Somewhere in the vast open spaces of the Rajasthan Desert in Northwestern India, there is a highly organized group of bandits operating a well-oiled machine of hijacking, car-stripping, electronics and jewellery fencing.
The local cops are in their pocket, and they even have an onsite crematorium for getting rid of the bodies. One fine and sunny day, they try their usual business of a pair of vampire fraternal twins who happen to be passing through in their white Chevrolet Cruz. Violent, bloody and quite imaginative mayhem ensues as it is a showdown between bandits versus vampires.
That is about it.
And that is about all there needs to be.
It's a stylish genre mash-up of vampire, martial arts action, Western, Mad Max vehicular bedlam, musical, and even at one point, crime procedural genres. There is a bit of everything under the hot desert sun. The use of contemporary Malayalam pop music (woven diagetically, for the most part, on stereos, cell phones and car radios) provides the bass-thumping rhythm to set the violence and further underscores the goal of making this picture: The style is the substance.
Glossy, unapologetic, and lacking much in the way of backstory, exposition, or any of the typical "frills" of plot or character, Half makes no bones that it is here to look good, take names and kick ass. Stars Ranjith Sajeev and Aiswarya Raj are cut, handsome, steely-eyed figures who recall Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek in Robert Rodriguez’s similarly polished, high energy, high body count Desperado. They are not afraid to get dirty.
With the fight choreography team behind The Raid 2, and a region of India rarely seen on screen offering stunningly wide-screen compositions inspired by the likes of Anthony Mann, Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa, the recipe results in a spicy, bloody masala, worthy of India’s talent for this sort of tasty spectacle. A repeated shot of the bandit organisation, consisting of half-ton trucks, motorcycles, and various other vehicles, exit the scene of the crime (and four corners of the frame) in choreographed unison. Shots of straight open roads and sun pounding down on ramshackle buildings evoke desert road movies and post apocalyptic wastelands simultaneously.
But the action is a horse of another colour. The most interesting innovations here are the vampire twins, or rather Half-vampire, as they have all the immortality without any of the drawbacks. They are fine out in the sun, they merely heal a bit slower.
That is about it.
And that is about all there needs to be.
It's a stylish genre mash-up of vampire, martial arts action, Western, Mad Max vehicular bedlam, musical, and even at one point, crime procedural genres. There is a bit of everything under the hot desert sun. The use of contemporary Malayalam pop music (woven diagetically, for the most part, on stereos, cell phones and car radios) provides the bass-thumping rhythm to set the violence and further underscores the goal of making this picture: The style is the substance.
Glossy, unapologetic, and lacking much in the way of backstory, exposition, or any of the typical "frills" of plot or character, Half makes no bones that it is here to look good, take names and kick ass. Stars Ranjith Sajeev and Aiswarya Raj are cut, handsome, steely-eyed figures who recall Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek in Robert Rodriguez’s similarly polished, high energy, high body count Desperado. They are not afraid to get dirty.
With the fight choreography team behind The Raid 2, and a region of India rarely seen on screen offering stunningly wide-screen compositions inspired by the likes of Anthony Mann, Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa, the recipe results in a spicy, bloody masala, worthy of India’s talent for this sort of tasty spectacle. A repeated shot of the bandit organisation, consisting of half-ton trucks, motorcycles, and various other vehicles, exit the scene of the crime (and four corners of the frame) in choreographed unison. Shots of straight open roads and sun pounding down on ramshackle buildings evoke desert road movies and post apocalyptic wastelands simultaneously.
But the action is a horse of another colour. The most interesting innovations here are the vampire twins, or rather Half-vampire, as they have all the immortality without any of the drawbacks. They are fine out in the sun, they merely heal a bit slower.
They do not seem to need to feed if they do not want to. They are free to live their lives as they see fit. When they decide to revenge on the bandit gang, they brawl in a way that lets them take as many stabbings, blows to the head, or knocks to the gut. They know they cannot die, they know how fast they heal, and they use their own bodies in ways that other fight-films, do not: They have the full runway to explore.
One may think this might lower the stakes (sorry about that) or undermine the tension, but the execution and the carnage offer a gory kind of Grand Guignol of hand-to-hand combat involving an inventive arsenal of knives, hammers, and kitchen items. And arrows, guns and molotov cocktails. At one point, a garlic press comes into play in a way that turns vampire lore on its head.
One may think this might lower the stakes (sorry about that) or undermine the tension, but the execution and the carnage offer a gory kind of Grand Guignol of hand-to-hand combat involving an inventive arsenal of knives, hammers, and kitchen items. And arrows, guns and molotov cocktails. At one point, a garlic press comes into play in a way that turns vampire lore on its head.
The rousing battle-royale climax of the film has the stage set by one of the most hilariously bold deus ex machinas I have seen on screen in some time; vampire movie or otherwise. It only adds to the glorious commitment by everyone involved in making this to entertain its action craving audience above all else.
Using a series of interesting locations and set-pieces, each offering their own opportunities for gory kills, if there is any kind of analogue to Half it would be the indestructible Finnish protagonist of the Sisu movies. They both enjoy a certain commitment to wide-screen landscapes, impossible sunsets, cartoonish indestructibility, and ferocious simplicity as a virtue for visual myth-making.