When I first heard the title Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai, the first thing that came to my mind was ofcourse the film Once Upon A Time In Mexico of the El Mariachi and Desperado series directed by Robert Rodriguez. To an extent I liked those films for the pure entertainment they provided. But Once Upon Time In Mumbaai is absolutely no comparison. One of my friends, a fellow film critic, was absolutely correct in stating that Ekta Kapoor (producer) did nothing but make a 3 hour extended K serial.
The story is set in 1993 where a police officer fails to commit suicide and relates his reasons to his senior. He takes us back into an 18 year flashback to the time when the streets and waters of Mumbai are controlled by the underworld and in particular by Sultan Mirza, a righteous smuggler who loves the city and keeps peace among the city's underworld but subletting areas to different mafia groups of the city, he himself controlling the seafront and thus bringing in material to be smuggled. He is lovesmitten by Rehana, a beautiful actress who he wins over by his charms. A parallel story runs in the form of Shoaib Khan, the son of a police officer, a small time criminal who is bailed out by his father every now and then. The two stories merge when Shoaib becomes too much of a headache for his father and is put under the guidance of Sultan. He rises through the ranks and wins Sultan's respect and thus power in the underworld. However the difference in opinions between Sultan's puritanical ways and Shoaib's hunger for power cause their paths to split.
The film is flawed beyond measure. The drama is overplayed to the point of death. The acting may be commendable but easily reminds of other veteran actors, leaving no originality from the part of the artist. The dialogues are extremely dramatic, terribly metaphorical and outrageously exaggerated. The constant burn effect on the edges of the frame with the brightness effect in the centre of the frame caused the actors and their shining white clothing to shine but easily caused headaches to some audience members. Another defect would be the concrete cobbled streets which were not in existence in the 1970's. Overall terribly made and badly flawed film.
Watching this film would be an utter waste of money on counts of travel and ticket. You can argue that your snacks and some entertainment would satisfy you, but I suggest doing the same in another movie screening.
There's no way you can connect El Mariachi series with Once Upon... Those were hardboiled action ficks and Once Upon.. is 'supposed to be' mafia film. Anyways it does make sense when you say that it was just a prejudice. It was a good review but I just wished that you'd enlightened a bit on the screenplay, acting & technical aspects. For example the continuity was horrendously at its worst end in the railway tracks sequence in the first half.
ReplyDeleteOne a whole it was way far better than Khalid Mohamed's review who had wasted a space of 900 words talking nothing relevant to the film.
http://passionforcinema.com/once-upon-a-time-in-mumbaai-movie-reviewhaji-na-ji-haji-na-ji/
Good one. Looking forward for your future ramblings.
Cheers.
-Yash Singh
I believe that Ekta Kapoor was one lady that took Indian homes away from normal basic way of living life and showed them something that was so unreal that once her era of soaps ended she couldn't stop but crib about it and make similar movies which all those addicted people would watch.
ReplyDeleteOnce Upon A Time In Mumbai is just one such of her experiment that has managed to stay in minds of people as the controversy that runs around it is linked with the mafia and the publicity done for the movie is huge.
Now this may make people go for it once but showing such stuff about Mumbai just creates a fake "Mumbai" in minds of people watching it, as once done watching this movie people would associate Mumbai as a place where mafia rules over the government and a person can kill another on the road at any instance if he is linked to the mafia.
i suggest Ekta Kaopor starts making movies that are more realistic and do not have the typical daily soaps effect in them!
Good Work
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Aalam...-
Hey guys thanks for the comments. I did mention a little about the technical aspect and the acting. I mentioned the camera work during some of the action sequences which later on gets boring and loses it's effect altogether, and also said that the acting was somewhat decent but I thought that they had copied acting styles of other actors from the 1980's Bollywood era (like I thought Ajay Devgan had copied Amitabh Bachchan's style - it is a debatable point). As far as screenplay and technicalities is concerned I don't think it can be taken into account with any mainstream Bollywood flick because they don't care about it.
ReplyDeleteThis brings me to the point that reality is not represented. I don't think Indian filmmakers really make an attempt to portray or take reality into account. They do whatever will bring money in. So I think it's a disgrace what they try to pass off as films here, but not much can be said and done after that.