Thursday, January 26, 2012

Movie Review: 'Agneepath'


Email from Karan Johar

To Karan Malhotra

Subject: Top Secret recipe for the success of ‘Agneepath’

Instructions: Take 5 ounces of blood , 4 kilos of makeup, 3 ounces of Cheddar cheese, 2 ounces of Blue cheese, 1 ounce of Feta cheese, 4 blue screens, 3 villains, 1 finely built shirtless hero, 1 item number. Mix everything together and half bake it. Avoid insignificant ingredients like innovation, likeable characters and intrigue. Sautee with 300 plot holes. Add kitsch for (bad) taste. Serve blockbuster chilled. 

Agneepath, Karan Johar’s remake (read: cheesy vulgarisation) of the cult classic Amitabh Bachchan movie of the same name is a labor of love that reminds you that love is blind. The 1990 film was a B-movie to begin with, and this putrid remake wears its contempt on its sleeve. Agneepath is in fact not even a remake, it’s a ‘reimagining’ and it feels like watching a below average 90’s Telugu gangster action film where all the characters speak in Hindi. Director Karan Malhotra’s debut sits in a patch somewhere between a shameless cash grab and a callow vanity project.  What is certain though, is that the film is compulsively horrible and full of unintentionally hilarious OTT drama.

A sane writer would’ve strangled all the characters 30 minutes into the film, but then Agneepath would have ended too soon. It’s been 20 years since Big B’s remake of Scarface released, but there is not a shred of freshness to be found in the new Agneepath. The movie leaves absolutely nothing whatsoever for the viewer to digest - Mr Johar and co just offer a frozen dead cadaver of Bollywood tripe and expect it to be reheated by paying audiences who can find nothing else in their fridges to snack on. It's hard to say what's worse, the film's utter lack of entertainment value or the unabashed condescension towards its viewers. 

The story remains the same, but when you have big stars like Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Sanjay Dutt and an item song from Katrina Kaif, why do you even need a story? Mega baddie Kancha Cheena (Sanjay Dutt, looking like Uncle Fester) descends upon the town of Mandwa to turn it into a drug haven. A schoolteacher (Chetan Pandit) who dares to oppose him is framed and hung to death. The man’s son, Vijay Dinanath Chauhan (Hrithik Roshan) joins forces with the high profile rival gangster Rauf Lala (Rishi Kapoor) and plots revenge against Kancha.

But none of this is interesting, new or arresting in any way - the film keeps throwing melodrama and songs and just trudges unbearably on for almost 3 hours as a how-to manual for budding migraine-fetishists.  Agneepath is completely devoid of humour, and there isn’t a single memorably witty line of dialogue, save for the deadpan Sanju Baba quips. Not even the love story between Vijay (Hrithik) and Kaali (Priyanka) manages to divert from the boredom. In fact few Bollywood movies have ever asked audiences to care for couples as repugnant and irredeemable as Vijay and Kaali. 

During all this atrocity we are treated with plot holes that can let a tiptoeing Woolly Mammoth through.

- Vijay attacks Kancha’s lair by carefully placing and detonating big bombs, but refuses to carry a simple pistol to overpower the villain, and gets beaten to pulp.              

- Vijay stages an assassination attempt on Rauf Lala’s son and takes a bullet to his own shoulder. Why? To get in Lala’s good books? Then why make a speech about not needing either of them?

- Kancha’s lair is guarded day and night by dozens and dozens of his armed henchmen around the coast, so how does Vijay, carrying all those firearms moor his boat and sneak past all of them?

- When Vijay is 12-years-old, he refuses to hand Lala over to the cops – and that angers his mother so much that she abandons him. But 15 years later when Vijay is busy taking revenge and Lala’s life, she screams at him to let him go – despite the fact that Lala a few minutes ago had prostituted her own daughter.

There are many more gems but recounting them all would be spoilerish and rather painful. Oh but how can you consider plotholes in a masala movie, you say? KJo and his team had twenty years to iron out the kinks from the story, and the fact that it is even more ludicrous and less believable than the 1990 version says a lot. 

The performances range from great (Hrithik) to good (Sanju Baba and Rishi Kapoor) to horrendous (Deven Bhojani) to hilariously awful (Om Puri). Hrithik Roshan growls, kicks, punches, laughs, weeps, sweats, bleeds – he gives it his all, but he is sadly eclipsed by the overall stupidity of the film. There isn’t much he can do to leverage his star power to avoid the embarrassment. A smart, talented and versatile actress, Priyanka Chopra for some reason believed in this film’s merits before she signed on. It is sad to realise that her turn in Agneepath is not a highlight but a terrible misstep in her glowing career. Uncle Fester Sanju Baba clearly has more fun than the audience, as does Rishi Kapoor in his lecherous role, but neither of them are as suave or threatening as Danny Denzongpa. Om Puri is screen poison, uninteresting in every way.

Agneepath is a tedious, worthless mass of filth and an absolute insult to both Scarface and Big B’s 1990 recreation. Its only redeeming quality is that it reminds us of the things that used to be so much fun about bad 90’s movies.






(First published in MumbaiBoss)


54 comments:

  1. Didnt expect you to call Hrithik and Priyanka great actors fer sure !!

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  2. srk wud hav been a better choice for vijay chauhan, only he cam give big b a close fight

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  3. yes the movie was very boring, srk charisma cud hav made this muvie better, he is the most versatile actor after big b, swdes,chak de india, ddlj,kabhi haa kabhi naa,don are the best examples of it

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  4. hahahahahahhaha! I died laughing reading this thanks for saving my money once again Mihir :)

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  5. Forget the movie, the poster reeks of steroids, collagen, botox, and coke!

    And geezzzz fat lips! Take a break from those surgeries, will ya!

    P.S. Yes, the movie was a total crapfest!

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  6. Agneepath is a good movie...and again Mihir ji gave it poor rating..Now it is historically and universally true that before watching a movie go by Mihir Ji's review..The poorer the rating,the better the movie it is.Thanks Mihir Ji
    :-))))

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  7. Are you serious, man? Even you think a movie has plot holes, you shouldn't give away major plot points in a movie review. You are spoiling the movie for those who haven't seen it yet.

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  8. As usual another fodutodu review from Mihir. Made my day. Thanks for the entertaining review dude........ I am sure agneepath is not as fun as this review

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  9. Dear Mihir Ji,

    please stop comparing everything with some Highly Overrated tall actor's movie who also produced innumerable craps....and don't misuse your power/position to guide us in wrong direction.

    hereby quoting some wise man's comment:

    "Personal Likes/Dislikes should take backseat while reviewing a movie.Review is not the place for venting frustration. "

    In fact I personally don't consider you even as a reviewer, Because u do not follow the ethics of review. I just read your blogs for making fun of it.


    "If You are a reviewer and you keep on live-tweeting the Story of the movie from Preview screening,U r nothing but a Dickhead" !

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  10. thanks you saved my money.. frankly, u r the only sane movie critic left out here.. thanks for the good work.. and nevermind the bashers, they are salman-lovers or SRK-lovers, whose understanding for a gr8 movie is Bodyguard etc..

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  11. Mihir Ji is fond of Live-tweeting the story also. and he is so Unbiased reviewer that he can tell you "Wacth my TL for Live rape of the movie" even before seeing the movie. ROFL

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  12. ha ha ha ha you call those plot points?

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  13. Best opening para of a review ever!!!!!!!!!!! Hilarious!!

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  14. I liked the tiptoeing woolly mammoth bit more :D :D

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  15. Someone thinks SRK is a better actor than Hrithik. This is going in my Big Book of Jokes.

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  16. Someone thinks SRK is a better actor than Hrithik. This is going in my Big Book of Jokes.

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  17. caliing oneself a critic is one thing having an opinion is another;worst review i have ever heard.....laughing over it.....haveu watched the movie even ??

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  18. Your reviews make for a fun read. But you don't expect us to take you seriously when week after week you come up what look like biased rants,do you? Not liking a movie is one thing, but deliberately bashing mainstream cinema just because you've contempt for it is bad. Frankly, its very easy to predict your reviews easily by just seeing your tweets preceding a movies release.
    I personally like your hollywood reviews/movie reccos better.

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  19. And not everyone who disagrees with you is a troll, btw.

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  20. Abhinav, I don't deliberately bash mainstream cinema, I bash lousy cinema, be it commercial/indie/Hollywood/Bollywood/Tollywood/World Cinema. In fact I was the only guy who came up with a list of TEN good Hindi films of 2011 - and most of them were commercial. Peace.

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  21. how can u 'listen' to a review? u have sum high tech special speakers?

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  22. Been waiting for your Agneepath rvw since reading your Players rvw. Love your writing style and scathing humour

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  23. You got fired by Mid-day within a week?

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  24. TROLLOL he writes Hollywood reviews for Middday but I feel he should do Bollywood reviews for them too

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  25. He @Mihirfadnavis is a Real Owner of @BollywoodGandu The Biggest enemy of celebrities on twitter! #Troll #Fact

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  26. True. He @Mihirfadnavis is also a Real Owner of @priyankachopra and @sonamakapoor! #Fact #Youaregenius #Whydontyoubecomeadetective #omg #Areyousingle?

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  27. Plotholes than can let a tiptoeing wooly mammoth through!! hahahahahahaha!!!

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  28. '..the film's utter lack of entertainment value or the unabashed condescension towards its viewers'

    And this tweet from you isn't condescending at all :

    'Really, if ya tell me that Agneepath is more entertaining than Haywire or more satisfying than Descendants, then ya deserve to be ridiculed.' :)

    I am okay with you picking on the plot holes but shouldn't there be some uniformity? There were numerous plot holes in MI:4 too but you chose to gloss over them. They were gaping plot holes. 1 star? That's a bit harsh considering the movie keeps you engaged for most of it's duration especially when Hrithik/Rishi are on screen. And I agree with Abhinav, anyone with half a brain can predict how your review (or for that matter,Raja sen's) if they follow you on twitter. It's clear you don't care about bollywood movies(very few movies) so why bother reviewing them? I prefer your reviews of English movies. While reading your Hindi reviews it's almost like you have an allergy against Big Bollywood productions and you go in with a pre-conceived notion. Disappointing review.

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  29. Dear Pradyumna, I don't charge Rs 300 for my tweets. And regarding plot holes, please read the review. Cheers.

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  30. Before watching Agneepath, i was little doubtful about the movie that it couldn't be so bad. Alas yes, it is. Completely agreed with every point/word/line that you wrote about the movie, it deserves even more than this. And i want to add the background music part to your review, it was as bad as hell. This movie is the epic hail of 174 min. Keep it up man, you are the best critic i know.

    P.S - Remaking a movie is not a bad idea, but not to try making it relevant with the present is the worst mess that you can do to the original one. (even when you are presenting the movie in present time)

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  31. Before watching Agneepath, i was little doubtful about the movie that it couldn't be so bad. Alas yes, it is. Completely agreed with every point/word/line that you wrote about the movie, it deserves even more than this. And i want to add the background music part to your review, it was as bad as hell. This movie is the epic hail of 174 min. Keep it up man, you are the best critic i know.

    P.S - Remaking a movie is not a bad idea, but not to try making it relevant with the present is the worst mess that you can do to the original one. (even when you are presenting the movie in present time)

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  32. Hmnn......the review opening reminds me of a certain Dhoom 2 review written by a certain someone......but....very well done Sir

    It got the treatment it deserved.

    - you know who

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  33. Sending the khoka maal as I type :) *wink*

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  34. Pwned is the right word to describe this superb post.

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  35. i read this review before watching it today,but trust me.
    it turned out to be worse than what you've written.
    this deserves everykind of thrashing possible.

    sanjay dutt looked like thodanga :villian from nagraj's comics.
    what a let down!
    the only good thing:- the tehelka poster.shom shom shaame shaaa shaaaaaa

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  36. What are you? His paid blog replying assistant?

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  37. U r right..he should stop reviewing BW movies,specially masala movies..btw,who cares?Agneepath is being liked by audience and broke all records...

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  38. i assume you watch atleast dozen movies in a week (most of them Hollywood). After watching those high budget intelligent movies these hindi movies became easy bashing for people like you. I recommend u should stop reviewing Hindi movies. OR review them as a point of view of a person who watches one or two movies in a fortnight for fun sake.

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  39. Don't know which is more sad, that such films are releasing, or the fact that Subconciously-brainwashed by the media/marketing audience! If the same public, or atleast the half of them do not turn up for 'Gangs of Wasseypur', then perhaps the 12/12/12 apocalypse is a fitting end.

    P.S. - People are starting to hate you Mihir. Congrats, you are getting famous!

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  40. i was very much eager to watch Agneepath...but after reading this i am having second thought at it

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  41. Awesome review ! Agree with you completely ! The noobs who liked this movie don't know a shit about what story and script is all about ! Give them 1 fucked up skimpily dressed actress' item number and they all love the movie ! Please get a life, audience !

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  42. I feel sad for those who even can't understand plot holes, this movie is the museum of plot holes.

    1)Why Vijay out of the blue, after 15 years makes move to get control over Mumbai? and goes to see Mandwa so that Kancha can torture him? So that Rauf Lala (Rishi Kapoor) will know about everything?

    Ans_To become powerful so that in the end Kancha can kick the shit out of him.

    2)Whether Vijay stays in red light area or common man chawl.If it is a common man chawl then why Kaali (Priyanka) wears saree in sultry way?

    Ans_ It is the another way to become chickeni chameli.

    3)Vijay's mother and sister goes to police station when they see their old gaonwala was killed, to meet Om puri, why?

    Ans_don't think stupid, its a plot hole.

    4) Have you seen Vijay's sister at his wedding? specially when shootout happens?

    Ans_ She was shooting for 'fair n lovely' ad.

    5) why there is mentally retarded character in the movie? Rauf Lala's younger son?

    Ans_ Story is not enough to pass retardness to viewers.

    6) What exactly villagers do, when Kancha is about to hang Vijay?

    Ans_ Karan Malhotra to Kiran Deohans (DOP) "they are out of the frame, they are not important"

    7)A frame wasted for plain "15 years later" subtitle,guess what,in the very next scene,Hrithik comes to play Dahi Handi

    Ans_Height of Spoon feeding.

    8) Really? Do you need more?

    Ans_Yes, because I came empty handed, and now I'm leaving empty handed,
    (Yeah , I have done that hand j** in between)

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  43. Just a question: when did Priyanka Chopra last get a decent movie? I think her last one was probably Kaminey.
    Also, well you do write well. I just feel that you could reduce your expletive and curse usage, and focus more on the movie details. But, your reviews are mostly good. :)
    Take care.

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  44. Nah, your "cursive" words are who you are. Good article.

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  45. Had i known of this review, i would have mentioned u in my tweet:
    "@Archi_palego Forget the critics: they never get tired of over-analysis. Just go and watch #Agneepath"

    Personally i liked the movie, yet this hate review has been a pleasure to read. Following u on twitter :)

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  46. people claimed that u try to be different to gain attention but I agree with you most of times.

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  47. Right! So Mihir goes about bashing others but does not have the gaand mei dum to leave replies bashing him as is. What a joke to see my reply deleted just coz it bashed Mihir. If you do not have the dignity to take abuse, do not abuse others.

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  48. Tu chutiya hai be. If Mahesh Bhatt were to offer you an opportunity to write a screenplay you would be giving blowjobs to him and writing flowery reviews of Murder 2.

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  49. Mr Johar and co just offer a frozen dead cadaver of Bollywood tripe and expect it to be reheated by paying audiences who can find nothing else in their fridges to snack on.....

    ...True, True brother. Be careful when u mention about the Johars and the chopras & the khans they own the film industry. They simply prepare what ever dish that comes to their twisted minds and we their ever faithful audience are there to always gobble it up! right???!!?>

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  50. Rediff and other so called popular sites were singing laurels, one after another about this good for nothing, poorly casted pathetic excuse of a movie.

    .... Such faithful CHAMCHAAS of u know who! this is our industry so biased, according to them what ever Karan Johar or Yash chopra or SRK makes is bound to be a hit!, god we are in hell!!

    Today i feel Ram gopal varmas AAG was definietly a far underrated remake.

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  51. Agree with each of the points mentioned. My 2 cents here http://moviehysterics.blogspot.in/2012/02/agneepath.html

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