Bollywood Inquiry April 2019: ROMEO AKBAR WALTER & KALANK

Bollywood Inquiry is a monthly column on the biggest new Bollywood movies. Disclaimer: I may not have seen all of the past month’s globally released features.

It was a quiet month for releases, with distributors likely knowing their films would barely have a life in theaters during April due to Avengers: Endgame occupying virtually every time-slot and every screen in every cinema, everywhere. Outside of the cinemas, the Indian general election went underway which resulted in the delay of the divisive Narendra Modi biopic after it was ruled by the Election Commission to have “the potential to disturb the level playing field”. Nevertheless, cinemagoers were served with two major releases which I’ve reviewed below. Onto the first one…

Romeo Akbar Walter

Romeo Akbar Walter may be the first movie in history wherein the font of the subtitles is the best part of the viewing experience. It employs the Futura font for the English subtitles as opposed to the usual Arial and, as the name suggests, it looks fresh, contemporary and cool, unlike what the film tries to achieve for its lead actor. To speak plainly, this espionage thriller is a slog to get through.

In the Indo-Pak war of 1971, East Pakistan is dominated by terrors in power and it’s up to former model John Abraham and seasoned performer Jackie Shroff to embark on a private undercover in mission to infiltrate Pakistan. Abraham plays a modest fellow who assumes all the titular names at various points after he’s hired by the Research and Analysis Wing agent Shrikant Rai (Shroff) to spy on Pakistan and help liberate the part of the country that would subsequently form as Bangladesh.

It’s a cat-and-mouse thriller that plays out like the Tom and Jerry scene in which Tom sends a couple of big cats to take out Jerry, who wipes them out singlehandedly. But here, there’s none of the same surprise or finesse. Mr Abraham outmanoeuvres everyone, every time, reducing any sense of danger or tension to zero.

In fact, this is established before we’ve even seen the movie, thanks to his wasteful casting, for everyone familiar with the action star knows exactly what the outcome will be when bad guys square up to him. Further disappointingly, there’s hardly any action for him to engage in, with the laboured screenplay spending more time on all the boring parts of being a spy. There was more effort put in the title – a nice multi-entendre of the protagonist name(s), military speak and the acronym of India’s actual foreign intelligence agency – than the script.

There’s little to say about the other characters except a few negative things: Parul (Mouni Roy) is the secretary of the economic wing who’s promised to be far more important at the intermission than she actually ends up being by the end of the movie. Romeo/Akbar/Walter’s mother Waheeda (Alka Amin) is established as our anchor to the personal, emotional stakes of the journey at heart but she’s ultimately truncated to being the subject of a cheesy line of dialogue in the finale.

Edward Sonnenblick, who I described last month as the resident colonial Brit in Bollywood following his roles in Kesari and Manikarnika, finds a kindred spirit in Anil George who has two credits this year as a dodgy Pakistani government official, playing one here and one in January’s hit  Uri: the Surgical Strike. It’s safe to say producers know who to call if they need to add an overt patriotic touch to their movies.

There are good movies that could be made about the Indo-Pak war (like the Alia Bhatt-starring award winner Raazi) but Romeo Akbar Walter isn’t one of them. You could say it’s a vehicle for the badass star persona of John Abraham, but it’s more like a walking stick, helping him limp along with whatever’s left in this old hat shtick. Maybe the filmmakers thought it would sound cool to be received with a general headline reading “John Abraham helps create Bangladesh” but didn’t expect the rest of it to say, “in a ‘thriller’ that wraps us up in boredom.”

Kalank  (Stigma)

Kalank is the sort of Bollywood movie that only Sanjay Leela Bhansali seems to make these days, that filmmaker behind epic romances including Bajirao Mastani and Romeo & Juliet adaptation Ram-Leela.

The rich visual opulence afforded in stunning Indian locations is something more filmmakers could take advantage of, so it’s nice to have Kalank. It’s known that the idea of this film originated in the 90’s between super producer Karan Johar and his super producer father. If it was made in the 90s, this movie would likely have been a staple in the televisions of Bollywood-loving homes now. In 2019, though, it feels like the lesser effort of a better filmmaker’s work. And which filmmaker am I referring to? Mr. Bhansali, of course.

I must say it was fairly difficult to decipher what exactly this film was in the marketing. The logline simply stated it was a romantic drama set in the Partition period, featuring an all-star cast of some of today’s and yesterday’s highest-paid performers. Karan Johar, who was once called the flag-bearer of nepotism by Bollywood maverick Kangana Ranaut, has assembled a melange of thespians from prominent Hindi film families including Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Sonakshi Sinha, Aditya Roy Kapur, Sanjay Dutt and Madhuri Dixit, the sole non-nepotistic link in the chain.

The trailers simply focused on showcasing the richly dressed stars, looking melancholy, like the lush counterpart to the preview of True Detective season 2, plus flashes of large scale song-and-dance sequences. Turns out it’s a more interesting narrative than expected, a sort of Shakespearean tale of two families on either side of the religious divide with intertwining lives.

Roop (Bhatt) comes from the wealthy Chaudhry family, wherein she received a high quality education and found her voice (literally) in a love for singing. She’s approached one day by childhood acquaintance Satya (Sinha) who reveals that she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer and only has a year to live. Satya asks Roop to fill the spousal void to her husband Dev (Roy Kapur) that’ll be left in her absence.

Roop agrees to take on the responsibility on the condition that she marries Dev so as not to appear as just a companion. Dev runs a liberal newspaper with a certain view on the partition, living in an ideological deadlock with his Hindu father Balraj (Dutt) who’s concerned with the rise of the All-India Muslim League.

By the point you learn all of this, which is approximately only a tenth of the way through the movie (it’s 166 minutes!), it will be clear if Kalank appeals to you as the director puts all of his cards on the table in such a short time. Nice locations, a well-dressed attractive cast, jubilant pop songs and dancing. But, above all, pure, syrupy drama where emotion trumps logic; one character declares to a lover who refuses to accept an increasingly messy reality, “You want love more than belief!”

An expedited wedding happens, and both parties share a similar sentiment on the marriage taking place out of respect rather than love. The passionless arrangement leaves Roop depressed and seeking an alternate outlet for satisfaction. Practising singing again sounds ideal according to her maid Saroj (Achint Kaur). Roop feels the same but refuses to accept Saroj’s offer of arranging a tutor to visit home. Rather, she wanders out to take a hop, skip and short canoe ride to the palace doors of the wondrous Bahaar Begum (Dixit), a brothel owner and one hell of a singer.

Should Balraj discover that his daughter’s been visiting Bahaar, he’ll be enraged – not only because the Muslim Begum family is diametrically opposed to him but also because he has a secret history with the madame. Tensions – familial and sexual – flare up when Roop gets involved with Bahaar’s son Zafar (Dhawan), a promiscuous, extroverted, bull-riding, acrimonious blacksmith.

Their relationship serves as the crux of this weepy soap opera. Many lines are crossed and old wounds are opened, creating a thoroughfare to subplots about illegitimate love and children set against the Hindu/Muslim divide during the partition of India, all executed in unabashed Bollywood style.

There’s a fascinating but ultimately undercooked thread about the media’s role during partition in Dev’s impartial newsroom, benefitting initial thematic and character development but soon minimised in favour of classic family confrontations. And the best of those particular scenes are the ones which unite the cast members for an emotional showdown.

The first time Dhawan and Roy Kapur’s characters meet is intriguing, a potentially explosive encounter played in a far warmer way that lets the two engage in dialogue rather than diatribe. Then there’s the reunion of Sanjay Dutt and Madhuri Dixit, working together again after more than 20 years and sensationally metatextual considering their alleged love affair in the 90’s.

A lengthy runtime ensures the ensemble cast get equal footing and there’s even room for a conventional bad guy in Zafar’s pro-Muslim League friend Abdul (Kunal Khemu), who rallies his community by declaring, “We’re the majority here but we are treated like a minority!”, jeopardising the future of the interreligious romance between Zafar and Roop.

When Roop first performs for Bahaar, she’s told, “Your voice is good but it needs some sparkle.” To which Roop replies, “Too much sparkle can make life bitter.” These words are apt in paralleling Kalank’s desire to be a good old-fashioned costume melodrama without doing much more, assuming there’s enough here for the audience to savour. It’s uneven but enjoyable, and you’ll decide if you’ll like within the first 20 minutes.

And that concludes the April 2019 edition of Bollywood Inquiry! In May, I’m hoping to see the amnesiac action thriller Blank, the age-defying romcom De De Pyaar De and the teen drama Student of the Year 2, which is being promoted everywhere and has even confirmed a cameo from Will Smith. Check out the trailer below and stay tuned for next month’s column.

Which Bollywood films are you looking forward to this year or have enjoyed so far? Let us know in the comments below.