Criminal Justice

headlinesoftoday.com

To watch or not to watch: Better watch the original BBC Criminal Justice or the American series The Night Of

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Starring: Vikrant Massey, Pankaj Tripathi, Jackie Shroff, Mita Vashist
An innocent man Aditya (Vikrant Massey) is in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is regular college student, looking to get to a party by driving his father’s cab. A pretty, rich girl gets into his cab looking to hire and asks him to take her from one location to another and was obviously on drugs. Because of the delay, he misses his party and the girl invites him over to her place, where they drink alcohol, do drugs and have sex. Aditya wakes up in the middle of the night and finds the girl stabbed to death. He remembers nothing and tries to flee the scene of the crime with the murder weapon in hand. Ensues a long legal battle, Madhav Misra (Pankaj Tripathi) being the constant as legal help on the outside, even though he is way out of his depth in this case. Aditya also becomes street smart in the jail with Mustafa’s (Jackie Shroff) help, who runs a gang in the jail. The whole experience strips Aditya of his innocence and takes his family through emotional, financial and societal roller coaster.
The series is a play-by-play adaptation of The Night Of starring Riz Ahmed and John Tuturro, which is in turn an adaptation of the BBC series called Criminal Justice.
It is a 10 episode series which could have just as easily been wrapped up in 5; it is unnecessarily stretched. Pankaj Tripathi outshines everyone as always, playing the role of a down-on-his-luck lawyer with the heart of gold with élan. He is eccentric with little social skills and gives comic relief along with intensity seamlessly. Vikrant Massey is believable as a wronged college student and the character arc throughout the series is heartwarming. Jackie Shroff is given a lot of screen time to appease the star of yesteryear and is the only actor the series could have done without. If someone is watching the series, they can simply skip the parts with him in them.
There is nothing exceptional or attention grabbing in the direction or cinematography – it is primarily about acting and secondarily about the plot. It could have been much better if the social issues like the drug abuse amongst youngsters and class discrimination had been woven into the story line and made part of the reason of accusation, but they lost a lot of opportunity to make the series stand for something and be more than just storytelling. Viewers can easily swap Criminal Justice with The Night Of, which is also on Hotstar.

Rangoon

koimoi.com

My rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Starring: Shahid Kapoor, Kangana Ranaut, Saif Ali Khan, Richard McCabe

The movie is set in 1944, the time of freedom struggles of Mahatama Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose, and Work War II. Julie (Kangana Ranaut) is a spoilt actress who used to be a gypse, until she was rescued at 14 by Rusie Billimoria (Saif Ali Khan), a successful movie producer, and now is his mistress. Nawab Mallik (Shahid Kapoor) is a serious, stoic soldier assigned to be her bodyguard, on the trip to Indo-Burma border. In that entourage, is a Indian National Army loyal, carrying a valuable sword from a Maharaja to be given to INA to fund their freedom struggle. Enroute, the Japanese forces attack and Julie with Nawab are separated from others, and fall in love with each other. Nawab takes his responsibility of a bodyguard seriously and successfully returns Julie to the destination, there ensues a series of events full of intrigue, action and suspense.

All the three main characters of the movie are crafted carefully and are immensely intriguing. Shahid Kapoor is one of the most brilliant actors in Bollywood these days, and delivers the role of a stoic soldier shouldering responsibilities way beyond his stature, to the T. Kangana Ranaut's performance steals the show. It is so powerful that it shadows over everything else. And everything else isn't much. The story line, while sounding good off-hand, was killed by poor execution. Eroticism was prioritised over plot, drama over direction. At some points it looked like a spoof of a heist movie. The first half was only a build up to what audience can expect from the second half, and second half was anti-climactic. The dialogues were clichéd, the songs over long, unnecessary background details of characters, made the movie long and tiring. It lost the focus from the love-triangle in a war torn land and freedom struggle and instead, focussed on multiple insignificant things, like bad Hindi accents of Britishers. Vishal Bhardwaj has broken the hearts of many hard-core cinema lovers. He does deserves a mention for creating the sublime music this movie has. All in all, this movie should be missed.

Jolly LLB 2

My Rating: 3/5 stars

Starring: Akshay Kumar, Huma Qureshi, Annu Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla

It is a classic David vs Goliath story. Jagdish Mishra, alias Jolly (Akshay Kumar) is an assistant to a big shot lawyer in Lucknow. He hasn't been given much opportunity to practice law, only earning small sums by fighting petty cases. His reality is at odds with his ambition. He wants to have his own chamber, earn a lot of money and buy Gucci dress for his wife, Pushpa Pandey (Huma Qureshi). In comes a case for the big shot lawyer, and Jolly seeing this as an opportunity to get money, cheats the applicant, who is a pregnant lady. His actions nag at his conscience and Jolly decides to fight the case.

This potentially interesting movie suffers as a result of the shifting priorities of the contemporary film industry, where the focus is on dramatization and tangential story lines, rather than telling the story the film is supposed to tell.That is what plagues this seemingly interesting movie too. The case, the crime, the timelines have a step-child status and deemed unimportant. The prime focus shifted to the non-conventional relationship Jolly has with his wife and courtroom humour, delivered by the judge. The whole burden of making this movie interesting is borne by Saurabh Shukla, who delivers the performance of a quirky judge perfectly. In fact, all the actors are cast aptly and deliver what is expected of them. But there is no compensation for a poor execution of a good plot. Annu Kapoor is a good actor, so is Akshay Kumar. There was a lot that could be squeezed into 2 hours 18 minutes movie, like debates in the court, background on the accused, which would have made for a good movie. If anyone wants to watch the movie, go expecting good humor, good acting, and a few far spaced good dialogues. The rest is meh.