Blogathon 1: Part 4

Well, I promised you a lazy day and it was one. With Mom and Dad away from home and friends out with their respective better halves, I had the Sunday all to myself. I must congratulate myself for I spent it well... I slept through most of the day.

Bulla called up in the evening and we decided to go out for dinner. Before dinner, however, inspiration struck us and we decided to go to the Gurudwara to which we used to go to as college-kids a couple of years ago. Must say, visiting a holy place lifted me up entirely after the extremely lazy day I was trying to shrug off.

Dinner was brilliant!! Makki ki roti and sarson ka saag at Balwant Singh's dhaba. It has been quite a while since I had enjoyed this amazing combination and the onset of winter was just the perfect time to get back into the rhythm of things.

Dinner was followed by "Maharathi".


My two-bits about the film:

* I thought I'd placed my bets on another dud after "Oh, My God" when I realised there were only 6 people at the evening show for this film

* Within 5 minutes of the beginning of the film, I knew that my doubts were unfounded

* Naseeruddin Shah in his limited role is damn good

* Paresh Rawal was also very good. However, I did feel that he was too old for the role. Perhaps, as suggested by Bulla, Neil Nitin Mukesh would've been a better choice. In fact, if this had been his follow-up film to the successful caper "Johnny Gaddar", he would almost be bracketed in the league of actors who do good crime/caper films.

However, I doubt whether Neil would have done as good job at the comic bits as Rawal.

* Neha Dhupia does exactly what was expected of her: look stunningly HOT. Period.

* The movie is AWESOME. It has a chilling note to it ever since we step inside the world of Jaichand Adenwalla (Naseeruddin Shah), a successful movie-producer of yesteryears who is now out of luck and, by his confession, has more whisky than blood in his veins. Subhash (Rawal) is a petty thief who gets employment at his house as a driver. Mallika (Dhupia), Adenwalla's wife, would love to see her husband dead 'coz that would mean a bounty of 24 crores of insurance money. Adenwalla, however, tells her that he's instructed the insurance company not to pay a penny to anybody if he commits suicide. And, to throw spanner into her works, Adenwalla promptly points the gun at himself and goes 'BANG'.

How Mallika must utilise the wit and resourcefulness of Subhash so as not to arouse the suspicions of the family lawyer (Boman Irani), the ACP chief (Om Puri) and the house-nurse (Tara Sharma) forms the rest of the plot.

The execution is almost Hitchcockian in nature. All in all, this is the second movie after Johnny Gaddar which deserves to be called a good Hindi suspense thriller in recent years. Two thumbs-up.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, my first blogathon ends. Not many posts during the course of the weekend but it has been fun. Cheerio, folks. Have an awesome week ahead.