Review: Tashan [Blast From The Past]

With AOL shutting shop in India, most of my reviews went offline. While I did not save all of them, I still have quite a few in my mails. So here on for some time I will be posting reviews that I wrote while I was still with Sanskriti Media. I call this the BLAST FROM THE PAST series. 

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With release of Dhoom 3 round the corner, it's a good time to share what I thought of director Vijay Krishna Acharya's first film when it had released on April 11, 2008. 

Of course over the years I have learnt better. Now my opinion has a sea change. I believe Tashan started what later went on to become a series of 80s saluting films mindless action dramas. 

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Cast: Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Anil Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor

Director: Vijay Krishna Acharya

Producer: Aditya Chopra

Music director: Vishal-Shekhar

Rating: **

It's always interesting to watch a movie from a new comer. Because that is when he comes up with the freshest of ideas. This is what Tashan promises and that's where Tashan fails. What Tashan offers is style in abundance…. That's it. Vijay Krishna Acharya who has already shown his skills as a story teller in Dhoom, Dhoom 2, Guru and Pyaar Ke Side Effects, comes up with a story which is fine as a thriller but not exceptional.

Tashan, which literally means style, is a story of four people – Bachchan Pandey (Akshay Kumar), Bhaiyajee (Anil Kapoor), Jimmy (Saif Ali Khan) and Pooja (Kareena Kapoor). Bachchan wants to become a killer, Bhaiyajee is already a killer, Jimmy is a call center employee looking for fun and Pooja is the hot babe who has her own secret agenda.

The story takes off with a car crashing into pond and you have a gun shoved into Jimmy's mouth. And then there is a flashback to six months before, when life was far simpler for him. That was when Jimmy was hired as an English tutor to Bhaiyajee, who at first sight looks nothing more than a comic goon, trying hard to master his English. That's where Jimmy meets Pooja who seems like a simple girl from a small town. They fall in love. And then Pooja reveals that she needs to pay off a huge loan to Bhaiyajee, that her brother and father had taken. And since she has not been able to do that yet the goon wants to marry her. Jimmy immediately plans to steal Bhaiyajee's money to pay off the loan. And as soon as they do steal Rs 25 crore, Pooja flees leaving Jimmy to face ire of the don. That's when Bachchan Pandey is called in to get back the two and also the money. The mission takes Bachchan Pandey, Pooja and Jimmy across several places in India since Pooja divides the money to stack it at different places.

The story idea is nice but the script has glaring holes every now and then. The dialogues are done well and the screenplay is OK. But the director shows absolute inability to carry it off. For god's sake what happens to Akshay Kumar injured hand – one scene he is shot on his left arm and next scene it's all fine and that too the very next day? And on which route to Haridwar from Mumbai do we come across Ladakh? May be the director would have done better by not suspecting the intelligence of the junta. And the last fighting scene gets bizarre when we suddenly have Chinese Kung Fu masters in a Mumbai slum. It stretches way beyond its time as well.

Technically the editing is very stylish and camera work is upto the Yash Raj standards. But the director and editor could have cut off the songs or at least made them shorter. The songs are complete put offs. The song which shows Pooja in a Bikini could have well been just a minute rather than dragging to over four minutes. The rest of the songs also makes Tashan just an average Hindi masala. Vishal Shekhar's music does not have the fuel.

The movie however has some cool performances. Anil Kapoor is brilliant with his over the top performance of the good who speaks in English no matter what. The scene where he imitates Amitabh Bachchan from Deewar is fantastic. Saif is cast perfectly as the cool dude. Kareena gets a role that provides her the scope to showcase everything – even a bikini! The scene-stealer is definitly Akshay Kumar. Akshay comes up with another stellar performance which does justice to his star status.

Overall, as said earlier Vijay Krishna Acharya has come up with a decent and a film which has lots of style. But not a good movie. Tashan makes you feel that you are just watching a more polished version of some 1980's action drama.

PS: This is the film when Kareena and Saif got together. So people should be eager enough to check their chemistry. All we can say when Akshay Kumar is dumped in, the chemistry is more a mystery!