LORD OF THE MINDS

Q: What goes through your mind when you go to the theatre to watch a highly anticipated movie like 'Kaminey'?
A: You want a crisp story, good direction, brilliant performances, nice songs... In other words you want a total paisa vasool show.
And Kaminey delivers just that. In these times of utter crappy movies (like Kambakht Ishq) or total bore ones (like New York) or somewhat ok ones (like Love Aaj Kal), this movie comes like a breath of fresh air. And a lot of the credit goes to the director - Vishal Bharadwaj.
So lets start with the story. This is probably Shahid's first movie where he has a double role. One as Charlie - a gangster who wants to be a bookie, lisps (pronounces S as F). The other brother, Guddu - an NGO worker who has big dreams, stammers and loves Sweety (played by the gorgeous Priyanka Chopra). Both got separated when their father committed suicide and went separate ways. Then during one of inter-gang-crossfires Charlie hits jackpot when he gets cocaine worth ten crores in the 'guitar' . Guddu gets Sweety pregnant and so has to marry her. But then he realizes that she is the sister of a top goon - Bhope bhau, who in turn wants to become a politician. What follows is a pacy story of how they get out of the mess and claim their lives. Not once will you yawn during the 2 hour show that the story is getting boring.
Next about the direction. Typical Vishal Bhardwaj stuff but then you want the same style. Anyone who has seen Omkara would agree that his dark handling does wonders to the movie and never does it get dragged into the typical Ram Gopal Verma style of gangster movies.
Now about the performances, Shahid does an commendable job. The biggest difficulty when playing double roles is to keep the two characters separate and Shahid does that part brilliantly. One person's stammering and the other's lisping are executed well. Priyanka does well in whatever small role she gets of Sweety. She has her typical bubbly and sometimes crying persona. Among the other actors, Amol Gupte as Bhope bhau was good too. But its mostly Shahid who dominates.
The songs all get overshadowed by one top notch number - Dhan Te Nan and its melody gets repeated throughout the movie. Among the others Pehli Baar Mohabbat is melodious. But rest all just merge well with the movie.
In all, a movie definitely worth watching once maybe twice (mostly twice). I bet you would feel satisfied and come out of the theatre feeling good that you had a paisa vasool time.

Photo: courtesy www.bollywoodhungama.com
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