tonymontana’s viewings (Updated)

Manjummel Boys:

terrific survival thriller with stunning cinematography and great background music: creepy and tense. Have always found survival thrillers to be a tricky genre which can easily fall into the trap of predictability and repetitiveness.

tonymontana on Jawan

Watched Jawan:

The problem with the film is that it’s overstuffed.. every scene is chaotic, a lot is happening without reason and without any sort of conviction. It’s a series of scenes joined with one another with no regard of what follows before or after. They have packed in a vigilante drama, made a political statement, a feminist drama, more backstories and flashbacks that it could be handled, a revenge tale, a father and son story altogether without bothering if the screenplay makes sense. With respect to age old storytelling, it’s a darn mess..

tonymontana on Bawaal

Watched Bawaal.

I didn’t mind it. It’s sincerely made, and some scenes are shot wonderfully well. It also confirms the pattern or the style of filmmaking of Nitesh Tiwari that many successful directors do not follow, and that’s a good thing. He has kept his ambitions low key even after having achieved tremendous success with Dangal.

tonymontana on Malik

A little too ambitious and packs in a lot. There’s politics, communalism, a godfather like figure, smuggling, corruption, scheming family members having their own vested interests, the justice system, relationship problems, mother-son dynamics and so on, but if the film wasn’t so sharply edited (a little too well-edited, maybe, for its own good), this could have been well over 3.5 hours long! Strangely, though, the director pulls it off, and is ably supported by an ensemble cast which hardly hits a false note.