Tashan Movie Review

Movie Reviews

By Taran Adarsh, April 25, 2008 - 16:08 IST Hindi movies have undergone a sea-change in terms of content. From crude, been there seen that, done to death kind of movies, to films with substance, the audience tastes have changed over the years. Even though we've have grown up on the staple diet of desi food, we've cultivated a taste for Italian, Chinese, Thai and Mexican cuisine. The experience with TASHAN is like, you enter a posh restaurant, waiting for a sumptuous meal to be served, but what's served on your plate is vada-pau. TASHAN takes you back to the 1970s Bollywood, when illogical situations, blood and gore, for no rhyme of reason, were the main ingredients that made the junta break into taalis. Sorry, the formula doesn't work anymore! Write your own movie review of Tashan Seriously, what was debutante director Vijay Krishna Acharya thinking when he wrote this apology of a script? It's perfectly okay to revisit the classics and pay homage to the masala films of yore, but the new interpretation has to be contemporary, you need to change with the times. The one thing that you realize after watching TASHAN is, no amount of gloss, glam and top notch stars can ever substitute for a riveting script. Great stars, great styling, great songs and great visuals work as long as the script is great. So what's the verdict then? If you genuinely miss the 'Kamine, main tera khoon pee jaaonga' and 'Bhagwan ke liye mujhe maaf kardo' kind of movies that dominated the 1970s, pick up a DVD of those hits instead. TASHAN is regressive cinema with a capital R. type=text/javascript> dapMgr.enableACB("GE300",false); d apMgr.renderAd("GE300","&PG=IFMGE3&AP=1089",300,250); A call centre executive Jimmy [Saif Ali Khan] is entrusted the responsibility of teaching English to a gangster, Bhaiyyaji [Anil Kapoor]. But Bhaiyyaji's key help Pooja [Kareena Kapoor] uses Jimmy to swindle Bhaiyyaji of Rs. 25 crores. Obviously, Bhaiyajji wants his money back and also Jimmy and Pooja's heads. He settles for Bachchan Pande [Akshay Kumar] to carry out the job of tracing Pooja, once Jimmy surrenders himself to Bhaiyyaji. What happens next? Actually, TASHAN starts off very well and the first hour unwinds at a feverish pace. Besides, there're interesting twists and turns in this hour that make you jump with joy. Akshay's entry in the movie is the turning point and the actor only takes the film to a new level. Alas, the joy is short-lived. The writer-director goes completely off the mark and loses focus. Instead of coming to the point right away, what the writer does is makes you run in circles and circles. It's like boarding a direct flight to London, but the pilot suddenly decides on having stopovers in Ahmedabad, Dubai, Budapest, Munich, Berlin, Amsterdam, before landing at London. You're exasperated! What ails the film? Various factors. The film goes on and on and on. Unwanted scenes, the outdated love angle, the lenggggggthy fight sequences [people showering Akshay and Saif with bullets, but, well, nothing happens], the confrontation between good and evil in the climax… you actually pinch yourself, were you watching the same movie in the first hour? Or did the reels get changed? Another minus factor is Vishal-Shekhar's music. Seems like the composers have run out of tunes and what they offer is best suited for the music systems in their cars only. With such impressive names on and off screen, the music directors should've ensured that they come up with tunes that remain etched in your memory… in this case, at least that could've been a redeeming aspect. But the music is awful. The picturisation of some songs is, however, quite eye-filling. Debutante director Vijay Krishna Acharya seems to have taken the audience for granted. Cinematography is excellent. The locales are a visual treat. Dialogues are good at places. TASHAN belongs to Akshay Kumar completely. No two opinions on that. Take Akshay out of this film and the movie is a big zero. He's the lifeline of this project and his performance will be loved by elite and masses, both. Kareena Kapoor is fantastic. She looks gorgeous, acts very well [her role is similar to the one she essayed in FIDA] and yes, she carries off the bikini with lan. Saif Ali Khan is relegated to the backseat. What did Saif see in this role? He's hardly there in the second hour. Anil Kapoor entertains at the start, but after a point, the Hindi-English bhasha gets on your nerves. Also, it's very difficult to decipher what he's speaking most of the time. On the whole, TASHAN is one of the weakest films to come out of the Yash Raj banner. This film has gloss aplenty, but no soul. At the box-office, the film will join the ranks of JHOOM BARABAR JHOOM, LAAGA CHUNARI MEIN DAAG and AAJA NACHLE sooner or later… Business in Overseas will also be weak despite a popular cast.

B.O. update: 'Tashan' not as expected

- By Taran Adarsh, April 26, 2008 - 08:23 IST
Yash Raj's new release TASHAN hasn't opened to the desired response. Since the movie hasn't released at multiplexes, the distributors are bound to lose a substantial chunk of revenue. At single screens, however, the response wasn't as expected. The film had a 70% start, but there were reports of business sliding downwards as day progressed. The reports are negative and the biggie is not likely to sustain in days to come.

The second release, SIRF - LIFE LOOKS GREENER ON THE OTHER SIDE, has opened to a dull response.


http://www.indiafm.com/trade/boxoffice_update/index.html

Masand's Verdict: Tashan is terribly trashy

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Anil Kapoor

Director: Vijay Krishna Acharya

The sight of Kareena Kapoor in a two-piece bikini is about the only thing that wakes you up from your sleep while watching Tashan — the mega-disappointing, mind-numbing new film at the cinemas this weekend.

Bad films are bad films and we see some every week, but Tashan is not just a bad film, it's a terrible film. Terrible because it takes its audience for granted, terrible also because the filmmakers expect to get away without a plot or any common sense only because they've got big movie stars onboard.

Written and directed by Vijay Krishna Acharya, Tashan is what you'd describe as a road movie, but one that's going in all the wrong directions.

Jimmy's got his eye on Pooja, the gangster's pretty young assistant (played by Kareena Kapoor), who uses Jimmy to swindle her boss of 25 crore rupees.

Determined to recover his money and also to punish both Jimmy and Pooja, Bhaiyyaji recruits his most trusted henchman to do the job.

So you have Akshay Kumar as Bachchan Pandey, the gangster's faithful aide from Kanpur, who tracks down the culprits and recovers the stolen money that's hidden across the length and breadth of the country.

Much like those bad eighties potboilers, Tashan too is held together by a threadbare script centred on a vendetta plot. But the treatment's so over-the-top, so indulgent that it fails to establish any connect.

Instead of a coherent screenplay or a traditional three-act structure, you get a handful of set pieces around which most of the scenes are loosely constructed.

That garish item song in the desert, the bullet-dodging action scene at a Rajasthani fort, Kareeena's bikini moment, even that ridiculous climatic action scene complete with shaolin monks, a water scooter zipping through a dirty naala, and believe it or not, even a Dhanno-style horse-driven tonga.

In all fairness, not all these set pieces are badly done - the item song in the desert is quite neat actually - but very little of it makes any sense in the larger picture, because you're just going from one piece to another without any help from the script really.

Little do you expect in a seemingly fast-paced road movie, to find a sickeningly sentimental flashback track about childhood sweethearts.

You see the problem with Tashan is nobody associated with this film knew what film they were making. What's more, I don't think they cared either - the film reeks of arrogance.

Arbitrarily packing in elements of every genre without actually bothering to stop and see if the mix does work, Tashan is like an overcooked stew.

There are films that kill you softly, and then there's Tashan, a film that kills you with excess.

Packaged snazzily with glossy-finish camerawork, exotic locations and fancy costumes, every frame of the film probably cost lakhs to put together, but it still feels like a hollow piece in the end because the story doesn't hold.

Borrowing narrative from Tarantino and style from Stephen Chow doesn't help either because they don't blend with the film's wafer-thin plot. One may have complained a little less if the characters were more engaging, but Anil Kapoor's grating Hinglish dialogue makes you want to slit your wrists, and Saif Ali Khan fumbles through the film foolishly, unable to find his feet.

Kareena Kapoor, meanwhile, queen of over-the-top delivery, does a decent job. But of course, if Tashan is salvaged to some extent, it's thanks to Akshay Kumar's irresistible presence and his spontaneous approach to the character.

You cringe when he's cupping his crotch repeatedly, and you scowl when he delivers those double-meaning dialogues, but not for a moment can you take your eyes off the screen when he's up there.

Despite some good music from Vishal-Shekhar, the songs seem like they're only prolonging your misery. Well that's because Tashan is a test of your patience.

I'm going to go with one out of five and a thumbs down for director Vijay Krishna Acharya's Tashan.

In case you didn't know, Tashan means style. I'm sorry to say, this film has none.

Rating: 1 / 5 (Poor)

😛 😛 😛 OMG I cant wait to watch it 😳 😉 😛

thanks for sharing .Tashan is very good movie

me 2 da film waz k bt not gr8 lik yash's other films!!
kareena lux rely skinny n all bt she lux gr8 in da film
hse stands out 4rm da crowd na ninin 4rm da others!!hehe 😆 anil lux funny n saif n akshay luk rely different