Tragedy

It is interesting to think that the central character of Haider (Hindi) is not Haider (Shahid Kapoor) but his mother – Ghazala – and her fickle heart. A heart that sends Haider away, lets in Khurram (her brother in law) into her life, removes Hilal (her husband) from her life, and eventually destroys the last vestiges of their family. Loosely based on Hamlet, Hilal is the victim of an army crackdown in Srinagar. As his son Haider tries to trace him down, the complicities of the relationships within the family – and that with Arshia (Shraddha Kapoor) – Haider’s girlfriend – begin to unravel. Extremely watchable, intense, and somewhat disturbing

14/20

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

No reviews of Bollywood movies for 2009 would be complete without a mention of Kaminey. Shahid Kapoor is in a double role (why is this so endemic to Bollywood?) as Guddu – the simple folk in love with the minister’s daughter Sweety (Priyanka Chopra) and Charlie – a man at home in a life of crime. Oh, and Guddu and Charlie are identical twins. But this movie is not about the inevitable and hackneyed faux pas that ensue between the brothers (and Bollywood has so much of that that that could emerge as a genre in itself). This is a movie about the sheer nature of people, and Vishal Bhardwaj’s (Maqbool, Omkara) triumph is about showing that people – or most – are inherently rotten out and out, and the movie leaves this message without a twinge of cynicism. Where Kaminey strikes out on its own it strikes a chord – it fails wherever it attempts a Tarantino – the kill ‘em all shootout for example does not click, by a mile

13.5/20