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New York: Politics scores, not the plot |
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New York: Politics scores, not the plot |
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06-26-2009, 12:50 PM
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New York: Politics scores, not the plot
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 Film: New York Director: Kabir Khan Starring: Katrina Kaif, John Abraham and Neil Nitin Mukesh  A still from New York What do you do when the most moving thing in a film that is meant to stir and shake you happens right at the end? When Irrfan tells Neil Nitin Mukesh that America is great and we have to move on after 9/11 because there is a little boy whose father is a Muslim terrorist and who is cheered by his American teammates in the very American game of baseball? Just put your head in your hands and try to massage your headache. That's what happens in New York, which Kabir Khan, who has made it quite a habit to make polemical films, directs. It begins beautifully enough. Everyone looks mint fresh, smiles so much their cheeks and our cheeks ache, and wears sporty clothes that will no doubt be immediately copied as latest campus wear. The three, Katrina Kaif, John Abraham and Mukesh are students of New York University which is shot in a golden light to suggest its golden age moment (Khan doesn't believe in too much subtlety). But then 9/11 happens and everything changes. Cue Julius Packiam's operatic score and Kaif's weeping face. Cue also scenes of torture, Abraham being stripped to the bone, being peed upon, being handcuffed, being threatened. And cut to seven years later, when Mukesh is brought back on the scene as an undercover FBI agent to penetrate what they believe is a sleeper cell run by Abraham who was released after nine months of illegal detention. Kaif is now a young mother, with Abraham as a husband, producing an offspring who naturally is pretty as a picture, but fortunately acts better than both. Irrfan is the FBI agent who is an American Muslim married to an Italian who keeps feeding him pasta. Somehow the character must have been funnier on paper but Irrfan still manages to invest it with some humour and humanity, putting the Americans down as much as he tries to get evidence on Abraham. Mukesh's job is to look befuddled and outwitted in equal measure and he manages to do it well enough. But of course this being Bollywood, it is laughably easy for him to win Abraham's trust. But by this time, it all begins to get terribly long winded. Not even Kaif's histrionics manage to keep us riveted and the final confrontation with FBI snipers, on top a New York skysc****r, can save the film. Everything by then is shot in slow motion to emphasise the futility of war, Islamic and American. It has to be said that Khan has done his homework-as he should given his role in shooting parts of the Daniel Pearl documentary-and the scenes of torture and detention seem quite authentic. And it doesn't hurt that everyone hates what America has done in Iraq and Afghanistan. You really don't need to win the audience's sympathy. It would be an interesting experiment though to run this film in the heart of middle America. Picketing would happen, I imagine. As it is, it's passable though its politics is more interesting than its plot. Abraham as terrorist mastermind? Nah! Similar Threads:
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