Monday, January 30, 2006

Mother of all movies

I can't believe this is my third posting within 48 hours. A record of sorts for me.
Well this post is about the best movie I have seen in my entire life, and so it deserves more than a passing mention.

When I was a kid in college, I used to hear a lot about IMDB and the top-100 and so on. Names like 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Shawshank Redemption' used to do the rounds very often. Well, soon after I graduated and helped myself to the purchase of a TV and a DVD player, I started my own movie collection. Courtesy the bootleg DVD stores at Palika Baazar, a haven for immoral cheapskates like me. Thanks to these stores, I was finally able to see most of the so called gems like the ones mentioned above and many others.

However, I knew something big was still missing. Firstly, I still hadn't seen a movie that would make me jump out of my pants with laughter, roll on the dirty floor and beat myself senseless out of sheer delirious excitement. Secondly, all the good movies were English, and as a card carrying nationalist, it really pinched me sometimes. So all my life I waited for this one movie, a Hindi movie, 'The One' if you may. That wait was over yesterday night.

Now this movie didn't spend any money on publicity. However the sheer raw talent of this movie was so much that it gained a lot of word of mouth publicity. It was doing the rounds of bulletin boards, some of my friends who had seen it swore by it, and so many reviews raved about it that I felt like checking out what the hue and cry was all about.

So I went ahead and procured 'Gunda'. A typical low budget, made-in-two-weeks Mithun-starrer, 1 good vs 200 evil kind of movie. Five minutes into the movie I was totally hooked. Like a heroin addict who knows that its bad for him, yet he can't stop, I too was acutely conscious of the gray cells that were quietly dying, yet I couldn't look away.

In my opinion, the star of the movie is not Mithun, but the immensely talented dialogue writer. Consider the following gems:

"Mera naam hai Bulla, main karta hoon khullam-khulla".

"Bulla ka naam lekar tune mera khada kar diya hai...gusse se ek ek baal".

And one of my personal favourites:

"Ab yahan laashein (bodies) aise girengi jaise koi bachcha jab pishaab karta hai..tap tap"

The genius of the dialogues lies not in the extremely high quality but in the fact that they rhyme. 25 minutes into the movie, I noticed that not a single dialogue was out of rhyme with its predecessor. Along with the jaw-dropping background music, it almost felt like a three hour song! The extraordinary hamming effort put forward by all the 'actors' also helped the cause.

"Bulla mujhe mat maar...tujhe AIDS se bachaane ke liye main nirodh ban jaaonga"
"Towel ban kar teri kamar se lipat jaaonga".

Sheer genius!

Apart from the great Mithun-da, the movie boasts of a stellar crew like Mohan Agashe, Shakti Kapoor and the Neanderthal who played Inspector Salim in Sarfarosh. Some girl picked on the street plays Mithun-da's romantic interest.

Now, the movie's storyline is predictable yet gripping. Mithun-da works as a coolie in Ooty airport. Yes, thats right! I guess the airport administrators haven't heard about a little thing known as trolleys. Anyway, so with his high paying coolie job, Mithun-da fulfills all his simple pleasures in life like liquor every night and Maruti Esteem. Now things are going fine with him and his family, which comprises of his sister, his girlfriend, his dad and his pet monkey. Till one day he takes pangas with Bulla (the Neanderthal) and co. Like true Bengalis, they continue making noises at one another for the first twenty minutes of the film, without getting physical. However, the dialogues are poetic (as proved before) and the delivery is par-excellence. Bulla throws in a pathetic fake Punjabi accent once in a while which really spices things up.

So these two are at loggerheads, and nothing is happening. Till one day, things get slightly ugly at the sea-port. Don't ask me how a mountain town like Ooty got a sea-port. Bulla decides enough is enough and finds out that he is horny enough to rape Mithun-da's sister. So after some blouse ripping, Mithun-da's family count reduces by one, which really pisses Mithun-da off.

He proclaims that he has fixed the death dates for the five villains in advance.
The relevant dialogue containing the dates is:
"Do , chaar, chheh, aath, dus. Bus!"

This rhyme amuses Bulla so much that he goes ahead and knocks off Mithun-da's havaldaar father. This makes Mithun-da so mad that he stops fooling around with his girlfriend for a while.

"Nafrat ki aag mein jal kar main pyaar karna bhool baitha hoon".

So now Mithun-da is horny as well as pissed off. Well, so much testosterone proves too fatal for poor Bulla and his minions. The killings start and bodies begin to drop on the promised dates. Apart from Dominos, Mithun-da becomes the only other entity who delivers on time.

In the climax, Bulla (who has killed Mithun-da's girlfriend, by the way), along with an army of 2000 auto-rickshaws faces Mithun-da, who, understandably, is alone. So Mithun-da opens the trunk of his Maruti-Esteem (remember the fat coolie paycheck?). And lo and behold! Mithun-da has dozens of rocket launchers with him, the kind which would put Doom and Quake to shame.

So after some pow-wow and boom-dhoom with the rockets, the auto0rickshaws become cycle-rickshaws (consequently, this ticks off the citizens of Ooty, who are left with no transport). Seeing that Mithun-da is playing at God level with the cheats on, Bulla gives up and is swiftly killed by the God.

That, my friend is the end of the movie. Thats three hours well spent.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome movie man! Atleast the dialogues and script looked were interesting :) :)

Manish

Solzaire said...

Welcome to the elite club! Not the one which likes Rang de Basanti mind you.

Anonymous said...

"Rhyming dialogues"... * rolls eyes *. Don't even remind of the famous GD :).
-Varun

Asterix said...

Shaggy,

I remember the trauma we went through during GD. But Gunda is very different (and much more classy). Trust me, I have seen both :)

Anonymous said...

Haa aah,
Like SRK said, 'We dont need to make movies like hollywood, we are in a league of our own'.

What dialogues........this is a must-have in everybodys collection.

Asterix said...

Yep, this movie is going straight to my must-save-in-case-of-flood collection.

Blog said...

the dialoques put Goethe's Faust to shame; truly. nice review though.

Anonymous said...

Okayyyyyy... I didn't know they make movies like that!!!

Vivek said...

After ages in this business of promoting Perpendicular cinema to the world corrupted by normalcy, I at last found someone whose favourite film is Gunda. You might be interested in the following link that contains a well-researched (and debated) article on Do Numbri. But I hope you are bothered by the "0 comments" and indeed go on to post your esteemed view on the subject.
http://vivekrs.blogspot.com/2004_07_01_vivekrs_archive.html
http://vivekrs.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_vivekrs_archive.html
Its been 8 years since I saw Gunda for the first time(I can still feel the heat of the fresh film cans at the benevolent tent-house), but haven't been able to come to terms with. One day I hope I will gather enough knowledge to post a comment on it, Khullam Khullaaaa.

Anonymous said...

Dude ....GUNDA rocks big time.....forget the godfather...company...sarkar.....all fall flat in front of this masterpiece.....never seen a film so aesthetically show rape scenes.....deserves an oscar in my opinion...!!!!!

Anonymous said...

dude.. i don't know what the film was like.. but that blog was surely very gripping :D...

Anonymous said...

AWESOME POST DUDE!!!
never imagined gunda could shake anyone up so!!!!! :-)
rofl!!
salute - keka

Sammy Chanda said...

Hilarious!A total laugh riot! If the write up could make us howl with laughter, what would be watching the film like? Too much man!!!!!!!!

Sammy Chanda said...

Hilarious!A total laugh riot! If the write up could make us howl with laughter, what would be watching the film like? Too much man!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Man rocking review. Seriously consider taking this as a profession, the only condition being mithunda's movies. btw Who's the dialogue writer? And yeah any other works of his that u know of?

Anonymous said...

methinks, this is a hilarious review. i specially liked the Neanderthal-who-played-Salim-in-Sarfarosh bit.

too good.

Arvind

Anonymous said...

Gunda is one classic film every Mithun fan must have in his DVD Collection.

But the one movie that tops it all as far as raunchy creative dialouges r concerned was Dharmendra and Mithun's LOHA, which was sort of a continuation of Gunda.

Bullaa is replaced by Lukka (Mohan Joshi). Shakti Kapoor as Chutiya or ponytail (not 2 b mistaken with the profanity) Dharampaji, Mithun and Govinda and Manisha Koirali, with Govinda and Manisha Koirala playing duplicates of themselves.

A sample dialouge >> Kalia danger surrenders to Lukka and says the following >>

" Main Bina Nashe ki Tadi hun aur Bina petrol ki gadi hun, main to woh phati hui saree hun jise koi Hijda bhi nahi pehnega"

Lukka to his henchman baatlya-the body builder >>

"tu jab itna sa tha, tab teri itni si thi, aaj bada hogaya to mujhe dikha raha hai, Khada karke marunga"

This film is loaded with such classics, n not to b missed at any cost.

Anonymous said...

I AM EYE-WITNESSED OF 12 MAY
I am the Liberal person and not involve in Politics , i have also have some clues about happening on 12MAY....... every body know about the tragedy occured on 12May and i know these setuations better, because on 12 May before the day starting i had sitting with some people they belong to MQM and we were discussing on (------Please read -- we were discussing.... here someone should be who can moniter or make check and balance on the ARMY Chief PervaizMusharaf because Pakistan is not his personal property and Pakistan is not his family business of Musharaf , he just to obay his duties and he is the servent of Pakistanees people, but here something different Musharaf being the servent of country, on public demand he deny to leave the job of presedent of Pakistan. Its meaning Owner(Pakistanees) ordering to servent to get-fired but servent encountering to Owner....ha ha ha yel thats amazing and amuzig.-----) this was the topic on which we are discussing. During discussion while we sitting in a Tea hotel meanwhile two boys came into tea-shop armed with REPEATOR and second one armed with big gun that is unknown to me . They both boys sat at Tea-shop situated near to MQM offices. i just glanced them and tried to identified them and they both came from the office of MQM that is near from this Tea-Shop that can been seen in the view from Tea-shop, then i observed some more boys sitting outside just beside the office of MQM . then i saw a very young innocent boy, his height was may be hardly 4 feet having arms, wearing cap, and amusing thing was that his height was equal to the size of gun that he had in his hand, standing and patroling just near the office of MQM. For a moment i got afraid because may be he made air-fire so that can be dangerious due to the mistake of target shot. At that time i supposed that may be they people doing same for the security of their office of MQM But i did not knew that what would be going to happen at morning . when the time we were leaving to home it was about 2 'O Clock at AM that time they people who belong to MQM they strictly advised me to not go to court at morning and sured me the massacre will be happen in the morning, i supposed it they are making joke because there was no expection to happen this massacre.

Here i concluded two things . One is that why they people advised me who was sitting with me on that night, to dont go to court at morning it's meaning they all knew it that happen on 12 MAY and that all was preplained ,

Second thing is that why their people, belong to MQM, were standing out side of the office of MQM and checking their weapons .........So i dont know why the Home Advisor of MQM Waseem Akhter stated on Aoth in a TV show and compleately denied all about that happened on 12 May its meaning he is vary lean and Layer man and BABER Ghoree also denied all matters that occured on 12MAY ......WHY the member of MQM's office was preparing for action with full armed at that night just before 12MAY then what game they they were deciding on that night to play at morning with innocent people of Karachi.
That is SHAMEfull SHAMEfull SHAMEfull SHAMEfull SHAMEfull SHAMEfull SHAMEfull for all the leaders of MQM.


LEADERSHIP OF MQM
i know all and even all Pakistanees know the faces of the leaders of MQM i have seen on different shows in TV programes regarding 12MAY i say all people know that how clearle and shamefully and cleverly and malafiedly, cruelly and brutally the leaders of MQM denying and opposing that blunder they have done , even on their talking anybody have seen their faces. Such as WASEEM AKHTER(home adviser) BABER GHOREE , their faces dont support their talkings and i would like to say all leadership of MQM are corrupt, they are not deserved for governing the city management. Even i have listen to governer Ishrat Abad in his speech and i say about him he has impressive personality and literate personbut what he has done wrong in the past time in politics i dont know but remaining leaders including ALTAF HUSSAIN, Waseem Akhter and Baber Ghoree all are indecent and illiterate persons. So i ask the MQM that ..... Dont they have good leadership like PERVAIZ MUSHARAF, IMRAN KHAN, Shoukat Aziz, Ishrat Abad, Chief Justice Ifthakhar M. Ch., Naeem Bukhari, Hakeem-Saeed-shaheed, I dont know theirs political practices but they all are literate and decent people.

That is SHAMEfull SHAMEfull SHAMEfull SHAMEfull SHAMEfull SHAMEfull SHAMEfull for all the leaders of MQM. Even if ALTAF HUSSAIN, Waseem Akhter and Baber Ghoree are not literate and decent persons eventhen at least they do the good political practices such as .............. they should take lesson from Mr ABDUL SATTAR EDHI . i know Mr. Edhi is not literate person but doing good and humanitarian practices.......i think this is good way of life. Any man should have one good thing , (1)good practices OR (2)good appearence and decent personality, but in ALTAF HUSSAIN, Waseem Akhter and Baber Ghoree they dont have any one good thing among two (1) good practices OR (2) good appearence and decent personality.

Anonymous said...

THIS ONE DESERVES AN OSCAR.

AWESOME WORK BY THE DIALOGUE WRITER.

Anonymous said...

This was indeed a masterpiece, but my friend,it seems this one is your first. You also need to check out a few of the classic masterpieces which came after Gunda like "Chandal", "Shere-e Hindustan", not to mention "Shera" where the great Mithun da plays a don who is a master in martial arts but after the rape and death of his sister and wife becomes a recluse. Dont miss Mithun da's entry when he sings and dances in a club (He is a don at this stage of the movie)and returns home in the morning only to be reminded by his sister that it is his B'day. Also dont miss the climax when he finishes off the bad guys with his martial arts once vowed never to be used again. His moves would put the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon director to shame.

Anonymous said...

Great Post. Some pearls of wisdom - can be viewed on the Net: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4uiQMI3riE

But if you think this was "Mother of all movies" then alas my friend you haven't seen LOHA. Enjoy it & let me know.

Here's a quick preview:
Saala fakiron ka chera leke, jurm ke shenshah ke saath ladhne ki koshish maath kar, varna teri halat uss katmal (bed-bug) jaisi hogi jo khoon peene ke liye kathiya(cot) ke kaache(crack) se din mein bhar nikhal tha hai.

Film: Loha *ing: Mohan Joshi (as Lukkabhai), Deepak Shirke (as Tandya Bhai) - Tandya, one time Lukka's mentor, has come out of jail and is warning Lukka that he's gonna capture Lukka's Ghol Bhasti. Lukka delivers this dasoo dialouge to tell Tandya bhai that he's insignificant.

Here's the full deal: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4505130037311693350&hl=en

FYI.. Sarfarosh's Inspector Salim's name is: Mukesh Rishi.

Blessings.

Anonymous said...

Loved your review so much that now i have to rent this movie :P

Anonymous said...

the actor is mohan joshi and not mohan agashe.....
loha was the prequel to gunda........

Anonymous said...

Excellent review! have to rent the movie. Mithun Da ROCKS!

ShreyGoyal.com said...

The best was, of course, "Laashein aise tapkegi jaisi nanhe-munne bachche ki nunni se peshaab tapakta hai... tap-tap..."