James - Watch it for style

The punchline is that you'd have seen all the scenes in James at least 4-5 times before. Despite that, the treatment is so different, you don't feel like yawning and taking a walk outside the theater to make a call on your cell or have a smoke.

There is no story. Of course, there is the small town simpleton in big bad Mumbai, with small town idealism, will to fight and super human strength liberating the city from the tentacles of the devil personified bit in lieu of the story. Don't watch James if you want to see realistic cinema or a story.

Watch James if you want entertainment 80's style - thrill, adventure and rough and tumble - tough guys and hot women, idealistic hero and lascivious villain, helpless police and corrupt cops. Watch James if you want to see the raw intensity of a fresh face and some fine performances. Watch James if you want to watch some very well executed sequences.

Apart from the narrative and the message, the success of the movie (and we are not talking about box office success) is determined by its ability to evoke the kind of emotions that it intends to evoke in the audience. On that count, James scores high. You identify with the protagonist's fearlessness, though you may feel he does things that you may never do in real life, you feel the intense hatred and anger aganist the villain, you feel the warmth of camaradeire between the hero and his friend, you feel the helplessness of the heroine's father and you feel the self righteous zeal of a puny servant to protect the modesty of his accidental guest.

The Verma factory seems to have mastered a lot of aspects of film making - though all of their movies are not great, some are even outright bad. Two of the things they have perfected are cinematography and background music.

Camera work is superb. The deft use of black and white frames, the interplay of light and shade and exciting camera angles enhance the impact of scenes to high levels of intensity.

Background music is also great. A variation that works really well is the theme music for the villain and the hero - so whenever we have the villain in action, we have a specific kind of eerie music filling the scene and whenever the hero moves, its a different guitar tune.

Dialogues are interesting. The reticent hero, at places, mouths sharp one-liners. The intro sequence of the hero, with his half amused, "Maar padegi.." is cool. The villain does mouth some crude lines but thats in line with his persona.


Performance wise, Shereveer, who plays Radhe Narayan is impressive. The slight twinkle in his eyes, the twitch of his lips and the obscene movement of his tongue bring the cruel, lecherous and manic character live. Zakir Hussain, as a corrupt politico-criminal excels. Mohan Agashe is wasted. Rajpal Yadav does well in his short role. The rest of the side cast also pulls off well.

In the lead pair, Nisha doesn't have to do anything apart from baring her midriff and trying to do Urmila-esque dances a la Rangeela. She fails miserably in that. Dialogue delivery is not great, but that doesn't hurt as her main job here is to look hot and sexy and at times vulnerable which she pulls off well.

Mohit Ahlawat has got intensity but he has to work on his dialogue delivery. He shows that he can emote and is much better than a lot of Bikram Salujas and Himanshu Maliks and even Fardeen Khans but thats an area he would do well to improve.

At the end, Ramu may have his own opinion about the movie, but its still laudable, more so because the movie takes a beaten to death plot and (also, is quite eloquent about it) makes it interesting on the strength of its treatment.

You won't get bored and and you won't curse me.