0 Fast & Furious 6` review - Lost and curious!

Film: ‘Fast & Furious 6’; Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Gina Carano, Luke Evans, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster, Sung Kang, Ludacris and Gal Gadot; Director: Justin Lin.


Rating:
 
‘Fast & Furious 6’ evokes diverse reactions. With a wafer-thin plot and a lot of sleek action, ‘Fast and Furious 6’ is definitely a test of patience. Reason? The audience is thrown into the conflict of the story with great speed and velocity. Chances are that if you blink, you may miss the crux of the story and worst is that if you are not an ‘F&F’ fan, then you`d definitely be lost in the rigmarole of the speeding cars and crashes, hand-to-hand combats and snappy one-liners.

Unlike the franchise`s previous films, which focused on cars and their different makes, this one focuses on cars, an army tanker and a cargo plane - brought in to deliver a mega climax. It also leans heavily on family ties and bonding. In the sixth instalment, the franchise`s favourite car thieves, who are scattered across the globe, leading a luxurious life after their successful heist in ‘Fast & Furious 5’, join forces to take down an international criminal.

The film begins with Domnic Toretto (Vin Diesel) along with his best pal and brother-in-law Brian (Paul Walker) flaunting the speed and vigour of their cars in the scenic Canary Islands. Domnic`s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) is expecting Brian`s child. Domnic assures him that nothing will make them go back to their old lifestyle.

Meanwhile, there is a blast in Moscow.

Federal Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) is investigating the case. He has been tracking an organisation of lethal, ruthless and skilled mercenary drivers across "4 continents and 12 countries". He learns that the leader of the organisation, Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) is accompanied by a fearless second-in-command revealed to be none-other than Domnic`s `dead` lover, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez). Hobbs knows the only way to outmatch this rugged team is to assemble a team with just as much will and drive. Knowing Letty`s a key-player, Hobbs lands up in Canary Island to recruit Domnic.

Everything changes thence, a reluctant Domnic gets on board to rescue her and prevent any more Interpol buildings from being blown up. He assembles his team in London and they go ahead to complete the mission. While every character with their action and agility fit the block, it`s the emotions that are missing. Especially the bromance between Dom and Brian looks forced and the conversations between them lacks its initial spark.

Similarly, the romance between Domnic and Letty is devoid of luster, particularly in the scene where he reminds her of the past, which appears really silly.

Beefed-up Dywane Johnson walks through the scenes like a robotic GI Joe. There are a few funny moments between Tyrese Gibson as Roman and Chris Bridges as Tej.

While the first half of the film rushes through, it`s the second half that gives some semblance of sense to the narrative. But there are moments when you feel exhausted with the chases and explosions that you have to sit through.

Nevertheless, it`s the well-choreographed action sequence by Olivier Schneider that is brilliantly captured by Cinematographer Stephen F. Windon and the snappy edits that make ‘Fast & Furious 6’ a thrilling adventure.

The story might be simple, but director Justin Lin and writer Chris Morgan fail to pay attention to the holistic logic of the sequences in the film.

Where are these cars speeding to? Where are they in relation to each other? What`s their goal during the chase, apart from just creating some din? The climax has a major twist that works in making the next sequel and don`t miss the trailer of ‘Fast & Furious 7’ after the end credits.

0 Steven Spielberg's Lincoln

 

Emancipator?: Lincoln, featuring Daniel Day-Lewis, is wowing critics, but historians say the film gives the 16th President far too much credit for his role in ending slavery

The film currently taking America by storm begins with a black Union cavalryman pausing from the slaughter of the Civil War to recite the Gettysburg Address by heart as the president who gave it trudges past through the mud.
And it ends with Abraham Lincoln in quiet triumph, his work done in seeing slavery banned throughout the nation, and the Confederacy of the American South brought to its knees.
Breaking off from a discussion with colleagues about giving blacks the vote, Uncle Abe — played by Daniel Day-Lewis — heads off to a night at the theatre with Mrs Lincoln, and a fateful encounter with assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s sweeping epic about the 16th President of America’s triumph over slavery, won a commanding 12 Oscar nominations last week and is leading the field for this year’s Academy Awards, with Day-Lewis hotly tipped for the best actor accolade.
Weaned — as every U.S. schoolchild is — on the notion of Lincoln as a towering, morally spotless leader in America’s history, the Oscar grandees are unlikely to vote against it: it seems almost treasonous to stand in the way of this lump-in-the-throat, desperately worthy celebration of the man who has been dubbed the ‘Great Emancipator’.

Unfortunately, say historians, its portrayal of America’s most revered president is about as accurate as the notion that an ordinary soldier could have recited the Gettysburg Address from memory when the speech only became famous in the 20th century.
Not only, they say, has Spielberg’s lengthy drama grossly exaggerated Lincoln’s role in ending slavery, but it has also glossed over the president’s rather less likeable qualities.
Very definitely a man of his times, say historians, Lincoln was — certainly by today’s standards — a racist who used the N-word liberally, who believed that whites were superior to blacks and who, having jumped on the emancipation bandwagon rather late in the day, wanted to pack the freed slaves off to hard new lives in plantations abroad.

Dubious: Lincoln was a latecomer to the anti-slavery movement, according to some historians

To say you might not pick up on any of this from the almost saintly portrayal in the film is putting it mildly. Critics have been mesmerised by Day-Lewis’s compelling performance. Meanwhile, political commentators have even dared hope the film might restore Americans’ shattered confidence in their political leaders.
The film is based on a best-selling biography, Team Of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which Barack Obama has revealed he read during his first term as president.
Spielberg bought the film rights to the book before it had even been finished, and handed it to a screenwriter, Tony Kushner, who considers Lincoln to be the ‘greatest democratic leader in the world’.
It focuses on just four weeks near the end of Lincoln’s life when, in January 1865, he twisted arms and used underhand political tactics to persuade Congress to approve the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, thereby formally abolishing slavery across the nation.

Spielberg's film has been rated highly as cinema, but as history it 'leaves something to be desired', according to historians

Both Spielberg and his screenwriter have insisted this film is the definitive account of the defeat of slavery. ‘We were enormously accurate,’ said Kushner.
‘What we’re describing absolutely happened.’
Sadly, historians have been less impressed than the critics by such assurances. One after another has risked breaking step with national sentiment by declaring that Lincoln wasn’t quite the great liberator after all.

The Emancipation Proclamation is an order issued to all segments of the Executive branch, including the Army and Navy, of the United States by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War

‘As cinema it’s very, very good. As history it leaves something to be desired,’ says Eric Foner, a history professor at Columbia University who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book on Lincoln and slavery.

He said the film severely distorts how slavery came to be abolished by concentrating solely on what politicians were doing in Washington.

For the 13th Amendment, he points out, originated not with Lincoln but with a petition campaign by a formidable group of abolitionist feminists called the Women’s National Loyal League.
Spielberg portrays the president as the devoted foe of slavery, but Professor Foner says Lincoln occupied the middle ground on the issue.
Privately, he expressed his ‘dislike’ for it, but in public stressed that he didn’t want to abolish it, but only stop it from spreading.
Preserving the Union, he said in a key speech, was far more important than emancipating slaves.

But his position changed and he hardened in his opposition to slavery, especially after he saw the strategic advantages of freeing the millions of slaves behind enemy lines, many of whom could then come and fight for his Yankee army.
Other historians have taken a much harder line on Lincoln, pointing out his opposition to inter-racial marriage and even to blacks serving as jurors.
Historian Henry Louis Gates has called him a ‘recovering racist’. Other African-American experts on the period agree.

Lincoln allegedly backed a plan to send freed and willing slaves to work in other countries

Lincoln told racist jokes, enjoyed black minstrel shows and had no time for the arguments of hardened abolitionists that the races were equal under God.

During a famous 1858 Senate debate, for instance, Lincoln spoke of a ‘physical difference’ between blacks and whites that ‘will  forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality’.

He went on: ‘There must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favour of having the superior position assigned to the white race.’
As for giving them the vote, Lincoln only saw it as desirable for the more ‘intelligent’ blacks.
Spielberg’s film depicts Lincoln as ready to use every power at his disposal to free slaves, but the reality was that he envisaged a fate for them that sounded little better than their life on the cotton plantations of the South.

Marriage: Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, portrayed by actress Sally Field

He supported so-called ‘black colonisation’, backing unsuccessful schemes to send willing freed slaves to new lives — still toiling in the fields under blazing suns, of course — in countries such as Haiti, Panama and British Honduras.
Supporters say he only did it to persuade Congress to agree to freeing the slaves, but new evidence from, of all places, the National Archives at Kew in South-West London, suggests not.
Even after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 — which announced that all those enslaved in Confederate territories would be freed for ever — he approved plans in tandem with the British to set up freed slave settlements in what are now Belize and Guyana.
What really seems to have annoyed African-American historians in particular about Spielberg’s film is its portrayal of Lincoln as the great white emancipator freeing the helpless blacks.
(Curiously, the director got into similar trouble from some fellow Jews over Schindler’s List, about the courageous German businessman Oscar Schindler’s rescue of concentration camp inmates).
‘This is not mere nit-picking,’ history professor Kate Masur wrote in the New York Times. ‘Mr Spielberg’s Lincoln helps perpetuate the notion that African-Americans have offered little of substance to their own liberation.’
In fact, not only did 150,000 black soldiers fight in the Civil War, but some freed slaves became crucial members of the abolition groups who were pushing for emancipation decades before Lincoln took up the cause.
Passionate abolitionists such as the freed slave Frederick Douglass, newspaper editor William Garrison and heiress Angelina Grimke were the real heroes and heroines of the struggle to end slavery, but their names are largely lost to history now. They don’t even get a mention in Spielberg’s version of events.
Also absent is Harriet Beecher Stowe, a clergyman’s daughter and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which is a fierce attack on slavery and the best-selling novel of the 19th century.

Tragic: Lincoln was gunned down during a theatre performance just days after the end of the American Civil War

If you are searching for the single person who really brought down slavery in the U.S., say many historians, you need look no further than her.

But with some 16,000 books written about him — including 20 published in just the past few months — Americans remain obsessed by Lincoln. It’s not hard to see why.

‘He saved the American Dream and he lived the American Dream,’ explains one historian, Harold Holzer, who has been involved in no fewer than 42 books on the great man.
Raised in a log cabin in Illinois with very little education, Lincoln rose to the highest office in the land and took the helm of a teetering nation in its hour of need.
And there are few more tragic and dramatic moments in U.S. history than Lincoln’s assassination on Good Friday, just five days after winning the Civil War.

He was undoubtedly a remarkable president who kept the U.S. intact and presided over the end of slavery.
Whether he deserves the unadulterated hero worship of Spielberg’s Lincoln seems rather more questionable.

Lincoln believed in the supremacy of the white race, say history experts

0 Movie review: Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola

 

Movie: Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola

Cast: Imran Khan, Anushka Sharma, Pankaj Kapur, Shabana Azmi

Direction: Vishal Bhardwaj

Rating:

Macbeth and Maoism don't normally make for a cinematic cocktail, but with Vishal Bhardwaj you can never tell. Vishal's is a mindspace where nothing ever unfolds as it would seem. He played out the surprise quotient in Kaminey, Omkara and Maqbool. He does it again with his new film, teasingly packaged as a rom-com.

Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola is a satire that uses a Shakespearean whiff and shades of Red politics to make a caustic comment beneath its catchy, mouthful of a title. If comedy mixed with romance has become a Bollywood staple to ensure box-office kill, Vishal uses the formula to add layers to what starts off as a deceptively simple tale.

A lot has been said about the uber-cool Imran Khan's rustic Haryanvi turn. You could have a few hiccups when he tries out the Jatt accent, but the guy admirably moulds himself into what is surely the best role to have come his way yet.

Matru's Bijlee, Anushka Sharma, does a better job though, when it comes to getting into the skin of character. May be, Anushka is getting into a comfort zone playing these bubbly feisty types film after film. Vishal's latest merely gives her scope to add some depth to her set Bollywood image.

The killer acts, though, come from the veterans. This is Pankaj Kapur's film, no doubt. As Harry Mandola, millionaire with a dual personality, Pankaj flaunts versatile abundance. Whatever little screen space is left is hogged by Shabana Azmi, Hindi cinema's most accomplished actor right now, despite restricted footage as a ruthless politician.

Mandola and Shabana's Chaudhri Devi have a familiar agenda at hand. They want to grab acres of farmland in their remote hometown for a Special Economic Zone. The farmers are naturally up in arms. The black comedy about the screenplay (Vishal and Abhishek Chaubey) lies in Mandola's eccentric persona. The alcoholic tycoon becomes a caring soul when drunk, leading a revolution against himself in that state. When he is sober, he is no better than a beast. The Macbeth metaphor is cleverly woven in thanks to Mandola's visions. He sees Gulabo the bhains at odd hours. It is a witty Jatt twist to Lady Macbeth's bloodied hands.

Vishal uses Matru to make his political point. Without reserving much surprise, he reveals soon enough that the mysterious Mao, who guides the farmers in their agitation, is really Matru, otherwise Mandola's servant and drinking partner.

The build-up is superb, and the narrative leaves ample room for each character to grow on you. The polished tech-specs complement the black comedy, too.

But the film crumbles in the climax, giving you an end that is too filmy for satisfaction. The end is one that bars Vishal's latest from becoming an exceptional effort. For everything else it is worth, this is the first real whopper coming out of Bollywood this year. Go for it.

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