Movie Review: Ghajini
Aamir Khan takes great pains to promote his movies, whether he is the producer, director or even an actor. I don’t know the financial stake he has in A R Murugadoss’ Ghajini, but the way he has gone about promoting the movie, it appears as if it’s his production or direction. But then, he is Aamir the perfect perfectionist. So it would be in line to first highlight the technical flaws in the screenplay, which leaves you asking many questions.
- Like for instance, why is the death of the police officer, tracking down Aamir who is on a killing spree, not investigated?
- Also, he (the police officer) is locked up in Aamir’s house for at least a day if not more, why did no one in the force miss him?
- Also, with the help of just one bus ticket, after the first killing, how come the said police officer ‘zeroes in’ quicker than the Scotland Yard on the right conductor of the BEST bus, who even knows where Aamir boards the bus from?
- Also, what happens to the chaddi advertisement, Aamir (Sanjay) agrees to do for Asin (Kalpana). Now here is the Chairman of Air Voice, a mobile company, has not anyone seen him in the ad? Moreover, Asin is blissfully unaware of his ‘super rich’ status even though she claims to be his girlfriend. When he goes for the shoot, the film breaks into a song in Namibia, with the much-talked about six looks of Aamir. Was it a dream sequence, or were the audience dreaming?
- And how come Jia Khan, who plays a medical student, easily comes upon Aamir’s medical file, wherein, the movie introduces Aamir and his medical problem—that of Short Term Memory Loss. More importantly, the doctor taking the class knows that Aamir’s is also a police case, so how come when he is arrested trying to kill Jiah, the police have no records about him.
- Also, when Jiah Khan is trying to figure out what happened after June 2006 to Aamir, she goes to an archive that stores newspapers when all she had to do is ‘Google’ the names Sanjay and Kalpana!!
- Finally, when Rab Ne Bana de Jodi released two weeks ago, the ushers and staff at Big Cinemas, Wadala, sported the Ghajini haircut, like many from other multiplexes. The least they could have done, or Aamir could have looked into, was to see that the look was maintained at the time of release as well and all through the week. Their hair has grown and the trademark lines on the scalp have been buried!
I’m sure Aamir would like to look into these flaws, or again, knowing the perfectionist that he is, he is aware and since this is a typical masala Bollywood film, he has let it be.
However, having highlighted these ‘Short-Term Flaws’ I must admit that the movie is line with Hollywood revenge films. The action is slick, the fight sequences powerful, almost giving you a Jean Claude Van Damme impact. Full marks to Aamir for working on his physique to get the desired effect to put in that extra power into his role of a killing machine. He is simply marvelous when he bares his torso. His fight scenes are ‘up there’ and his overall performance, well it would suffice to say that only a perfectionist would come up with a zinger! Asin who is already a rage down south, and who is also part of the hit Tamil version, is good. But there is something lacking in her skill. I mean she does not exactly go out there and ‘attack’ each scene.
Ghajini is a complete entertainer; it has action, romance, comedy, suspense and revenge, the age-old Bollywood formula. And Murugadoss has packaged it to meet the needs of the time and elevated it to a slick status, making use of the advancement in technology that was not afforded to revenge films of the 80s or 90s. He also comes in with the added advantage of having directed the hit Tamil film by the same name, which was a remake of Christopher Nolan’s 2000 flick, Memento.
The movie is about Aamir who is out to avenge his grilfriend’s death. Aamir is a rich businessman, who ‘accidentally’ falls in love with Asin, a struggling model. During the course of their courtship, Aamir porposes to Asin and she agrees not knowing that he is who he is. In the meanwhile, Asin loves to help out the needy and one such exercise of hers proves fatal. She rescues 25 girls who are being taken to Goa. Ghajini, the man behind the flesh trade is not amused. He enters her house with his goons and does away with her, even as Aamir enters at the same time, to tell her who he actually is. He is hit on the head and hence the brain disorder when he cannot remember things for more than 15 minutes.
The film clocks three hours and the audience, who love typical Bollywood films, and are starving for the same, loved every minute of it. If violence, revenge and a little bit of romance is what you like, Ghajini is what you will love.
In the first few days, this film will break box-office records for the year.
Rating: 3.5 / 5
Martin D’Souza
This first appeared on glamsham.com on December 25, 2008