{{ http://img.indiaglitz.com/hindi/wallpaper/MOVIES/therising/Mangal_030805_800_1.jpg?200×150|The Rising (Mangal Pandey)}}

Last week I saw Mangal Pandey — the Rising. I was disappointed.

I had gone in with high hopes, thinking it was Aamir Khan after all. He’s had such a good streak off late (esp. Lagaan). But the movie was a big put off.

There’s hardly any character development of Mangal Pandey. The story itself is quite flaky — never really coming across as inspiring or glorious. Most people around me agreed that the Legend of Bhagat Singh (starring Ajay Devgan) was a much, //much// better movie in the same genre. And //everyone// agreed that the last 30 seconds of the Rising were the best part of the movie (for the curious, the last 30 seconds are actually b/w clippings from the olden days, they add a good touch to the movie)

Some of the characters in the movie were completely irrelevant to the story (Amisha Patel, Rani Mukherjee). I understand the director was probably trying to do a broad sweep of the India society during that period (sati, caste system), but still, the movie completely missed its point.

Also, it was disappointing that Aamir Khan succumbed to commercial interests and put in the customery //item number// (which, of all things, tries to insinuate the beginnings of lesbian//ism// in India back then).

Last friday was the first time we managed to sneak in two movies in one evening. Probably the presence of Asim/Chowgi offset PSD’s bad-luck and mine :-)

__**Virudh**__

{{ http://www.bollywoodsargam.com/albumsbolly/Viruddh_Movie/Virudhh_Movie_Amitabh_Bachchan_John_Abraham_and_Sanjay_Dutt_Stills_0111_54_21.sized.jpg?200×150| Virudh}}

Good, thought provoking movie. Not as powerful as I had expected. The plot took a little too long to build, and then ended a little too soon when it had finally built up. I’m not sure how important it was to show that the innocent //got involved// in someone else’s matter. I mean plenty of innocent //by standers// face the same fate every day. Amitabh was good, John tried to act, Sanju baba was OK, the CM was utterly unconvincing.

__**The Island**__

{{ http://media.movieweb.com/galleries/2795/posters/poster1_full.jpg?150×200|The Island}}

From the looks of it, it seemed as if this would be an exciting movie — lots of fast paced action, intriguing story etc etc. I was wrong on more than one counts. The story was a little too far fetched. Not because it was unrealistic — hell no, look at Matrix! It was far fetched because it was not internally consistent. They twisted and tweaked the assumptions of the world, //their// world, so that the story could make progress. But if you like crashing buildings, blowing up cars, and in general lots of destruction, then you might love the movie. Still, it wasn’t that bad, enjoyable I’d say.

__**Sarkaar**__

I liked the fact that Ram Gopal Verma openly acknowledged the influence of Godfather in this movie. That said, unlike some other movies, this is //not// a scene by scene clone of the Godfather. Far from it. I liked the movie. It wasn’t fabulous, but it had its moments.

Abhishek Bachhan is really maturing as an actor now. I’ve started appreciating more him since Yuva. Amitabh’s screen presence is awesome as ever.

__**Dus**__

Multimedia overloaded. The director tried to make a really stylo movie, but ended up acting like a kid who found new toys and becomes overzealous with them. Too many sound effects, too much computer graphics, too little content.

But I’m probably making it sound worse than it is. Its actually not that bad. Good entertainment.