Superboys of Malegaon: A super hit!

Superboys of Malegaon (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This is “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” writ very large.

 

The emotional impact is augmented further by the fact that Bollywood director Reema Kagti’s charmer is based on actual events. The often rowdy result is thoroughly entertaining.

 

Nasir (Adarsh Gourav, second from right) tries for the best possible shot, while wielding
the camera with assistance from friends, from left, Shafique (Shashank Arora),
Nadeem (Ammol Kajani) and Farogh (Vineet Kumar Singh).

The year is 1997, the setting the primarily Islamic community of Malegaon, in the Nashik District of India’s Maharashtra State. A buoyant introductory montage, set against Sachin-Jigar’s jaunty score, introduces the story’s primary characters as they begin a typical day of work.

 

Wedding videographer Nasir (Adarsh Gourav), who operates out of a video parlor run by his older brother, is quick with an entrepreneurial hustle but prone to placing bets with money he doesn’t have. He’s often assisted by the handsome Nadeem (Anmol Kajani). 

 

Local journalist Farogh (Vineet Kumar Singh) composes poetry and aspires to become a screenwriter. The doleful Shafique (Shashank Arora), who works a loom in a sweatshop factory, never seems to smile.

 

Nasir’s staunchest advocate is Shabeena (Muskkaan Jaferi), who always has an encouraging word; alas, he doesn’t love her. Instead, he has long been sweet on Mallika (Riddhi Kumar), but her father never would allow his daughter to marry so lowly an individual. Even so, the two often sneak off to be together.

 

Nasir, Nadeem, Farogh, Shafique and several of their friends always are first in line, when a new Bollywood hit reaches their town. But Nasir, a rabid movie fan, takes it a step further; he screens silent films by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in the back room of his brother’s store ... but very few people come.

 

His “solution” is wildly audacious. Armed with a pair of VCRs, he blends the best scenes from those silent classics with kung fu footage from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies, stitching the results into a sorta-kinda story laden with comedy and action. The result is a smash hit with the locals, who swarm the makeshift theater for repeat viewings ... until police officers smash everything, and warn Nasir to stop pirating.

 

Although dismayed by the ruins of his brother’s business, Nasir remains undeterred. His next scheme is even more brazen: a shot-for-shot, micro-budget remake of 1975’s Sholay, one of the biggest Bollywood action hits ever made, using solely local talent. He’ll call it Malegaon’s Sholay, in order to evade claims of piracy. 

 

Farogh loves this plan, since it will allow him to write the script ... but no, Nasir points out, there’s nothing to write, since they’ll simply follow the original movie’s template.

 

Our next movie will be an original, he promises.

All We Imagine as Light: Incandescent

All We Imagine as Light (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Not rated, and suitable for all ages

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang

Most memorable films are driven by a strong, compelling narrative that dictates the behavior of its characters: challenges to be overcome, problems to be solved, relationships to be resolved.

 

As Prabha (Kani Kusruti, left) watches apprehensively, Anu (Divya Prabha) tries to
figure out where this unexpected gift — a fancy rice cooker — came from.

Indian writer/director Payal Kapadia takes a different approach, with this delicate, heartfelt drama. All We Imagine As Light is more of an atmospheric, cinematic tone poem: a calmly meditative piece that makes its Mumbai setting — brought to exquisite life by cinematographer Ranabir Das — as much a character as the three women whose lives intersect in gently poignant and quietly heartbreaking ways.

We’re first introduced to the city itself, as viewed through the windows of a passing bus, via an impressively long tracking shot: bustling, cacophonous, overwhelmingly crowded. And hot, humid and wet; rain is constant, windows nonetheless left open to catch an occasional stray breeze.

 

This portion of the city — Lower Parel to Dadar — is in constant transformation, with rapacious developers demolishing residential chawls (tenements) that have long housed the workers who keep the city functioning, into gated luxury building complexes and high-end shopping malls.

 

One particularly obnoxious billboard shamelessly flaunts the blatant unfairness of India’s caste system: “Class is a privilege ... reserved for the privileged.”

 

Random individuals express their thoughts, off camera and in different languages — Gujarati, Bhojpuri, Bengali — as this bus proceeds, each brief snippet a haunting saga of its own:

 

“I’ve lived here maybe 23 years, but I feel afraid to call it home. There’s always the feeling I’ll have to leave.”

 

“I fought with my dad, so I packed my bag and left for Mumbai. My brother had a job at the dockyard. His place smelled so bad, the first night I couldn’t sleep.”

 

“I was pregnant, but I didn’t tell anyone, because I’d recently found a job at a house. I had to take care of a lady’s kids, but they were pests. But the lady ... she fed me well. That year I ate like a queen.”

Mission Majnu: Thoughtful espionage caper

Mission Majnu (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated TV-MA, for dramatic intensity and violence

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

It’s always fascinating to see how different cultures embrace familiar cinema genres.

 

Director Shantanu Bagchi’s Mission Majnu is an engaging — if occasionally unlikely — take on the one-man spy flick, as typified by the likes of James Bond and Jason Bourne. Scripters Parveez Sheikh, Aseem Arrora and Sumit Batheja have employed an actual event — the mid-1970s nuclear proliferation crisis between India and Pakistan — as the backdrop for the usual blend of scheming politicians, double agents, double-crosses and dire consequences in the event of failure.

 

Covert agent Amandeep Ajitpal Singh (Sidharth Malhotra) has become convinced that
Pakistan is building a secret facility, in order to develop a nuclear bomb ... but where?
And how can he supply proof, to his handlers back in India?

Their angst-ridden hero, played persuasively by Sidharth Malhotra, is something of an outcast: sent on an undercover assignment overseen by a field supervisor who despises him.

The film opens with the successful completion of Operation Smiling Buddha, the code name (yes, seriously) given to India’s first successful nuclear bomb test, on May 18, 1974. Pakistan, still smarting from its quick defeat during the brief 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, objects globally to this development; India suspends further testing.

 

But Pakistan is being duplicitous. India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW, the equivalent of Britain’s MI6) receives reports that Pakistan is covertly building its own nuclear facility. But proof must be gathered, in order to expose this operation on the world stage.

 

At this point we meet Tariq (Malhotra), a cheerful Pakistani tailor with a talent for ingratiating himself with others. He meets and marries Nasreen (Rashmika Mandanna), a beautiful blind woman, during a somewhat jarring detour into Bollywood, complete with music, songs, colorful costumes and an elaborate wedding ceremony.

 

She becomes pregnant soon thereafter.

 

Ah, but this is all artifice. Unbeknownst to Nasreen, the lowly Tariq actually is Amandeep Ajitpal Singh, a RAW agent still haunted by the memory of watching his father commit suicide, after being accused of sharing Indian intelligence reports with Pakistan. Singh has spent his adult life determined to clear the family name, which makes him an ideal undercover agent in the eyes of RAW chief RN Kao (Parmeet Sethi).

 

This opinion isn’t shared by Sharma (Zakir Hussain), surely the most toxic field contact in the known universe, who verbally abuses Amandeep every time the poor guy checks in, most notably with repeated references to his father’s traitorous activity.

 

Sharma, convinced of the likely failure of Amandeep’s efforts to find proof of Pakistan’s nuclear activities, assigns another RAW agent — Sharib Hashmi, as the scruffy Aslam Usmania — to watchdog the situation.

 

To make matters even worse, India’s political winds shift. Operation Smiling Buddha and this covert operation were endorsed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (Avantika Akerkar), who is replaced in the next election by Morarji Desai (Avijit Dutt). He has little use for RAW’s intelligence data; he also seems far too cozy with Pakistan’s Gen. Zia-ul-Haq (Ashwath Bhatt).

 

This doesn’t make Amandeep’s assignment any easier … or his life any safer.