It is static and goes around in a loop. There’s something about the film that reminds you of the Bosnian Oscar winner ‘No Man’s Land’, which was a poignant reminder of the futility of war, and the tragic waste of human lives. ‘Kya Dilli Kya Lahore’ had the potential to be as powerful, maybe more, because it is our story. So many people still remember Partition as if it was yesterday, and so many people have still have such strong familial connections on either side of the border.

The Rani in ‘Queen’ won our hearts because she was believable every inch of the way. This Rani, who hefts revolvers and shoots to kill, is neither wholly a cartoon figure, nor completely credible. This confusion makes us stop suspending disbelief, and ‘Revolver Rani’ becomes a tiresome Bollywoodesque trudge through the Chambal, and its men and one woman posturing with guns, and the standard corrupt ‘netas’ and complicit cops.

This may have had power 40 years back. Now it is just tired, and jaded.

This is an important film, and I do hope it gets seen widely, timely and topical as it is in the time of Muzzafarnagar, misguided mullahs and modified bhakts.

It’s nice to see Bollywood attempting to create a contemporary young couple. I liked the way they proceed without fuss into that most modern of compacts — of attraction that leads to conjugation, minus coyness. It is done as just something that happens, a no-weightage progression. Which is why the parental ‘khit- khit’ seems, after a point, overdone and mothballed. The smooth, engaging first half descends, post-interval, into mopey melodrama, and I got impatient waiting for the inevitable resolution.

I laughed out loud in a few bits, didn’t mind some of it, and blanked out in the rest. Finally it was neither funny nor serious enough: neither fully ghostly nor ghastly, but somewhere in between.

‘Main Tera Hero’ is not as ghastly as a few recent Dhawans have been, but only because it takes itself not at all seriously, and becomes as silly as it should be for some of the second half . The rest of it has its share of the usual unsightly and tasteless gags about women and protruding body parts and the mandatory fat guy in a wheelchair.

I ran for my life in about an hour from this atrocity which calls itself a film, but which is nothing but a series of dismal, embarrassing scenes interspersed with songs that are even more so.

The film, despite its efforts, becomes muddled, and dull. The one I enjoyed watching most was the late Farooque Shaikh, who plays the young politician’s mentor and friend. Shaikh has a large role, and he plays it with his customary humour and grace, lending much-needed gravitas to this film. This ‘youngistaan’ will always remember him with love and affection.

This is the kind of film where everyone refers to themselves in the third person (“Gujjar ne kaha kaali diary mein likh dey” : Gujjar being a bad guy and ‘kaali diary’ a black notepad, got it?), and wanders about biding time till the next meaningless shoot-out and killing.
Who writes this kind of tripe? Someone please shoot me in the head.