Aag (the review)

Ridiculous, pathetic, terrible. Add over-hyped, shoddy and poorly written and you begin to get an idea of how bad it was. All the points made in my preview hold true and then some. This is a new genre – unintentional comedy leading to unintended horror amongst the audience.

It sucks big time as a movie

• Camera angles : RGV (Ram Gopal Verma, the director), delights in weird camera angles that only enhance the feeling of nausea and detract completely from the characters / movie.
• Bad Acting : Nisha Kothari is the worst of the lot – cant act, cant talk, cant emote. I hope for her sake she has a good figure and is willing to bare all as that is her only hope for making it big in Bollywood. Prashant runs her close in terms of overall badness and everyone else compete for 3rd place.
• MohanLal as Narsimha : his southern accent jars and makes you laugh. The man can act, but is wasted. I kept thinking there may be a twist, which justifies him being from South India but no such thing.
• Completely disjointed, undeveloped / rushed story : we don’t understand what the movie is about – since it shifts to the Mumbai underworld. If it weren’t for the orginal Sholay, like most of the actors, I would have been groping in the dark. We don’t feel for any of the characters here since they are woefully undeveloped.

Vs the original Sholay (maybe I shouldn’t even honor this tripe with a comparison to Sholay, but I cant resist, I love the original too much)

• The relationship between Amitabh / Dharmendra : One of the highlights of the original was the chemistry between the two – how two characters so different to each other got along and functioned beautifully as a team. Amitabh, as the strong silent type paired with the ebullient, emotional, extrovert Dharmendra. Here, there is no difference between the two – they are the same, both ambling aimless idiots vs the men of steel they were trying to emulate. As if to rub salt in the wound, they even become police informers in the beginning.
• The senti / mushy, romantic ‘I love you’ crap : Neither with Dharmendra nor Amitabh along with their leading ladies, was there any romance. Their characters were too macho to allow any of this shit. Here you have both their replacements getting into ‘I love you’. ‘No. Really, I really love you’ stuff.
• Prashant is, looks & acts half Sushmita’s age !! This pairing doesn’t work, is a non-starter, while the Amitabh-Jaya pairing was one of the most touching things in Sholay.
• Of psychotic vs menacing villains : I don’t think, with all due respect to Pran, there has been a more intimidating villain than Gabbar Singh in Sholay. And amazingly it is done without any hint of gore, over the top violence. Here Babban comes across as a stark, raving bonkers – he is sinister, creepy and sleazy. Little touches like the slithering tongue or the ‘poof’ further confirm RGV’s colossal errors of judgement in the movie.

I don’t know what forced him to remake Sholay without any fresh ideas – the darkness (as communicated in the preview) is all pervasive, gets to you. I think I’m going to not watch any more RGV movies as he’s completely lost it. Cant think of a worse way to have spent Sunday afternoon. I want my money back !