Who is India

 The (deliberately) deceptively named "Emergency"(Hindi) should have been titled Indira but I guess that just does not draw the requisite eyeballs. It may also be the reason why we sat to the movie in an empty theater in its third week - provocative works for some but may not gel with many. For the most part the movie is highly commending of Indira (Kangana Ranaut) - her initiatives whether it be in Assam to stem refugee movement, her taking Nixon head on, Pokhran, Bangladesh related decisiveness and in general being a highly popular leader. The movie puts the bogey of emergency, mass sterilizations and Bhindranwale largely on Sanjay Gandhi (Vishak Nair) and a fragile mind of Indira at that time. Unable to deal with the pressure of a growing Janata Party and the pressure of her own delusions the Iron Lady of India caves in to a series of catastrophic misadventures that costs her her seat and eventually her life. A decent biopic for a run through history, but some overacting on the part of the lead actor takes the sheen off somewhat - the movie lacks the high quality thespianism required to pull this one off into something truly memorable

14.5/20 

Good Show Baby!

After the fiasco of Indian super-heroes and secret agents in overhyped movies like Bang Bang and Happy New Year, the success of which frankly speaks very poorly of the tastes of the Indian movie-goer, comes a convincing action thriller from the Akshay Kumar stable. Baby (Hindi) is a covert outfit pulled together post the 2008 December Mumbai attacks – its objective is covert ops, its identity a closely held secret, its mission always under a cloak of plausible deniability. Spanning across Istanbul, Nepal and Saudi Arabia, Baby pulls it off – not slick, but somewhat stodgy and believable, with believable characters. Nicely done guys

15/20

A Bit Incendiary, a Lot of fizz

Like the giant explosions in the second half of the movie, there are moments in Dabangg that are – well – explosive firsts in Hindi cinema in the action genre. What is not quite as catchy is the storyline, which gets caught in an uncertain zone between being the oh-so-familiar Bollywood melodrama, and being a loose vehicle for some over-the-top action sequences. With one-man action capers reminiscent of the likes of Desperado and Shoot ‘em Up, and liberal doses of inspiration from several other Hollywood flicks, this movie is on the one hand quite enough to be a popular hit, but could have gone much further in the over-the-top action genre. And then there is the issue of the never-ending careers of our Bollywood stars and whether it would have been really difficult to find a better lead than Salman Khan. In any case, watch this movie for the action, but you will not miss much if you snooze off whatever’s in between

10/20