Movie Review: Dhoom 2

Yes - I did it. I watched another Bollywood movie hours after posting on the last one.

This is a very different film to Say This Is Love, and is a crackpot comedy action movie (more Rush Hour than Top Secret!) in which all sorts of attractive people fire guns for no good reason, shit gets blown up, people sing and dance and one character refers to herself in the third person for the ENTIRE FILM!

Algo would never do that!

It stars Abishek Bachan and his wife, Aishwarya Rai (of Bride and Predjudice fame), Hrithik Roshan (only playing one character this time, but with lots of aliases) and a sort of silly comic relief character played by Uday Chopra.

The cast are without doubt absurdly good looking again - the film differs greatly in grown up content (to say "adult" would be perjorative) as many of the women and men flirt, wear not much clothing and stand in the rain playing basketball in a much more adult fashion than in any of my previous Bollywood experiences.

The plot's a lot simpler than Say This Is Love, too.

Abishek and the comic relief are cops. They are first seen blowing a bunch of drug dealers away in the most ridiculous opening sequence I've seen for some time.
They then join forces with an old schoolfriend of Abishek's, who is amazingly good looking and try and hunt down master of disguise and amazingly good looking international thief Hrithik Roshan. Also looking for the thief is the amazingly good looking Aishwarya Rai, who is the culprit of the third person speak (example "sunehri is not impressed").

As an aside to my point about the more grown up nature of the film, there is an unmarried kiss in it, that according to IMDB started a court case over "obscenity". There you go.

Much fun and hijinks ensue, including a cool diamond heist (by one man rather than 11) and castle getaway as well as the bizarre slow motion basketball scene.

The film relocates after a while to Brazil and the chase continues to build up tension between the stars and plot holes for the viewers, especially towards the end - where from betrayal, we move straight to chase scene, despite the fact that according to the movie's internal logic, Abishek should have no idea even where to start looking for the thieves, let alone suddenly turn up in a helicopter chasing them!

This type of movie shouldn't really be held to quite the western standards we are used to and is superb escapist entertainment. The songs are cool, despite some dodgy dancing from Abishek and his sidekick and by the end I was smiling broadly (though mainly at the hilariously predictable outcome).

I really think more of us western folk should see these types of films once in a while - they really highlight just what Western films have that we take for granted (and I guess, vice versa). There's something wonderfully innocent about the gun fetishism in this film, unlike say "Wanted", it being reminiscent of a bunch of schoolkids playing war. We really are too cynical in the West IMHO, and maybe this is just where we need to escape to?

For three hours at least.

Peace Out!

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