Hisss

Medium : Hindi
Starring : Mallika Sherawat, Irfan Khan, Divya Dutta
Director : Jennifer Chambers Lynch
Music : Alexander Von Bubenheim

She has not acted in many movies, the movie that told the story of illegal relationship itself made her popular, in a short span of her career of around seven years, she had done a movie opposite Kamal Hassan and even she got the chance to act in an English project by the Asian action hero Jackie Chan. She is none other than Mallika Sherawat who is notable through the movies like 'Murder', 'Dasavathaaram', 'Myth' etc. Recently I watched a trailer having the hollywood standard, featuring Mallika and the scenes showed that it is a different investigation thriller, the name of the movie was 'Hisss'. Those scenes can create an extra interest for any viewer.

The story starts with a foreigner suffering from brain cancer, reaching the thick forests with a group to collect the 'Naagmani', which can give him a long life. He captures a male snake. The female snake takes the form of a human being (Mallika Sherawat) and searches for her partner. She mingles with the society and kills those people who are nuisances to others by taking the form of a big snake. The police officer (Irfan Khan) is investigating the case. How the snake woman takes the revenge is shown in the end.

Mallika Sherawat has acted in the movie with out any dialogues. She has done almost a nude appearance to make the character more realistic, but her attempt had been wasted for such an unprofessional project. The costumes and the visual effects given for her character in some areas are ok. The reason for showing a past episode in the beginning is not known. The foreigner is behaving like a mad personality and kills those people who are working for him, which is not good to watch. His hindi dialogues are also not easy to follow. There is no logic in the story and the scenes are having no connections also. The editing is weak. The investigation scenes are also below average. The computer graphics featuring the snake shots are amateur. The chasing, song sung by the mother and daughter in law, the experiment done by the foreigner etc are those areas which will make you loose the temper.

A movie should not be made like this - 'Hisss' can be projected to substantiate such a fact. It happened in spite of many of the hollywood technicians who worked behind it.

Rating : 1.5 / 10

Knock Out

Medium : Hindi
Starring : Sanjay Dutt, Irfan Khan, Gulshan Grover, Sushanth Singh, Kangana Ranaut
Director : Manishankar
Music : Gauravdas Gupta, Atul Raninga and Sanjay Wandrekar (bg score)

It is time for another remake subject in hindi. The new bollywood movie 'Knock Out' is adapted from the english movie 'Phone Booth' starring Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland etc. The hindi version is directed by Manishankar, who gave movies like 'Rudraksh', '16 December', 'Tango Charlie' and 'Mukhbhiir'. Noen of them were hits and the director might have tried his luck this time, by remaking a psychological thriller from hollywood which happened in the beginning of this decade. It is produced by notable producer Ronnie Srewvala for UTV.

Tony Khosla (Irfan Khan) is an investment banker who lives with his wife and daughter. In a busy day, he reaches a public telephone booth to make some calls. As he was about to leave, the phone rings and the anonymous caller (Sanjay Dutt) on the other end tells him that he has got a gun which is right now pointed on Tony's head. To make belief, a couple of shots were even fired. The situation became tensed, thus a large crowd, police and the media gathered. The caller had told his demands and the situation forced Tony to act according to the instructions without leaving the phone booth. What were his demands and what Tony did are all shown in the rest of the portions.

A couple of months before, when I heard that 'Phone Booth' is going to be made in hindi as 'Knock Out', I doubted the possibility of a carbon copy happening here. The beauty and thrill of the english version is due to the fact that the caller is not shown till the end. In the remake, it all happened as I expected. In the beginning itself, the caller is shown as Sanjay Dutt and he is taking a revenge using Irfan Khan's character. Unlike from the original version, the character of Irfan khan is lacking a real identity. The impolite and dominating act by the person (Colin Farrell) just before entering the phone booth was good enough to justify the incidents that follows later, in the case of 'Phone Booth'.

The director had also not worked properly on the scripting side. Such a big incident that caused great media attention is only guarded by a small police team headed by an inspector (Sushanth Singh). The team is also shown as a watch men most of the time, such things should have been avoided. The transfer of an enormous amount of money while in the middle of a shoot-outs is not an unbelievable one. The happy reaction of the crowds hearing the good news through TV is also not an attractive sight. The continuity of the dialogue flow is broken at times. Some of the sequences involving Sanjay Dutt's character reminds us of the movie 'A Wednesday'.

Sanjay Dutt has done an excellent job, it is he who really drives the story which makes the audience in a curious mood. Irfan Khan and Kangan Ranaut, who are usually notable for stealing the shows, has not given their 100% on the performance side. Cinematographer Nataraj Subramanyam ('Love Aaj Kal', 'Jab We Met', 'Lafangey Parindey' fame) has given colorful visuals. Editor Chandan Arora has done his job well. The bg score given by Atul Raninga and Sanjay Wandrekar is good. Director Manishankar should have done more homework to make his job a prominet one.


Don't go for 'Knock Out' with an impression to see a thriller like 'Phone Booth'. It is good to get a dvd of the original version; if you can't, then you can try this remake version.


Rating : 6 / 10

Acid Factory

Medium : Hindi
Starring : Irfan Khan, Manoj Bajpayee, Fardeen Khan, Aftab Shivdasavani, Diya Mirza
Direction : Suparn Varma
Music : Amar Mohile (bgs), Bappa Lahiri, Shamir Tandon, Gouravdas Gupta


Last week when I saw few shots of the new hindi film in television, suddenly memories of some of the films came to my mind which I saw in the past years. 'Kaante', 'Musafir' and 'Zinda' - those who have seen these multi star cast films should know that they all belong to the same category due to the difference in its script and presentation. The greenish color tone of those films made them unique; moreover the man behind those films, director Sanjay Gupta has come up with his new film. It is named 'Acid Factory', but here he is in the role of the producer. Suparn Varma, who has directed 'Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena and had written films like 'Qayamat', 'Zameen' etc is in the director here. He has also followed the same pattern of making, that can give the feel and flavor of a hollywood movie. The script written by the producer and the director combination, is also different.


You don't have any super stars acted in this film, but you are having a big casting in the form of many notable names like Irfan Khan, Manoj Bajpayee, Fardeen Khan, Aftab Shivdasavani, Danny Denzongpa, Dino Morea, Diya Mirza etc. As the previous projects, here also the story is told in an action background with a good suspense. The majority of incidents happens inside a single location. Even then the creators have succeeded in presenting the movie without boring. In short the film is about the story of few persons who got stuck up in a location where they have lose their identity for few hours.


I am not going into the detail regarding the theme. As I told earlier, the film is technical brilliant in all its aspects; especially in the cinematography, editing and the grading (output color) area. I heard that 'Acid factory' is inspired from the Hollywood movie 'Unknown'. (Though some people are against such a custom and will make fun of it, I will totally support the remake subjects. The reason is simple; those who are not ready to or not getting a chance to watch the best from english / other language films will get a chance from such remakes).


Cinematography by Sahil Kapoor , Background score by Amar Mohile (he usually works for Ramgopal Varma's films) and the fast direction by Suparn Varma are some of the names behind this which is to be noted.


Those who love action films can watch 'Acid Factory' which is created differently, in a thrilling way.


Rating : 7.5 / 10