Force Film Review

          We live in times when we celebrate violence.  It is perhaps a reiteration that art finally reflects life and truly cinema is a poor social platform to take the blame.  From living violence to celebrating is the paradigm shift.  Nishikant Kamat gives you an essay in unadulterated stylised dramatised misleadingly heroic violence.  There will be many who will gleefully lap it.  Cat calls and whistles aplenty could encourage the artistic satisfaction for a director who the other day gave us Mumbai Meri Jaan and promised even more with Dombivili Fast.

          I suspect that in the precincts of a physics where nothing succeeds like excess, and the grotesque are saluted, the film maker decides to get to a tested script (Khaka Khaka , Garshana..) The degree of acceptance of the other regional versions of the film is not going to be reflected this time.  That is for sure.

          To tell the story: it deals with ACP Yash (John) heading the Narcotics wing of the police.  He and his team crack the underbelly and just when they think it is all over and from Kenya to Hyderabad all is done and safe, two brothers from Hyderabad start operations and aggression. The brothers Reddy (Mukesh Rishi) and Vishnu (Vidyut Jamwal) go berserk. The toll is heavy.  The script swings between the blooming romance between Yash and Maya (Genelia) to the battle between the drug peddlers and the law agency.  Helping Yash are Atul (Monish Behl) his wife Swati (Sandhya Mridul) and a motley group of characters.  The detailed display of how you can chase, bash, destroy, rape, kill is essayed in the rest of the script drenched in gallons of ketchup and lost in high decibel noise.  Technology Salute.

          The film is wrong even from the delivery viewpoint.  The insipid Chemistry between Genelia and John is a huge undoing. Also people who have seen another version of the film are bound to compare the performances. Well truly John is no Surya and does not have a screen presence akin to Venkatesh.  Films of this kind depend largely on the central character.  Zanjeer would be long remembered for the pivot Bachchan was. Not John.  He just does not have it.  Why would a film maker choose a non actor for a role of this kind? Obviously the choice stems from a belief that the script requires a muscle body – even if he is a non actor.  The premise is defined and clear but it is also wrong. We are now resultantly witnessing a phase in out cinema where even Salman Khan can be inspirational.

          Slivered to bullet points the script leaves more for the action director (Allan Amin ) to deliver than the director.  To the credit of the film it must be grudgingly conceded that there is a lot of style and action.  An uninspired cast  mechanically delivers .  Even within the limited premise of such a film, so violent, so insensitive, so b.o. oriented, the end product could have been far better.  So callous to human sensitivity and indifferent to the craft of good cinema, the process is itself faulty when you choose the likes of John and Genelia as you principle stars. The task is arduous. The watching is a challenge. Force strangely for all the violence action and noise is insipid and a poor cause for entertainment.

L.Ravichander.