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Film: Blue (U/A)
Director: Anthony D'souza
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Akshay Kumar, Zayed Khan, Lara Dutta and others
Rating: *
Anthony D'souza, director of Blue, said in an interview that it was important to keep the running time of the film under two hours (1.57hrs to be precise) so that the audience didn't get bored. D'souza couldn't have got it more wrong. Blue could have easily been shorter, or even not have been made at all.
Okay, agreed that India hasn't seen an action film of this scale before. The canvas is huge, the cinematography pretty good and the making slick. Money has been spent like water and that's the closest the film comes to its theme.
But even as Blue tries to emulate every Hollywood film in the action genre, it hardly matches up to any of them. It instead ends up, embarrassingly, like a poor B-grade film from the west. Bad Boys anyone? Nope, this one's just bad.
If you've seen the promos, you roughly know the plot. It's another matter that even after the film ends, you don't really know what the plot was after all. Way back in 1949, the British decided to return some of India's jewels back to the country and dispatched them on a ship called Lady in Blue. The vessel sunk, untraced, in mysterious circumstances and its contents remained lost.
Now businessman Aarav (Kumar, addressed annoyingly as Sarkar) wants to find the 'treasure' the ship carried and can only do so with the help of friend-cum-employee Sagar (Dutt, addressed annoyingly as Sethji). Everything else pertaining to the plot is incidental and as pointless as the premise of the film itself.
Director D'souza needs to know that an action film needn't necessarily have close-up shots of a woman's cleavage and derrière repeatedly and pointless gun firing and chase sequences.
It definitely should not have lengthy verbose scenes, especially when the film rests on such a flimsy plot in the first place. You pray for the story to move on, but Gulshan - played by Rahul Dev - mouths dialogues like Apnanapan hai and such others at a leisured pace, while scenes seem repetitive.
And after all that talk about the 'treasure hunt', all that the actors do in the end is dive into the sea and its right there waiting for them. How in hell did no one else ever get their hands on all that gold!
Among the 'jewels' you take back home with you is Akshay Kumar saying "Hamein treasure hunt pe jaana hoga" - or something to that effect - like it's a trip to Lonavala and back.
For the actor himself, the film is a new low. Every time you step in to watch a Kumar film now, you are expecting something nonsensical, but you hope it at least entertains you in the bargain. After disappointing you every time in his last - we've lost count now - few films, this one just makes you hope that he'll finally realise that a film also needs a script!
Sanjay Dutt looks bloated, and no effort goes into ensuring that the paunch is somewhat hidden. He, however, puts in a decent effort. Zayed Khan is as far from being cool as the amount of effort he puts into looking it. Lara Dutta provides the appropriate eye candy to save the film from being a complete washout.
It's not that a film like Blue needs an Oscar-winning script or even scenes that justify the action. Most escapist entertainers of this variety rely on a racy script that keeps you on-the-edge and breathtaking action that blows your mind away. This film, sadly, has neither.
So what's the point, you say? Here, it seems like the idea was to make the Hindi film industry's 'costliest' film, make a lot of noise about it, get people in theatres during the holiday season and have a 'Hit' on hands.
Hopefully, the next time, all that money would be used to make something that's at least worth watching. This one isn't. Except, if you're looking for a spoof.
