A question for you,
"How did Salman manage to complete Wanted?"
" Kyunki ek baar jo commitment maine kar li, fir to main khud ki bhi nahi sunta."
About a month earlier, I took a pledge after watching a trailer ," Come what may, I shall save myself from the ignominy of watching Wanted ."
A month later I take another pledge- " I will never challenge Bollywood. And I will never try to act God to decide my future ." Both have funny ways to pinch you at the backside.
One of the rare movies to have been made in Bollywood not to have it's title featured in even a single dialog (Even Badhti ka naam Dadhi had a tilte song) , rides on a simple cliche- Love it , hate it, but can't ignore it. And generally not being ignored suffices to be a hit in Bollywood. Here, when Vinod Khanna was exhorting Salman to be a one-man-army, he was merely echoing the producer's sentiments. Ayesha Takia will find difficult to sell even a flap of Shilpa Bindi if with it a life size poster with a prominent mention of her bosom is not doled out for free. And regarding the saleability of director Prabhudeva, hmmm.
We went to watch Hrtihik in Lakshya, but then he was a choreographer. But, when he comes up with an action flick , which is a remake of a south Indian super action movie, sniggers are more commonplace than expectant sniffs.
There has always been a North-South divide in Indian movies. For e.g. with all due respect to Rajini Sir, a lot of north-Indians fail to grasp the significance of the act in which he tosses up a cigarette in the air , and then force of gravity becomes so miniscule on it that it lands well after he has finished playing with all the bad guys. Likewise, a lot of my south Indian friends can't seem to understand how SRK manages to woo scores of girls , when he wouldn't be able to sustain a punch from even a gali ka goonda which are blown away by a mere breath from Rajini Sir. So our esteemed director invented a new pharmoola- that is to make a pharmoola movie. And the pharmoola tells him to amalgamate what he knows sells in South and what he is being told that sells in Bollywood. And his goodness lies in the fact that he sticks to his pharmoola . In the recent past the Ghazini director also tried the same. I didn't particularly like the movie apart from the sugar-coated love story and the sugar herself ( Asin that is). But Wanted has no Amir and Ayesha Takia is no Asin. So does that set the film back? No, not a bit.
Coz, it has Salman. The Khan with a man in even in his name chooses to play the man and quite naturally lives up to it. Earlier, he chose to play a prince and act weird in Yuvvraj ( did I miss a v there?) He turned pauper instead. He chose to play a God in God tussi great ho and act weird. As it happened the Gods didn't turn out to be in such a good mood. He chose to play Salman Khan and act weird in Hello . Nobody turned up to say even a hi. Now he chooses to play the other Salman Khan in Wanted and though he still acts weird, we suddenly discover that we actually like the bad boys. Hmmmm...That's my man. And maybe Salman realizes that as well. He has gone from Wanted to Veer with full abandon , which is quite visible in Wanted as well, with most of the songs apparently shot later with his Veer hairstyle.
So to the movie. It is actually quite decent. I didn't picture myself writing this a month back , but life takes strange turns. Two years back I didn't picture myself writing a blog either. Anyways, to a neo-generation for which a single screen theatre is nothing but a macchi bazaar sans any macchi , Wanted can be a wee bit surprising. When in theater Salman made his entry on the screen , there were a lot of whistles from some section. Now, the one I go in ,I have never heard any such things earlier and one of my friends muttered under his breath," Bloody Biharis" . By the time I left , I was thanking those bloody biharis. They created an ambiance in which Wanted deserved to be watched. It is not LOTR to be watched in PVRs among muted appreciation and mild claps. It is supposed to be watched with a lot of seetees, inane remarks , lewd jokes and infectious laughter. And if you don't know how to whistle, go watch the movie. Salman will teach you even that.
I was almost waiting through the movie to watch Salman criss-cross the air with fire a la Garv style . But he didn't. And that is the best thing about the movie. It is crude, but it has no place for histrionics. Another good thing about the movie is that it doesn't take itself seriously. Even the villain Ghani Bhai is more like Crime master Gogo than a Mogambo . Thus what could have turned into a Bam Bam Bigelow , manages to keep its feet together.
The support cast turns out to be a large one , given that Salman is the only major lead here. Ayesha Takia, flaunts her charbi-waala gosht, her charbi-waale lips and manages to do what she was required to do. Mahesh Manjrekar excels in the eternal kutti cheez act and as Vishal Bhardwaj would have us believe that ," Har kutte ka bas ek hi jawaab hota hai-Kaminey" , Salman promptly turns Kamina to get rid of him.
The movie projects Salman as he has been projected by media since ages- bad boy, cool dude, sweet at heart blah..blah..blah. It almost seems that it was made to cash on the media image of Salman. Nevertheless, if you are a fan of Salman, you will love the movie. And if you are not, still watch it ; you might find reasons to like him or the movie.
