Movie Review: Tashan

One thing this movie does well and really well is remain true to it's name - Tashan. The movie is all about style and actually if you disregard the action scenes, this one surpasses the Dhooms and the new Dons in that aspect. It's very MTV, Hollywood like and yet not cheesy. The movie has a coolness factor in a way that it's not afraid to make fun of its main characters and revels in the fact that most of them come from "Kan-hai-Pur". Now lot of people who've never had a Kanpuriya friend would ask, "Kanpur and cool don't belong in the same sentence". Let me tell you, having lived most of my life in UP, I don't need any convincing that people from Kanpur and Lucknow are super cool when it comes to their language and attitude to life and I was happy to see this movie take that to another level.

Honestly no matter how stupid the twists were and how lame the storyline was, the movie really surprised me with it's approach and comedy. Akshay Kumar is a true star now, he is a scene stealer and has an undeniable presence that can overshadow most stars in Bollywood. He also proved that he can be funny in Kanpuria accent and not only when he speaks in his Punjabi accent.

Saif Ali Khan plays the central character, although he shares screen time gracefully with Kareena and Akshay. This was right up his alley, playing the cool dude and I think he didn't really need any preparation for this. Kareena needs more roles like these that bring her off screen image of a "shrewd bitch" on screen (of course I'm just kidding, I love Kareena). Her U-turn to a "zakhmi sherni" and trying to be Uma Thurman from Kill Bill towards the end of the movie was a bit over the top, but she played the role of a clever seductress really well. And man she looked smokin HOT, wish she would keep that look.

Anil Kapoor, believe it or not, is one of my favorite actors after Amitabh Bachchan and even though some might feel that he was over acting, but let me make a point that if it was any other actor speaking those lame lines it would have been far worse. He didn't have much scope in the movie as no one really wrote any good lines for him and made him into a caricature villain, but Anil Ji (after Amit Ji, he's the only guy I call a real "Ji") filled the shoes of a villainous "Bhaiyya Ji" quite well. Actually those dialogs did draw a lot of laughs from the audience, so maybe it was just me who thought they were lame.

The movie is shot in some killer locales and at times it seemed like a commercial for "Incredible India". Ladakh, Rajasthan, Mumbai, Kerela and Kanpur (though I have a suspicion those were sets) were captured beautifully. The songs had a different beat and look and feel to it. It was like watching one of those edgy and hip MTV videos, only this time with real stars. My favorite one was "white white face dekhe", how can you not like a song like that?

I think the movie starts a bit slow, but when Akshay Kumar shows up it does pick up a lot of speed and gets quite entertaining. Overall I think its a nice weekend watch, don't take it too seriously because the movie itself doesn't do that. It's like how they say in marketing speak, its a little bit of the same formula but in a very new and very shiny wrapper.