Statutory Warning: An adult movie for people who want to carry their marbles along to the theatre.

With Maqbool’s (2003) release, one unassuming musician-director, Vishal Bhardwaj ushered in a whole new idiom of cinema that can before it be traced to Satya’s (1998) emergence from the dregs. Although Maqbool met with zero success, (is an underground classic now) critics hailed him as a messiah. Ambition bred hunger for success and he made Omkara (2006) which pandered to a mixed crowd with its shebang of intense drama-has-time-for-shimmy item numbers.

With Kaminey, he’s come full circle to establish in his f-words what cinema has always been, and means to him, Kiss-Hiss Bang-Fang. If Dhan Tan Nan is not a dil phenkh homage to hardboiled cinema, what is? The song’s full throttle adrenaline assault on the senses is what has always lured audiences to flock into a dark hall and be blown away. Kaminey does just that.

Charlie Sharma (Fhahid Kapur) who lisps and Guddu Sharma (SSShahid Kapur) who stammers are twin brothers who don’t get along. Charlie bets on horses for a living, and Guddu is struggling to complete his studies and make an earnest living. Guddu sings about wearing condoms but does it without ‘pathwar’ and sinks into the ‘aag ka dariya’ - his firebrand Maharashtrian mulgi girlfriend Sweety Bhope (Priyanka Chopra). She gets pregnant and wants to keep the baby, and so they should marry. One small hitch: she is the sister of small time swine Sunil Shekhar Bhope Bhau (Amole Gupte) who hates bhaiyas and will kill Guddu at any cost to save his political career. Charlie on the other hand is down on luck flogging dead horses at the races when he stumbles upon ‘sugar’ in transit which he wants to keep for himself. It cracks open a stuffy can of wriggly characters we’ve seen before; greedy policemen, drug peddlers, diamond merchants, conniving punters and scheming parvenus. What follows is your usual dhan tan nan…

In a film where Gandhi and Hitler are collaged together on a poster in Guddu’s hostel room, you can surmise the philosophy that went into the making of Kaminey. Kaminey is a term of endearment being used for both. Or every good person has an evil twin. The twins in the film go through the same ordeal as they ratchet between their moral and survival instincts.

Kaminey as a canvas can also be threaded to what Vishal achieved with Blood Brothers- the short film he made for Mira Nair’s AIDS Jaago project in 2007. It has the same bleak setting, neon lights, street language, hand held camera work and a verite attitude. It’s quite possible that Blood Brothers was the trailer to what he had in mind for a full length feature film with a new story.

At a time when German filmmaker Werner Herzog is pressing for cinema to be physical, ‘for images that fit our era’, Vishal like Anurag Kashyap, is keenly following this ‘new grammar of images’ with his nouvelle vague style of film narrative, both in a non-linear storytelling format and execution for Indian cinema. Where Kaminey achieves is in these departments, the story is still run of the mill.

In the first half of the film, when the characters are being established (over a dozen), you will get caught in the gut, what the f is going on with the supercharged editing? By the interval point, when a case of mistaken identity lands up the twins in serious trouble, the pivot shifts to look forward to the divined climax, but what an anti-Christ! Just when you think you know it, there’s a surprise you wish wasn’t there. Didn’t Maqbool and Omkara have expiatory endings?

Shahid belts out a lip smackingly fexy performance as Charlie. As Guddu, the wimp, you don’t really care for the good guy because the meek bugger will inherit the earth eventually. Look at our Prime Minister for pete’s sake!

Priyanka’s loud performance is well nuanced to echo the sentiments of an ordinary middle class lass going frenetic to save her marriage. Watch out how she pitches her dialogues a decibel higher and yet does not turn it into an annoying banshee scream.

Mikhail (Chandan Roy Sanyal), who plays Charlie’s yaar could have been the next Bhiku Mhatre had Deepak Dobriyal essayed the role. As a rank newcomer his performance registers but Deepak who has worked with Vishal in Omkara and Maqbool could have raised the performance a note better and made it more identifiable.

Amole Gupte will walk away with the acting trophies next year, his character has the best lines in the film. If he is a good guy in real life, that phase, with this role, is over. He’s a badass kamina.

A special mention of the very real and kaminey looking supporting cast, which is superb, and without whom the film could not have achieved the grit and grime we see in their dirty rotten scoundrel faces.

Predictable-Terrible-Awful- just some of the f-expletives used by critics brewing a storm in their tea-cups at the press show I attended. Are critics important? Vishal arrived at the auditorium after the film was screened. He would have politely minced his words if he heard them. Critics are the real Kaminey (Rascals). Term of endearment, his way of thanking them.


Manish Gaekwad/Hill Road Media