MOVIE REVIEW

QUEEN

Director: Vikas Bahl
Writers: Vikas Bahl, Chaitally Parmar
Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Rajkummar Rao, Lisa Haydon
Runtime: 146 minutes
Strength: Light-hearted comedy, lots of fun, but with a strong message, great acting
Weakness: Story gets slow at times, not the best music
Showbiz rating: 4/5
Plot: A Delhi girl from a traditional family sets out on a solo honeymoon after her marriage gets cancelled
Review:  'Queen' is a significant Bollywood marker, a film that is intensely local and gloriously global, with a terrific acting performance by Kangana Ranaut, in a story that bubbles over with real feeling and meaning. Rani (Kangana Ranaut) is dumped just a day before her wedding by her fiance Vijay (Rajkumar Rao). Devastated, she decides to take the planned honeymoon on her own. She finds herself in Paris, and the journey she embarks on makes 'Queen' a truly special honest to earth story. Big Punjabi weddings and Bollywood have had a long relationship, but where 'Queen', both the girl and the film, start coming into their own, is when Rani is left to fend for herself, first in Paris, and then Amsterdam. A lone Indian girl, a 'behenji' with a 'desi ghee tadka', would usually fumble her way across crowded streets and annoyed pedestrians and find herself in a handsome stranger's arms, sing a few songs, do a few 'nakhras' and gratefully accept 'mandap' and 'mangalsutra'. But not Rani aka Queen. She does make silly touristy mistakes, nearly gets mugged but doesn't let it get to her, and discovers she has a spine after all. Kangana Ranaut revels in her solidly-written role, and delivers a first rate, heart-felt performance, one that is not to be missed!

Reviewed by Broti Rahman

***

3  DAYS TO KILL

Director: McG
Writers: Adi Hasak, Luc Besson
Cast: Kevin Costner, Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen, Amber Heard
Runtime: 117 minutes
Strength: Good performance by Costner, some action scenes are convincing
Weakness: Weak storyline, genre confusion, unnecessarily long
Showbiz rating: 2/5
Plot: A dying CIA agent trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter is offered an experimental drug that could save his life in exchange for one last assignment.
Review:  Ex-CIA operative Kevin Costner is suffering from cancer and has just a few months to live. An absent father all his life, he wants to mend his relationship with his estranged wife and daughter. In the middle of it lands up a CIA, Amber Heard who is ready to give him a wonder experimental drug. Costner makes juggling his character's twin obligations look easy. Ethan rarely breaks a sweat, whether he's shooting arms dealers or pulling a bunch of would-be rapists off of his daughter in a nightclub men's room. With action and melodrama both thrown inside this cauldron and given a thorough shake, the film falls prey to its own ambition. Contrived and manic, the film can't decide whether it's a thriller, comedy or feel-good family film. The result is a convoluted mess that has one good twist and two good car-chases. But it's hardly enough to bring this spy flick in from the cold. Watch it only if you have time to spare because even at less than two hours, it will feel like a really long time.

Reviewed by Mohammad Haque

***

21 GRAMS

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Writer: Guillermo Arriaga
Stars: Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts
Length: 125 mins
Strength: A freak accident brings together a critically ill mathematician, a grieving mother and a born-again ex-con
Weakness: None
Showbiz Rating: 4.5/5.00
Plot: 21 Grams is a powerful tale of tragedy and redemption. It's one of the most intriguing and unique films ever made. Not since Memento has a movie so successfully employed a non-linear chronology. The jigsaw puzzle approach used by director Alejandro González Iñárritu keeps us far more intrigued than a conventional vision of identical material would.
Review: Shot in documentary-style, 21 Grams is a bleak, unnecessarily convoluted, and surprisingly powerful drama about three individuals linked to both one another and the immediacy of death.  
In order to tell the three disparate but intertwined stories, director Alejandro González Iñárritu opted to use handheld cameras, loads of close-ups, and washed-out colors (top-quality work by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto), whereas screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga built a fully fragmented narrative. As a result, the gritty, claustrophobic 21 Grams offers no sense of a time-space continuum. There's no future and no past, just numerous "presents" that seem to be dangling from a dimension free of time and space constraints. 21 Grams is a must-see motion picture. Why? Well, how much is gained when a film offers superb performances all around? Overall, 21 Grams is an emotionally detached film that offers more clichés than it should. It's also an effort that is mostly redeemed by sterling craftsmanship, solid direction, gripping characters, and a uniformly perfect cast.

Reviewed by Broti Rahman