Cine Safari

Friday, 22 March 2019

Argentina Fans Kaattoorkadavu Review

ARGENTINA FANS KAATTOORKADAVU MOVIE REVIEW.

Vipinan and friends are die-hard fans of Argentinian football team in Kaattoorkadavu. Argentina Fans Kaattoorkadavu is the coming of age story of their lives, love and loss in the span of four football seasons. Argentina Fans Kaattoorkadavu aims to be a blend of a coming of age sports drama and a romantic comedy.
Since the success of the Aadu franchise, Midhun Manuel Thomas has made his mark among young movie buffs. And hence, making a film with a good number of youngsters, Kalidas Jayaram and Aishwarya Lekshmi, along with a bunch of newcomers in the cast could have scored well for him. Especially since the film had a story with football as a backdrop it couldn't have been more perfect if the film also had a good story so to speak of.

Kattoorkadavu in Thrissur district is taken as the background of this film. The village is known among many things for the Chantha or Kaattoor Angady and plays the backdrop for the story of football fanatics perfectly. As usual with Malayalam movies with a rural setting, the film also promises a few great visuals
Vipinan is your average rural youngster who hangs out with his friends is also the sole breadwinner for his family. He is a football enthusiast. Those who follow soccer know the craze for various South American teams have among the Indian youth. Vipin and his gang are the eponymous Argentina Fans in Kaattoor. But for every Argentina fan, there should be a Brasil fan. Mehrunnisa Khadarkutty is one such Brazil fan. She is also the schoolmate of Vipinan and their rivalry courtesy their loyalty to different soccer teams is also legendary. But as it should in every feel good romantic dramas, they slowly fall in love with each other.

For a football movie, it has very little football talk, making it viewable to those who aren't football enthusiasts. Kalidas Jayaram, who plays Vipinan, the lead shines like a penny in every single shot.Aishwarya Lekshmi as Mehrunnisa, Vipinan’s opposite number and love interest is cute and elevated her cliches role with her acting capabilities. Other actors just turn up as and when required. The direction of the film is surprisingly passive. The dialogues though appear good while watching the film, doesn’t add to the lore. The screenplay has many moments where the flow of the film stalls. The basic core point also doesn’t come until later in the second half of the film. Argentina Fans Kaattoorkadavu misses at the story. It hops around trying to be a football movie and a rom-com, missing the essence of either by a large margin. At the end it doesn't give you the adrenaline rush a good football movie is supposed to give you. Neither does it give you the feel-good mushy warmth of a good romantic comedy.

Argentina Fans Kaattoorkadavu is neither a pure football movie nor a pure romantic comedy.While a few can bear with the drag feat of the narration for the sake of the few highlights which lights up the proceedings here and there, it doesn’t offer to those who are neither interested in the game nor have invested in the director’s previous films. With flashes of goodness somewhere, Argentina Fans Kaattoorkadavu makes for a one-time watch.

Thursday, 21 March 2019

KESARI REVIEW

Posted by Unknown on March 21, 2019 in News, Review,

KESARI MOVIE REVIEW 🌟

Anurag Singh's Kesari brings to the big screen the famed 1897 Battle of Saragarhi, which witnessed 21 valiant soldiers of the 36 Sikh Regiment take on a 10,000-strong army of Afghan tribesmen in the rugged terrain of what is today Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Though the audience knows how it will end, the way the filmmaker tells this tale is worth a watch.

On September 12, 1897, the Afghan soldiers attempted to capture Saragarhi, which acted as a signalling post between Fort Gulistan and Fort Lockhart, with the intention of cutting off all communication between the two forts. Despite being low on ammunition and receiving no reinforcements, the 21 soldiers of the 36th Sikh Regiment of the British Indian Army led by Havildar Ishar Singh (Akshay Kumar) put up a strong fight.

Kesari takes the audience where history textbooks did not, into the lives of the soldiers

Anurag Singh and co-writer Girish Kohli have no excuse to botch up the material, but they do so anyway. Sluggishly paced until the interval and springing to life only in fits and starts in the second half, Kesari is a poor attempt to revisit a chapter in Indian military history that earned the admiration even of British colonisers and is celebrated to this day in Punjab.

Akshay Kumar effortlessly switches from the emotional scenes to the high-intensity war sequences. Parineeti Chopra, who plays Havildar Ishar Singh's wife, has barely any scenes to speak of.

The film is well mounted and shot. It is impressive in terms of scale. The production design by Subrata Chakraborty and Amit Ray, the stunt coordination by Lawrence Woodward.

Lost in the process is the opportunity to stage a pure, high-octane war drama. The 150-minute runtime, which includes flashbacks to Isher’s courtship of the woman he eventually marries (played by Parineeti Chopra), and limp attempts at slapstick humour, slow down the momentum ever so often. A movie that should have been about a legendary last stand becomes yet another star vehicle for Akshay Kumar, who is the only character with a back story. The other soldiers, which includes characters played doesn't have much screen presence or any much contributions.

Kesari is a war film with a pleasantly pacifist soul. Just a little tempering of its overt enthusiasm might have prevented the battle scenes from becoming so exhaustingly monotonous at times. The last half hour or so of the film would have worked far better had some restraint being exercised in the staging of the two climaxes - one built around Ishar's last stand, the other around Gurmukh, the boy who turns into the man of the moment.

Kesari is a complete Akshay film. And he pulls it off, keeping that ‘Kesari’ pagdi aloft right till the end, delivering thundering speeches, and keeping his men’s morale up. His Ishar Singh is inhabited and convincing, and it helps that his Punjabi accent is completely on point.