Garv Movie Review
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| Director
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Puneet Issar |
| Starring
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Salman Khan, Arbaaz Khan,
Shilpa Shetty, Akansha, Amrish Puri, Govind
Namdeo, Farida Jalal, Mukesh Rishi, Anupam
Kher and Shivaji Satam |
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Every component of "Garv"
is designed to get the masses into a foam-and-fume-filled
frenzy. Every sequence in debutant director Puneet Issar's
film ends with a double exclamation mark.
Every massy filmmaker
from Prakash Mehra to Iqbal Durrani gets close to the
people's pulse by tapping the basest instincts in the
audience. Issar gets down to basics double quick. "Garv"
doesn't waste time in establishing the cop-hero as the
rebel without a pause!
The main actor gets
an across-the-board monopolistic up-close-and-personal
treatment by the script much like the angry-young-man
anti-establishment Amitabh Bachchan films of the 1970s
and 80s. "Garv" harks back with arrogant pride
to the most illustrious action-potboilers of those times.
Its tone of presentation,
treatment of characters and hysterically rabblerousing
projection of socio-political values must be evaluated
in the context of Prakash Mehra's "Zanjeer"
and Manmohan Desai's "Coolie" rather than
the politics savvy cinema of today like "Dev"
and "Yuva".
Like "Zanjeer", the seething cop in the driver's
seat cannot come to terms with the rot around him.
Salman's Arjun is a
direct descendent of Bachchan's Vijay. The difference
lies not in the concept of heroism but the changing
face of villainy.
While "Zanjeer"
had smuggler Ajit operating deviously from his den with
his Mona Darling (Bindu), the kingpin in "Garv"
is a don from Dubai (Mukesh Rishi) who controls everything,
from the film industry to the politics in Mumbai.
The similarities to
a certain Dawood Ibrahim aren't just intentional. They
give the malice-element in the masala a certain edge.
Issar takes a bird's
eye view of terrorism-related issues such as the isolation
of the Indian Muslim.
So far Salman has largely
been seen doing romantic eye candy with dark overtones
emerging in his last film "Tere Naam". "Garv"
is his first headlong plunge into populist cinema.
As the cop who takes
on the corrupt, Khan goes for the jugular, dropping
his voice to a threatening whisper, taking on the scum
of the earth with that characteristic sneer of contempt.
In the sequence where
his colleagues interrogate him after he kills a notorious
pimp in an encounter, Salman is delightfully sarcastic.
His performances are
becoming increasingly fine-tuned. His physical and emotional
restrain countermands the monstrous excesses of the
villainous brigade.
Govind Namdeo as the
corrupt Maharashtrian chief minister Trivedi seems to
be on the verge of a paralytic stroke. Do we have to
give such a sickeningly overblown spin to villainy?
Even Anupam Kher as
a debased lawyer - his sleazy arguments against the
hero in the courtroom have to be heard to be believed
- turns on the hysterical mode full force.
For some badly needed
self-control, there's Amrish Puri cast in the appealing,
idealistic role of Salman's senior and later his defence
lawyer.
While the arch-villains
and their henchmen occupy whatever space Salman allots
them, Arbaaz as his comrade gets surprisingly ample
footage, including a long shootout where he eliminates
explosives as though they were a heap of Diwali crackers.
Incongruities, such
as long song breaks with bar dancer girlfriend Shilpa
Shetty, take the edge away from Salman's performance.
And to watch a serious no-nonsense cop break into a
jig with Shilpa in an orange dhoti, requires nerves
of steel.
Shilpa provides the
song breaks. The fact that she dances like the wind,
helps give her role a spatial rhythm. But the item song
by another starlet is downright vulgar.
The film editor creates
a hullabaloo of suspense around the question, what happened
to the hero's sister while we were busy watching him
fight the baddies? She gets raped.
Hasn't the hero's
sister been subjected to this indignity from the time
Hindi cinema was invented? To create intrigue out of
this moth-balled convention shows the director's naïve
confidence in generating excitement out of the weather-worn.
Courtesy
: Glamsham.com
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