Kaminey - Movie Review

Consider a Indian food dish like a Biryani or a curry which tastes great with all the ingredients, bringing to life your taste buds and as you are wolfing into it with gay abandon and great relish, you bite a cardamom - you bite a full bloody cardamom that breaks between your teeth as you chew the food and leaves the flavour lingering in your mouth. Well, I am not aware about you, but such an experience screws up the entire eating experience and you are not happy with the dish until you wipe the taste away with the next morsel sans the cardamom. The movie Kaminey reminds of that experience.

The movie is not a regular entertainer but an entertainer nevertheless. It provides with a very satisfying movie watching experience. The movie has all the elements that are needed for a movie of its genre in place - the MacGuffin, multiple double crossings, seedy gangsters, and a plot that that keeps taking the serpentine twists and turns - and then settles for a placid Bollywood movie ending. As the movie reaches its closing scenes we really don’t care for the fate of any the characters - which is very good place for a movie of this genre to arrive at - and then reverts back to a traditional happy ending. This and the unnecessary flashback with an entirely pointless backstory of the twins bring the story down by a few notches and increases the viewing time by a few minutes.

The movie takes it's time to establish the characters - and that is putting it very mildly. The first half-an-hour almost frustrated me and at some points it desperately demanded subtitles in English. It takes around 20 minutes to half-an-hour to get a hang of the tone of the movie and the style and language of the characters and you suddenly see yourself involved in the proceedings.

I think the biggest flaw of the movie occurs in the end. Charlie sees his lover's (well, Charlie and Mikhail are not 'just friends'; There is a definite homosexual relationship implied in every scene between the two of them) dead body in the jeep and this acts as a trigger to empty the entire contents of the guitar into the fire building up below him. If I remember the movie correctly(I have watched it just once and the structure is a bit difficult to remember), his partner was shot in front of his eyes in an earlier scene in the mock shoot out that ends in a 'Satya'isque bang that leaves the fellow dead. Then why the 'naheee...' kind of shock and late wisdom on Charlie's part that works as a completely unconvincing trigger for the closing scenes. For all the respecting-the-intelligence-of-the-audience theme that everyone is mentioning to me, this is an unforgivable mistake. Of course, as I mentioned, I have watched the movie just once and tell me if I got this scene entirely wrong.

I seem to be giving an impression that I haven't liked the movie. On the contrary. I immensely enjoyed the movie and these are just a few areas where the film fell short of my expectations – the cardamoms in the curry, as I like to call them. Kaminey is a very good movie that falls short of being a great movie. Go watch it in the theatres.

Final Note: Everyone and his uncle are comparing the movie’s ‘Dhan Te Nan’ to the theme song of Pulp Fiction. I say, it is a huge load of horseshit. If at all it resembles anything from Pulp Fiction, it resembles the background score during the scene where Zed sodomizes Marsellus Wallace.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Kaminey

Comments

[Deepali]

Hey Arvind,
I don't think that Charlie empties the guitar becoz of a late reaction to Mikhail's death (which btw, I felt bad about. Mikhail's "tu bhope toh mein tope" was THE funniest line in the movie)..
He sees that the mad bongs have found Mikhail dead and will go on a rampage with those huge guns that they were playing with in the first few scenes. So he thinks, what the heck and empties the guitar.
P.S. that homo angle was not something I noticed.

[Vikas]

I watched the movie last friday and found the movie gripping, fast paced and well-edited.But as you have rightly pointed the climax is Bollywood style( It reminded me of priya-darshan hera pheri kind of ending where the all goons at one place are found bargaining 80-20, 75-20 et al ).I felt this comment is far fecthed -> http://sify.com/movies/bollywood/fullstory.php?id=14906382&cid=2359

[Arvind Swarup Pathiki]

Deepali: yes, i remember the 'tu bhope toh mein tope' line. I didnt react to it very aggressively when i came across it, but after you mention it, it come to my head at random times and i burst out laughing. as for the explanation of why he empties it - okay, i shall take that one.

Vikas: i read through that link and yes, it indeed is far fetched.

[patrick]

im agree with this article its not a full vegetarian film. good entertainment masala film.