Starring Sonakshi Sinha, Anurag Kashyap, Konkona Sen Sharma
Directed by A R Murugadoss
The biggest takeaway from this brutal depiction of police atrocity is the cop Rane .As played by Anurag Akshyapthe character acquires sharp spiky edges that pierce the plot and penetrate into a region far deeper than where director Murugadoss rests his case.
[wp-review id=”3789″]
Don’t get him wrong. Murugadoss means well. Akira takes up the cause of women’s empowerment…But only on a superficial elevel. When Akira is still a child(which is to say, she is played by little Mishiekka Arora) she takes revenge on a, acid thrower by….well, learning karate(prompted by her inspiring mute dad) and throwing acid back on the guy who did it.
So there!
As simple as that! If only life was as uncomplicated!! As though to make up for the paucity of clutter and plainsubstantiality in the first half, Akira suffers a severe midlife crisis and goes into spasms of tortuous torture scenes meant to show Akira reaching breaking point before she explodes.
Instead of Sonakshi’s Akira exploding on screen the plot crumbles and falls apart under the weight of the gross violence.Murugadoss excels at showing his female protagonists being brutalized. Iron rods are a favourite weapon to torture subjugate and almost lobotomize spirited women. In Ghajini Asin was bludgeoned to death because she was too sunshiny for the villain to bear. In Akira Sonakshi sulks ceaselessly(troubled childhood,super-troubled adulthood), until the villainous cop and his hysterical deputies, accomplices in law-sanctioned crime(one of whom at one point falls to the ground whimpering as Kashyap looks alarmed and embarrassed) take her out to a forest and decide to eliminate her because…well, they got the wrong girl.
Ditto the film. It got the right girl—Sonakshi is sufficiently restrained and implosive—but it put her in impossibly sadistic situations. The scenes of her torture in a mental asylum, run bya doctor who looks like a pimp at a run-down brothel, are prolonged and unnecessary. If only the narrative, so gripping to begin with, had not grown flabby as it progressed.
Kashyap’s diabolic cop’s performance holds the film together. He had played a dirty lawman in his own film Ugly. He builds on the earlier cop’s role and hones the art of lawlesslness to such an extent that we miss him whenever he isn’t around in this film. Sadly the actors playing his khaki-wearing colleagues emerge as caricatures of desperate criminality.You can take Murugadoss out of the South , but you can’t take the South out of him.
The other very interesting character is that of a righteous pregnant cop Rabia, played laconically by Konkona Sen-Sharma. She imparts a sort of stubborn idealism to her character , compounded by her heavily immobile state. Tragically her slow painful physical movement becomes a metaphor for the plodding righteousness of the script.
Though well-intended Akira tends to slow down its own virtuous journey with implausible roadblocks including a mentally disturbed eunuch who helps Akira Sharma escape from the mental asylum where the villains lock her away while her family looks the other way.Oh yes, there is a sympathetic lover played by Amit Sadh who looks on helplessly as the villains wreak hectic havoc on the heroine.
To mend the holes in the plot Murugadoss stuffs the storytelling with messages on the physically and mentally disabled and on police brutality.While the sermons don’t get shrill the smothered cries of ‘Enough!’ can be heard from miles away.
That’s us screaming in protest, as Sonakshi Sinha tries bravely to make her tortured character braver than what the story writers allow her to be. Akira is a film that could have gone very far, if only the theme of women’s empowerment had not been overpowered by the Murugadoss school of villainous barbarism which does not discriminate between man and woman.
Is that what the neo-feminists mean by equality of the sexes?

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Jamuna Had A Love-Hate Relationship With Bollywood

Veteran Telugu actress Jamuna who passed away on Friday, shared an uneasy relationship with the Hindi film industry.She did eleven Hindi films including the iconic Milan in 1967 where Jamuna agreed to play the second lead, or the supporting role if you will, to Nutan.
Jamuna as Gauri was the Other Woman who craved for the hero Sunil Dutt’s attention whereas he had eyes and devotion only for Nutan. In later years Aruna Irani played a similar role in Caravan.
In Milan Jamuna was not keen to do a supporting role. Producer L V Prasad tempted her with three chartbusting songs. Besides, Jamuna had played the same role in Mooga Manasulu, the Telugu original of Milan. But it was the songs composed by Laxmikant-Pyarelal which convinced Jamuna to take up the second lead in Milan.
While Nutan had no solo songs in Milan, she did have the chartbuster duet Sawan ka mahina . Jamuna on the other hand, had two splendid Lata Mangeshkar solos: Tohey saawariya naahin khabariya and the magnificent Ghazal Aaj dil pe koi zor chalta nahin.Not only these, Jamuna also had a hit duet with Mukesh based on her character Gauri: Bol Gauri bol tera kaun piya.
But then, fate intervened. After the film released one of Jamuna’s solos, the poignant and memorable Aaj dil pe koi zor chalta nahin was snipped out of the film.
Here is what happened: the Ghazal , one of Lataji’s all-time greats, was very much a part of Milan when it released on 17 March 1967. But then it was seen to hamper the flow of the film and edited out. The beautiful song occurred right after intermission. Producer Prasad, a shrewd filmmaker, got to know that audiences prolonged their loo breaks as there was a song after the break. Hence the sacrifice of a seriously sonorous melody.
Jamuna hardly did Hindi films after Milan. Her last Bollywood appearance was in Raj Kumar Kohli’s Raj Tilak where she was lost in a multistarrer as the royal queen.
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Karan Johar Moves Alia Song From Switzerland To Kashmir

The romantic duet in Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahaani which was to be shot in Switzerland and which was delayed due to the film’s leading lady Alia Bhatt’s motherhood, is now being relocated to Kashmir.
Purely out of the love for new mom Alia.
Says a source in the know, “Karan loves Alia like his own daughter. He would do anything for her. He postponed the release of Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani as the love duet could not be shot before Alia’s maternity leave. Karan had decided to shoot the song in Switzerland after Alia’s maternity love. But now he has relocated the song to Kashmir as Alia doesn’t want to leave her baby girl behind for long stretches.”
And as Karan Johar argued, snow is snow. How does it matter whether it is Switzerland or Kashmir?
This song would be Karan Johar’s tribute to his idol Yash Chopra. Alia would be dressed in chiffon sarees while Ranveer, for a change, would be seen in formals.
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Bobby Deol’s Switchover To Villainous Roles

After Prakash Jha’s webseries Ashram where Bobby played a sleazy godman, and Love Hostel where he was a ruthless assassin, he is playing the villain to Ranbir Kapoor in Sandeep Vanga’s Animal.
Bobby says it is not conscious career decision to play negative characters but a conscious decision to play interesting characters. “ I don’t look at characters as positive or negative.When I watch films there is always one character that stays with you. I want to play that character.”
Prakash Jha’s Ashram proved a gamechanger for Bobby. He admits finding challenging roles is tough. “I am trying. I am doing Sandeep Vanga’s Animal with Ranbir Kapoor , Parineeti Chopra. Then I am doing the family film Apne 2 which I am very excited about.”
In an earlier interview with this writer Bobby spoke about his long absence from screen before Prakash Jha’s Ashram. “My fans would ask why I wasn’t being seen on the screen.And I couldn’t tell them it was because I wasn’t getting good roles. But my fans stood by me. They gave me the strength to keep looking for the right roles. Thankfully I found the roles I liked. My new films have given me some new fans. I am thankful I am still here. Yeah , I am in a good space right now.”
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Undekhi A Dark Compelling Thriller Set In The Heartland

Undekhi the forthcoming webseries from Applause Entertainment and Sony LIV which starts streaming from July 10, looks like the kind of thriller that won’t let us rest easy until we see the last episode. It is mounted with a stress on growing pressure.
One promo shows a rotund cop investigating a gruesome murder in a dense tribal area.The other promo shows a politician gunning down a dancer on stage in front of the public and the press.
Wild West comes to the North. Undekhi is a thriller set in Manali, Himachal created for Applause by Siddharth Sengupta. It’s a gripping story that sees Harsh Chhaya making an impressive comeback as a drunk Papaji in a super-rich amoral Punjabi family. And Surya Sharma (Prince from Hostages) really shines as Rinku , the main bad guy and Papaji’s nephew. It’s got a terrific cast of other characters, many of whom we all recognize as names .
The talented Harsh Chhaya makes a debut of sorts on the digital medium with Undekhi.
Says Harsh, “I have never played anything so wild and mad. I am looking forward to Undekhi, hope it works for the audience too.This is a debut in a sense that this is the first one I shot for the OTT platform.But the other two I shot for after this was streamed before this one Out Of Love and Rangbaaz, Phir Se.
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