Culling the watchlist with this, a major Bollywood film from 2004 which ends up spawning 2 sequels.
My first impression is that I like this cheesy song they put on, but I'm skeptical about the opening credits. I suppose this uber-busy pink-filter cyberpunk-styled editing is at least not what everyone was doing back in the day, but it's also not incredibly far off. Something I noticed as soon as I learned about Dhoom is that it kind of has an absurd sense of style, best expressed with the incredibly varied costuming these guys get. Starting off we've immediately got what looks to be some sort of a motorcycle heist. Four bikers, all lightly color-coded, ambushing an armored truck. We've got the busiest split-screen cinematography ever seen, with the nice effect of having the three shots synchronize at some key moments, showing three angles of, for instance, the traffic light counting down as the group rushes to complete their work. I think one of the top reviews says this is very De Palma, but I also thought of Soderbergh with Ocean's 11. This is a film series that I see come up every time someone wants to tell everyone that there are Indian action flicks outside of RRR, and if it stays on track, I think I'll enjoy it. (I did, despite some glaring flaws.)
Not sure if this film's going to get my standard musical scene bump or not. The first one is almost rabidly horny, though, holy shit. It's basically all about this guy wanting to fuck his girlfriend, but she's doing chores. Really just an immensely sexually charged film. Incredibly, when they're about to get to it, he has to leave for work and she gets pissed at him. I think this is what you'd call an item song, in that it is presented purely for the attractiveness of the actress without any contribution to the plot, presenting an exaggerated spectacle of the actress, Rimi Sen. I don't think I'd have any problem with it in a film which wasn't rated at the equivalent of PG-13 (adults are, after all, capable of exercising judgment), and especially if the song wasn't about pushing a woman to have sex with you. There's arguably another item number later on, but at the very least finding a wife is part of Ali's story from his very first scene. Ali's yearning nature is actually a little bit endearing once or twice. A lot of people, as far as I understand it, have connected Bollywood and item numbers in particular to the persistence of rape culture in India, in part because the attitudes promoted to teenage boys in these films normalize sexually abusive behavior. It's not really different from the United States and its own persistent/pervasive rape culture in this regard, to be honest, except that the main locus of rape culture in the US is certainly not in PG-13 action films.
Heavy emphasis on eye candy in general, to be honest. There's a shot they use twice during a motorcycle race which pans to follow the action of the racers which also happens to be panning across a handful of womens' legs. It, of course, doesn't help that the women in this film are, on the whole, not strongly characterized, don't have any real agency in the film, and don't get a ton of screen time (especially when you remove the music). It's a shame, because pretty much every major character in this film is amazingly beautiful, and it'd be cool if they could all be characters and do things that matter.
All the way throughout this film, there are a ton of quaint stylistic decisions, and I ended up liking a lot of these, while some others hurt to look at.
On the whole, this movie suffers from failing to implement romance or sex into the narrative, and it's the rare example of a movie that I think would be better if it had less sex and more action.
It does get an extra half star because of the final song and because of the DHOOM sting that they hit us with, like, 25 different times, which always makes me laugh. It's also one of very few films in existence with a motorbike standoff, and it has that "If you weren't a good guy/bad guy, we would have been friends" trope, which I like.
him, trying to get his wife to hand him more spending money: "Come on, Sweety." her, denying his plea: "My sweet baby, bye."
Culling the watchlist with this, a major Bollywood film from 2004 which ends up spawning 2 sequels.
My first impression is that I like this cheesy song they put on, but I'm skeptical about the opening credits. I suppose this uber-busy pink-filter cyberpunk-styled editing is at least not what everyone was doing back in the day, but it's also not incredibly far off. Something I noticed as soon as I learned about Dhoom is that it kind of has an absurd sense of style, best expressed with the incredibly varied costuming these guys get. Starting off we've immediately got what looks to be some sort of a motorcycle heist. Four bikers, all lightly color-coded, ambushing an armored truck. We've got the busiest split-screen cinematography ever seen, with the nice effect of having the three shots synchronize at some key moments, showing three angles of, for instance, the traffic light counting down as the group rushes to complete their work. I think one of the top reviews says this is very De Palma, but I also thought of Soderbergh with Ocean's 11. This is a film series that I see come up every time someone wants to tell everyone that there are Indian action flicks outside of RRR, and if it stays on track, I think I'll enjoy it. (I did, despite some glaring flaws.)
Not sure if this film's going to get my standard musical scene bump or not. The first one is almost rabidly horny, though, holy shit. It's basically all about this guy wanting to fuck his girlfriend, but she's doing chores. Really just an immensely sexually charged film. Incredibly, when they're about to get to it, he has to leave for work and she gets pissed at him. I think this is what you'd call an item song, in that it is presented purely for the attractiveness of the actress without any contribution to the plot, presenting an exaggerated spectacle of the actress, Rimi Sen. I don't think I'd have any problem with it in a film which wasn't rated at the equivalent of PG-13 (adults are, after all, capable of exercising judgment), and especially if the song wasn't about pushing a woman to have sex with you. There's arguably another item number later on, but at the very least finding a wife is part of Ali's story from his very first scene. Ali's yearning nature is actually a little bit endearing once or twice. A lot of people, as far as I understand it, have connected Bollywood and item numbers in particular to the persistence of rape culture in India, in part because the attitudes promoted to teenage boys in these films normalize sexually abusive behavior. It's not really different from the United States and its own persistent/pervasive rape culture in this regard, to be honest, except that the main locus of rape culture in the US is certainly not in PG-13 action films.
Heavy emphasis on eye candy in general, to be honest. There's a shot they use twice during a motorcycle race which pans to follow the action of the racers which also happens to be panning across a handful of womens' legs. It, of course, doesn't help that the women in this film are, on the whole, not strongly characterized, don't have any real agency in the film, and don't get a ton of screen time (especially when you remove the music). It's a shame, because pretty much every major character in this film is amazingly beautiful, and it'd be cool if they could all be characters and do things that matter.
All the way throughout this film, there are a ton of quaint stylistic decisions, and I ended up liking a lot of these, while some others hurt to look at.
On the whole, this movie suffers from failing to implement romance or sex into the narrative, and it's the rare example of a movie that I think would be better if it had less sex and more action.
It does get an extra half star because of the final song and because of the DHOOM sting that they hit us with, like, 25 different times, which always makes me laugh. It's also one of very few films in existence with a motorbike standoff, and it has that "If you weren't a good guy/bad guy, we would have been friends" trope, which I like.
him, trying to get his wife to hand him more spending money: "Come on, Sweety." her, denying his plea: "My sweet baby, bye."
