Aamir Review

Some movies are made purely for slobbering film critics and connoisseurs who salivate at anything that is merely different. Welcome to Aamir.

Aamir is the tale of an NRI Aamir Ali (Rajeev Khandelwal) who's just returned to India. At the airport, he gets a call informing him that his family has been kidnapped and that they'll be set free if he does whatever he is asked to do for the next 5 hours. It turns out that his tormentors are a bunch of Muslim terrorists trying to do the usual - bomb innocent civilians to death because they believe their God loves and endorses that - and are using him to do it, though it's never clear why they need to.

Like we at fullhyd.com always say, if you want a make a movie that will win a few awards and get 5 star ratings from holier-than-thou movie critics, you have to skip the second half and keep as many things dangling as possible. Which is exactly what Aamir does. Sure, we have no problem with a moviemaker doing just what he wants. We just have a problem with paying good money to watch such bunkum.

Let us begin the post-mortem. First off, Aamir is an excruciatingly slow movie - there's no unravelling of the plot happening anywhere, and the movie plods on and on and on, with the mystery staying at square 1 even in the penultimate reel. There's no flex point anywhere in the script to make it interesting, to make it a damn story, worth the effort of making a full movie based on it.

Indeed, it's very easy to find yourself asking in the end just why the terrorists couldn't give him the suitcase in the very first reel and get him to leave it in the bus (assuming you have the tenacity to stay till the end of a film like this). Everything else is dragging it, since there's no story-telling or character-building happening in the interim.

Secondly, it takes you into the territory of sarkari documentaries, spending 95% of its time in slums. It's to escape all that that we go to watch the movies, remember? With nothing really happening in the film, your entire attention attaches itself to the bleak and completely unappetizing environs. There's a reason you don't go to a slum on a date or a family outing. It's the same reason you wouldn't want to watch a movie set almost entirely in one.

Finally, the sheer mismanagement of even what is there. (Don't read this paragraph if you are planning to watch this film - and accept our sympathies.) The ending, for instance, shows Aamir left with 2 1/2 minutes to escape before the bomb blows up, and all the actions he performs after that would take about twice that. When things like that happen, all the thrill of setting a 2 1/2 minute deadline vanishes, and the audiences just get pissed. And just why does he kill himself? Is it because that's the way to make people think you've made a profound movie?

Another example of the slipshod plot is the whole premise of the film - just what is the logic behind using Aamir for the whole exercise, when an unknown person like that can so easily bungle up things even if he does not go straight to the cops? Don't the terrorists have enough trained people in their sleeper cells? And Aamir is much more likely to spill the beans later, whether out of guilt or out of fear, than any brainwashed recruit.

And why such a bright red suitcase that will attract just anyone's attention, if you are going to put a bomb in it? And what was that chase by the cop all about? And that very violent fight?

Aamir might have made for a good film if its ending was its interval - when he turns against the villians, becomes a bolder man, and starts fighting back. He could still lose, but at least it would have made a proper movie - a story worth telling, with whatever points you wanted to make staying intact.

It's always far, far tougher to make a commercial success than to make an "art" film. Any half-baked brain can some up with esoteric-sounding stuff that will get benefit of doubt from people not willing to believe their own heads. It's far tougher to engage your audiences - and if you are making a movie, that is what you want to do, right?

Only, even by art film standards, Aamir is incredibly boring and replusive. There's a close-up shot of Aamir's vomit, for instance. Ensoi.

Rajeev Khandelwal doesn't make much of an impact at any stage in the film. Sure, the role needs him to stay docile and insignificant, but we persist - he doesn't make much of an impact at any stage in the film. There are no other characters in the film with any sizeable roles. Indeed, that's too much of a burden on a debutante's shoulders - making him carry a film all by himself.

The songs sound good, but can come in at weird times - like that song during a fight. The visuals suffer partly since the film is set mostly in a slum, and partly because showing all those faces in the crowds makes the movie look like a Films Division production.

If Aamir's script gets any points, it's for the ending, however plebian and predictable. Our goodness is determined by how much above our current level of goodness we can rise, especially when it entails a price to be paid for a very long time.

There were some people in Ramakrishna clapping when Aamir regains control of the briefcase that he believes contains the Quam's money. Ramakrishna attracts a whole lot of the old city crowds, and we want to believe they were all clapping for the right reasons, and that the rumours are all wrong.

Then, there weren't many people in Ramakrishna anyway, on the very first day. If you didn't get the drift yet, that's your last hint.