BHAAGAM BHAAG

Bhagam bhaag starts off with a bang! Great comedy fills up the space in the first half. Almost the entire team of comedians does justice to the script, although Govinda appears to be in the same form as Tendulkar nowadays. He is just not able to deliver his lines in his impeccable style of yesteryears!

Akshay Kumar is good, but shows no difference in the type of role or acting from several of his films in a row, that have him doing comedy. Very monotonous, but still quite enjoyable, is how we can rate him.

The problem with the movie comes in the second half, where the comedy shapes up into a murder mystery. It takes you through just too many twists and turns before revealing the climax, which is a complete anticlimax (KLPD)!

Although the comedians have done their duty well, the non-comedians have performed as if they never wanted to work in the film. Can’t blame them entirely too – the script itself was very poor! Lara Dutta, Jackie Shroff, and Arbaaz Khan, all lack any shine at all. Their animations could have done better!

There was hardly any music there to take back home. ‘Afreen’ does have some good choreography, though.

To sum up, Bhaagam Bhaag will stay in your memory for some time, thanks to the comedy in its first half. But the enthusiasm in the film ebbs down rapidly in the second half. Had the film been made an entire comedy, or the mystery in the second half also handled as comedy, it would have been a watch worth twice! But now, it’s been reduced to a good entertainer for people who are in the habit of leaving the hall in the middle of a film – here interval is the point to leave!

RISK

In the first look, RISK appears to be another of the underworld genre of movies that Ram Gopal Verma springs out of his hat every other year. On scratching beneath the surface, we find the depiction of civilian casualties during warfare. Only, the director has chosen to put a cop’s conscience in place of an innocent bystander.

To start with, let us have an overview of the story. A devoted inspector becomes overzealous in his attempts at cleaning the society of its filth - criminals. That is his job and he tries his best to do it. In the process, he ends up shooting a couple of innocent guys, mistaking them to be the goons he was after. He insists they weren’t all that innocent.! Whatever, he is forced to take an underworld kingpin’s help to get out of the mess he got himself into.

That is the main highlight of the story. There were civilian casualties in this war as in any other. The victim of note here is the inspector’s soul! This man finds himself killing his soul and siding with the very scum of the society that he had set out to clean! As he himself remarks in the movie - he died that very day when he accepted help from the don.

The acting in the movie is intense, with little show of emotions, but no dearth of religious beliefs, especially among the big goons! The dons in the movie appear to be very devout at home, irrespective of the fact that their professions performed exactly opposite of what religion teaches! It makes us wonder whether they have God’s blessings in their prosperity in their fields or their intense devotion to God is an attempt towards cleansing their souls of the dirt that they accumulate in their daily lives!

One can very well say the movie doesn’t have any female actresses - whoever is there is meant to just fill in the gaps. The reins of the story lie solely in the hands of the male actors. The reins of the story lie in the guns they hold.

Overall, the movie holds on to you till the end by virtue of the intensity of its scenes. A nice watch, but don’t expect a standing-ovation material.