Remakes Should be Better - Review of the hindi film - Ghajini

A.R.Murugadoss is both Lucky and Foolish.

Lucky - because not every tamil film maker gets to watch his film , review it, understand the weaknesses, imagine the improvisations that could have been made, mistakes that could have been corrected, and also then end up getting a chance to remake it with an actor whose movie is sure to be watched by an audience atleast 25 times bigger than the one which saw it originally.

Foolish - because the climax was not the only thing that was wrong with the original tamil Ghajini. There were a million other loose ends, scenes which could have been grander, sharper and hip'er. Sequences that had to be more logical. And without looking at these gaps Murugadoss makes Me review his original film more than the new one, which is actually a tough job to do.

I have been forced to see the same tamil ghajini all over again, in a different language, with a better built hero , a shorter (and not necessarily sensible) climax and No other significant change worth mentioning. So I am basically disappointed after watching the film.

But this review of the film tries unsuccessfully to look at it individually as a new Hindi film, without the shadow of the original (whats the difference anyway). So here we go.

The director - ( the lucky and the foolish one)

He is partly impressive and partly irritating. There were scenes where I had an urge to go and tell him to change the way he shot it. The scenes where Sanjay Singhania is shown body building had a nice effect but again could have had even a bigger one had he done it properly. Generally, his direction is good. Nice angles, good reference to some minute details, making Jia Khan emote (:D) , etc.etc. are credit worthy.

The Performances -

Asin is as awesome as she was in the original. Sadly, Ghajini is the only good role she has done in tamil (after that she had to do kuthu dance with all masala monkeys) and I hope this is not the case with her hindi career. ( err, shes acting with salman next. ewww)

Amir Khan has an amazing body. The rest of it, however was like watching Surya all over again and his performance is not as great as what hes been telling in the 24x7 shows on Ghajini being played on Mtv, [V]channel, Ndtv, Cnn Ibn and even damp squibs like Headlines today. But he has been sincere to the role and I have never seen any actor put so much effort on building a brilliant physique for one single role (He is gonna shed it all for "3 idiots"- the film). His body is an amazing work of art, if i can call it that :)

Jiah - she is not made to run as much as nayan did but her role is equally dumb. And it would have been nice if she had at least exposed more. What else is she really meant for?

Riaz Khan - I hope he makes it big in Bollywood at least. Wah. What a physique

Other actors - Tinu , rawat and the others were "OK ok" ... ( the first Ok said with more stress on "o" and the second one with more stress on the "k")

THE MUSIC -
A.R.Rahman has typical Harrisesque instability in BGM, which is superb at times and out of place otherwise. His songs are a mind-blowing and Behka sung by Karthik is my personal favourite.

THE Camera
- Ravi k chandran does a nice job. The movie "looks" very niche and colorful. He has differentiated well between the Asin part and the Revenge part, which was expected anyways.

Art direction is notable , especially in the bekha song - nice work.

Dialogues, unlike other tamil remakes are thankfully not a translation. They are fresh and cool.


ALL THIS APART, THERE IS ONE THING THAT HAS RAISED THE HINDI FILM WAY BEYOND ITS TAMIL COUNTERPART. --- ITS THE EXCLUSION OF THE FOLLOWING DIALOGUE

" 10 digits. This must be a MOBILE number" .

LOL

2 and a half stars on 5.