward.
The noise level and the constant harping
on violent means to get even with anti-socials makes you wonder which
is worse - the malaise or the cure. Either way, "Big Brother" is only
recommended for those who are die-hard fans of the Guddu Dhanoa-Sunny
Deol pair.
The less said about the clamorous bhangra and other item songs, the better.
By Subhash K. Jha, Indo-Asian News Service
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