Kaminey Hindi Movie Review

Here is my review of Kaminey.

For those of you who haven't watched it - Kaminey is a Vishal Bhardwaj movie. Vishal Bhardwaj of the Maqbool, Omkara fame as also Makdee and Blue Umbrella - two of the best children films made in recent times.

Vishal doesn't make apologies in his movies. He shows blood, gore in full measure. But there is just one line he refuses to cross - a line that would have catapulted the films to macabre and maybe mediocre - and staying within that line his movies somehow turn out to be brilliant. The complex emotions, situations, dramas, climaxes that Kaminey portrays are the hallmark of all Vishal Bhardwaj movies.

Kaminey is an intensely complex movie. It is fast paced - but with brilliant editing there are hardly any loose ends. The movie is all Shahid Kapur (wonder what he did previously to inspire such confidence in the producer/director). It is the role of a lifetime for Shahid Guddu Charlie Kapur. And the movie is all about villians too. There are villians of all hues here. No middle path grey villain. All the villians, the "hail Maharashtra" criminal politician; the race course fixers, gun crazy and nutty Bong brothers; the international drug cartel leader; the intensely corrupt Narcs Officer - all of them are dirty, corrupt and deadly.

On a dark, dreary, rainy night all these people come together in a hunt for Guddu and / or Charlie. It was also the night Guddu was getting married (to Priyanka Chopra) and Charlie incidentally discovered he had Rs 10 crore of drugs in his possession. Guddu and Charlie happen to be identical twins with slight speech handicaps. One stammers and the other lisps. Some of the finer Shahid Kapur moments are when he lisps S as F - Jab Fell phone ko Fell phone kehta hai!

Among the characters - Amole Gupte ar Bhope is deadly, Priyanka comes across well in whatever little her role demands and Shahid Kapur is not brilliant - just okay. It doesn't look likely that his portrayal will be as acclaimed as Irfan Khan's in Maqbool or Saif's in Omkara. One character that I really liked was Mikhail (Chandan Roy Sanyal).

The movie ends in a crisply executed climax and one is left looking forward to watching it all over again - to catch those fine VB moments one may have missed in the first watch!

This article has also been published at Xomba.Com.