Kabul Express

The plot: Couple of Indian journalists go to Afghanishthan to try and get some photographs/interviews of a "Talib". They hire a local Afghani guide and also meet a female American journalist on their sojourn.

I had seen the trailer of this while seeing Omkara earlier. It had caught my eye then since it looked like a untypical bollywood production. My guess was not too incorrect.

Note that here I am not reviewing the movie on its absolute merits but more so relative to bollywood standards. (For an excellent Afghanisthan war movie, and in general a great war movie, check out The Beast of War ).

So on to the goods (note again for good measure, this is relative to Bollywood):

The movie is pretty non-judgemental as far as Bollywood movies go. Pakistan of course gets some flak but its not as bad as I would have expected and after all the Talib himself is an ex Paki and you are actually made to sympathize with the guy so go figure. US, everybody's favourite whipping target gets some of it though not excessive which is good.

Including an attractive female character is forgivable (after all you want to sell this in Bollywoodland dont you?), though her roaming around in war torn Afghanisthan on her own is slightly hard to digest but well, nevermind. The important thing to note is that a totally unnecessary and awkward romance is not forced down out throats between the characters.

The shooting captures the stark beauty of the Afghanisthani terrain rather well and its appreciable that folks from B-town braved out the instability and turmoil hovering over that land.

Acting wise, Arshad Warsi is good as usual, plays his stereotypical comic sidekick role very well. Though I think its a waste of talent to not explore him in other kinds of roles.

You can tell that a movie industry is maturing when some of the dialogue and nuances of the movie is left as an exercise for the user. The viewer is not patronized by spelling out each and every thought running through the characters minds, as is normally done in our movies. For example when planning to send the female lead to the Talib's sister, the characters just look at her and then in the next scene she is heading out to the village, albiet bitching about it, which is fair enough. Not a very strong example but you get the picture.

And lack of item numbers - priceless!

Allright, the bads: John Abraham is pretty replacable. As far as the plot is concerned, I thought bringing the ensemble closer together through cricket, bollywood songs and filial love was rather flimsy and filmy but you can get away a little by claiming that the movie only aspires to be a comedy and not much more. Political shades of the various personalities are just skimmed upon, pardonable again for the same reason.

All in all 7 out of 10. I would have been much harsher if it wasnt a bwood thing.