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| Director
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Ken Ghosh |
| Starring
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Fardeen Khan, Kareena Kapoor,
Shahid Kapur, Kim Sharma, Akhilendra Mishra |
| Fida
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At
a time when an out-and-out conventional love triangle
"Mujhse Shaadi Karoge" has the nation giggling
in helpless submission, Ken Ghosh dares to innovate
with a slick thriller that moves at breakneck speed
to end at just under two hours.
Ghosh's film is a triumphant
home-coming for Hindi cinema where any film under 180
minutes is automatically taken to be a 'songless' thriller
("Ittefaq" in 1969 and "Bhoot" in
2003 are two successful examples).
"Fida" is
short, crisp and compelling without losing on commercial
value. It has loads of Anu Malik's zip-in-zip-out songs,
tonnes of glamour (Kareena and Fardeen in a bath-tub
as bubbles of all kinds blow across the film's giddy
frame), a dash of oomph (Kim Sharma, doing a short-skirt
big-pout version of Karisma Kapoor in "Dil To Pagal
Hai") and slick production replete with eye-catching
locales, yatches, sports cars...the works.
But, above all "Fida"
has chutzpah. Ken Ghosh, who made a minor ripple at
the boxoffice with his debut "Ishq Vishq",
is in a mood here to reverse many of the rules of formula
filmmaking. There's no conventional lead pair or a 'Good
Versus Evil' format to sustain the battle.
"Fida" is
all about contemporary avarice and amorality. The three
main characters are all dispossessed creatures driven
single-mindedly by worldly passions. They all want to
own the best things in life - and what's wrong with
that? Except - and this is where Ghosh slips - their
means of acquiring their dreams makes them ruthlessly
self serving.
Ghosh is a clever raconteur.
His storytelling, though sporadically stymied by glaring
loopholes, moves sinuously through the lives of his
three characters, all playing a sinister and dangerous
game that finally destroys their lives - collectively
and individually.
The narrative is high-pitched,
though blessedly devoid of hysteria. There are no snivelling
sisters, no martyred mothers and bravura fathers.....
gosh! where do Ghosh's protagonists come from?! The
plot doesn't say so either. What the characters do with
their lives in this ambition-driven thriller is of far
more consequence than their antecedents.
The razor-edged plot cuts like a knife, slicing through
restless on-the-edge lives. "Interesting...very
interesting," says Vikram (Fardeen Khan) playing
a computer hacker who's too clever for his good, after
the desperate lover-boy Jai (Shahid Kapur) tells his
story. Jai is being led on by the bountifully beauteous
Neha (Kareena Kapoor). By the time her scheme of things
materializes in the rapidfire motions of Ghosh's narration,
it's too late for any of the characters-or for that
matter the director - to turn back.
"Fida" is
the sort of tumbling, cascading catch-your-breath-if-you-can
thriller-on-the-run that could go wrong any second.
Ken Ghosh's split-second timing and perfectly cast set
of actors, not to mention a soundtrack that's saturated
but never cluttered with edge-of-the-seat strategies,
ensure an attentive audience.
The term 'edge-of-the-seat'
(no matter how frayed) seems to have been invented for
this occasion. The compelling narration is propelled
forward by the performances. Fardeen is effortlessly
suave as the scheming hacker. As for Kareena, after
"Chameli" and "Dev" earlier this
year, she evolves further as an actress.
Playing a designer version
of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, Kareena goes from artless
seduction to heartless greed, to guilt pangs and finally
remorseless surrender to her baser instincts. In the
sequences depicting her moral degeneration Kareena,
echoing Shabana Azmi in a long-forgotten film "Log
Kya Kahenge", resembles Meryl Streep.
The film marks the coming-of-age
of not just the director but also his leading man. Conveying
the besotted misdemeanours of a desperate lover, Shahid
Kapur reveals surprisingly hidden depths of sensitivity.
Yup, he could grow into a substantial talent, provided
he watches his steps.
The film does just that,
until the incongruously manufactured climax where Kareena
is tied to a mammoth church bell by the sleazy underworld
don Akhilendra Mishra (playing the most over-the-top
gangster ever seen on screen) while the two warring
men in her life come together just once to rescue her.
So finally it's
love and not moolah that makes Ghosh's snarled and seductive
world go around. The over-stylised climax and the feebly
idealistic ending do their bit to damage the leaps that
"Fida" takes over the boundary walls of the
formula fortress. What the compromises cannot kill are
the film's inbuilt insouciant plot-construction and
gloriously grey-to-black characterizations.
Courtesy
: Glamsham.com
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