Tashan: All style no substance

Yash Raj Films’ “Tashan” is the directorial debut of Vijay Krishna Acharya, the scriptwriter of the “Dhoom” series. It stars Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Anil Kapoor in lead roles.

Tashan is the story of Pooja Singh (Kareena Kapoor) who works as an assistant to Bhaiyyaji (Anil Kapoor) a don from Uttar Pradesh who literally rules over Mumbai. Bhaiyyaji wants to learn English to impress his foreign clients and Pooja hires Jimmy Cliff (Saif Ali Khan), an accent trainer cum Call centre employee to train Bhaiyyaji. Bhaiyyaji makes bhajji of English while Jimmy falls head over heels in love with Pooja. Pooja owes Bhaiyyaji millions and Jimmy decides to rob Bhaiyyaji of his money. Pooja disappears with the money, Jimmy is caught and Bhaiyyaji arranges for Bachchan Pandey (Akshay Kumar) to get Pooja and his money back.

By this time one would understand what the movie has in store for you. Yes, you guessed it right. The threesome land up together and from there on confusion ensues since all the three men fall for Pooja and all of them want them. In her place, Pooja plays around with all of them leaving the viewer confused as to where this whole thing is heading. A couple of flashbacks later, it is revealed that Pooja has an axe to grind against Bhaiyyaji and with the help of the two other men, she succeeds in her mission.

With someone like Vijay Krishna Acharya at the helm of affairs, the last thing that you expect Tashan to be is logical! Like his Dhoom series, the script here also defies logic but there is a limit up to which one can take cinematic liberties and unfortunately for Acharya, he crosses those limits! It is as if Yash Raj and Acharya had decided whom to cast in their next project and then created characters around them, rather than working on a plot and casting actors accordingly!

Thus, you have Anil Kapoor mimicking Amitabh Bachchan of the 70’s and 80’s, Saif Ali Khan playing the phirangi, upmarket, modern dude and Kareena Kapoor playing the bitchy, unapologetic and immoral girl of today- things that suit of each of these actors like second skin! If at all there is someone who puts in efforts to make this fare enjoyable, it is the immensely bankable Akshay Kumar. He is in his elements as the crotch- scratching villager, Bachchan Pandey. The actor has worked hard on his looks and his accent and displays an honesty and sincerity which is lacking in the rest of the cast. This is good follow up to the string of hits that he has had in 2007!

Technically, Tashan scores very high marks! Anayanka Bose’s photography is brilliant, Peter Hein’s action choreography is in true- Hollywood ishtyle and Aki Narula has a field day dressing up the stars. Kareena’s size zero figure and itsy bitsy clothes allure the front benchers. She has been made to parade in the tiniest of bikinis for 10 seconds though one wonders whether it was necessary for the actor to stoop to this level especially after the immense popularity that she is enjoying thanks to her riveting performance in “Jab We Met”. Music by Vishal Shekhar is enjoyable and Sukhvinder Singh sounds good rendering “Dil Haara” and “Dil Dance Maare”. Editing could have been crisper. Art Director scores while choreographer (Vaibhavi Merchant) fails to impress.

To conclude, “Tashan” as its name signifies is full on style and attitude. If you don’t look beyond these two, Tashan could be entertaining enough for you!