Bollywood Review: Tashan
Few films from the Bollywood system have arrived this year with as much advance hype as Tashan. Its director, Vijay Krishna Acharya, makes his debut here after writing the scripts for the mega-successful Dhoom franchise. Its headline cast is pretty stellar, starting with Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor (reteaming here after a stellar showing in Omkara), and rounded out by Akshay Kumar (the man who is Khiladi) and Anil Kapoor (Bollywood’s resilient, jowly ham). The all-important songs are by the venerable Vishal-Shekhar team. The promotion is everywhere, though cleverly it has mostly focused on the soundtrack. Actual footage of the film has been scarce prior to release. There’s a certain swagger to this tactic, a confidence borne out by a recent interview with Khan, in which he called it “similar to the way Led Zeppelin released their fourth album.” The recently beleaguered Yash Raj production house, and the Indian press, saw this as the surest thing for miles.
No such luck. The critics have been less than kind, but popular opinion has been positively venomous. Comments on IMDB have ranged from the disappointed to the utterly murderous (a kind sample: “Tashan sucks from top to bottom”), and a poll on Planet Bollywood has 60% responding unfavorably. But what of the receipts? Bad news there as well. On a cost of 40 crores, the film has thus far failed to recoup even half. In short: a trainwreck on every level.
Here’s the dirty secret, though: Tashan is, though flawed, hugely enjoyable. Imagine if Tony Scott cleaned up his editing act and decided to make a musical. Tashan would be the result. That’s actually a recommendation.
More after the break.
The story is thus: The improbably named Jimmy Cliff (Khan) is hired to teach English to vulgar mob don Bhaiyyaji (Anil Kapoor) by his beautiful assistant, Pooja (the less jowly Kapoor). She quickly ropes Jimmy into a scheme to steal from her boss, but leaves him in the lurch after disappearing with the cash. Bhaiyyaji, furious, sends Jimmy to capture Pooja and the money with the supervision of village tough Bachchan Pandey (Kumar). It’s a pretty straight neo-noir road movie for the first half, and much more streamlined than the usual masala picture, though this comes with a price. While the plot motors along at a pleasing rattle, one of the prime pleasures of a Bollywood blockbuster is slightly undercut: the film is frontloaded with item songs, and they’re actually a little bit underwhelming. The first clutch of numbers are melodically DOA and staged with an alarming lack of imagination. While the unnecessary nature of many Bollywood songs can be part of their charm, here they stop the film dead in its tracks. It’s all the more baffling since Acharaya elsewhere displays a knack for glib, funny dialogue, expansive widescreen compositions and snappy editing. His pacing problems keep the pre-interval section of Tashan from being totally effective.
To give credit where it’s due, the actors are consistently involving. Khan makes a terrific, weaselly lady’s man, and Kareena Kapoor is frankly delectable in the femme fatale role. Anil Kapoor, meanwhile, gives a performance of such towering nuttiness that he all but steals the film from them. His Bhayyaji is an utter monster, a thuggish, self-important dandy with a cricket fixation. Every word out of his mouth seems to be coated in caramel-sweet evil. There’s a fine line between menace and self-parody, and Kapoor tapdances along it with glee. The film’s stealth weapon, however, is Akshay Kumar. Bachchan Pandey, the dim, aspirational goon, is a classic stock character, but Kumar invests him with a lot of warmth and dry humor. It’s the only turn in the film that could be described as understated, and it’s a total charmer.
These performers have a lot of room to breath in the second half, which comes as a relief. There, the film sheds most of its Western influence for a more familiar Bollywood recipe: genre mix-n-match, strange character detail, and the kind of digressive storytelling that enrages McKee acolytes but is heavenly for Bolly afficienados. Acharya finally brings in the artillery, staging two apocalyptic shoot-outs with maximum flair. Romance also rears its head very amusingly, and the songs finally step up. It becomes, in short, a proper masala actioner.
The film’s richest thematic seam is the tension between Westernized India and a more regional mentality, embodied most obviously in the conflict between the slick, English-speaking Jimmy and the impulsive, true-hearted Bachchan. In fact, it’s everywhere, from the film’s sarcastic praise of George W. Bush to a finale that hinges on Jimmy’s loyalty to his motherland. There's even an argument to be made that the film itself rests on that divide; when it's most Americanized, the film plods, but when truest to its cultural roots, it entertains with gusto. The split is, finally, addressed and resolved with a song in the film’s best and brightest sequence, “Dil Dance Maare”. For no very good reason, Jimmy, Pooja and Bachchan find themselves stowing away with an American film crew, on location shooting an Oscar-bait melodrama named Holy Widows. At gunpoint, they tell the director that he will be putting a song into his film. When the director protests that the film has no songs, Jimmy sums up the whole film and probably the whole industry.
“This is India, man. There’s a song for everything."
That’s the spirit.
