Dhoom2

( My son, inspired by Dhoom2, shortly after the movie)

This is a fun movie…everyone has fun, the director looks like he enjoyed making the movie and most importantly, even the cast look like they’re having fun, they’re enjoying being the characters they are portraying, enjoying being in the locations they’re in. There's a scene where Uday / Bipasha do a spoof of Baywatch and another where Aishwarya says enough of health food and asks for a juicy burger ! So its only natural that the fun rubs off on the audience !

This movie is not about the plot, even though it isn’t all that bad. There are shades of the Saint (Val Kilmer) and the Thomas Crown Affair. And it does ask for some suspension of judgement as some details are not totally believable,. It’s a not so standard cops (Abhishek & Uday Chopra, as in Dhoom) chasing a robber (Hrithik) story – with some predictable and not so predictable twists along the way. The action sequences are fantastic – some breathless stunts that well…make you gasp & hold your breath. And for a change, even the disguises are good – this has consistently been a weak point of Hindi movies as usually the disguises are laughable – here, though, in a couple of places even we (and not just the cops in the movie) struggle to spot Hrithik…

However, as I said before, its not about the plot or the action sequences…this is a movie about the stars ! So here goes

• Hrithik : OhMiGod ! Hunkalicious ! Simply outstanding…I’m running out of superlatives here. For me, he towers above everyone else in the movie and that too on almost every dimension – action / looks (I want his wardrobe !) / coolness / emoting/ credibility. And when he enters the dance floor – Wow ! Everyone else better move aside ! Hrithik rocks and rules !


• Abhishek : He’s good, he’s cool (floral suits him), does justice to his part, but for me doesn’t set the screen on fire. The role is a simple one – so I guess, to be fair, there wasn’t much more he could have done.


• Aishwarya : imagine a perfectly bronzed Ash, dressed either as Lara Croft or in the kind of clothes that most Dad’s would never allow their daughter to wear, the kind that only moth’s on a diet could eat. I readily admit I have a bias, and I’m going to use this movie as evidence in all further debates about her looks. She is paired with Hrithik in the movie and I think there are very few couples on this planet who make a better couple in terms of sheer looks. One slight issue was that she was given a part ‘tapori’ character – I think her role & the movie could have been better served if she was made more suave (like Hrithik & Abhishek), perhaps with some idiosyncracies, kind of like Rene Russo in Thomas Crown Affair (the Pierce Brosnan remake)


• Bipasha : she brings a lot of oomph in the early part of the movie – looks great, acts well. However, her role is extremely limited, but on whatever we do see of her is extremely promising / she deserved more.

Uday was good – he has a full 'tapori' role, as in Dhoom, and he continues to evoke the easy laughs. However, more interestingly, there is another level of jokes / conversation as well in the movie – the one liners, slightly more subtle jokes / dialogue, the kind you get in Hollywood movies. This is done through Abhishek and Bipasha in the early part and Hrithik / Aishwarya in the latter part. One disappointment for me were the songs – not the music, the sets, the dance / choreography but more the lyrics & the playback (especially for the women) – they didn’t seem to match up to the characters. The best song remains the remix of Dhoom Machale which is also used as background music through the film.

This is a movie which is overtly about being cool. Even Hrithik is described as a ‘cool chor’ by the cops in the movie. But pleasantly, it succeeds. While Dhoom made biking cool, I was trying to think of what things would become cool due to the sequel
1. Rio De Janeiro, Brazil – one of my favourite cities in the world and amongst the most beautiful ones I’ve had the pleasure to visit. I can just see the spate of Indian’s choosing to go there now (even if its too far), thanks to this movie.
2. Bandana’s – the pirate style, as worn by Hrithik
3. Roller-blading – while there is only one sequence, its great…

For the last word, I’m going to take refuge in my son once again. He’s at the kind of age where he picks up one word and then starts using it for anything and everything. So when I asked him ‘how was the movie?’, he used his current such word, a word which I totally agreed with as a one word summary of Dhoom2 : ‘Awesome!’.