Kahaani

Year: 2012
Genre: Thriller
Direction: Sujoy Ghosh
Cast: Vidya Balan, Parambrata Chatterjee, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Rating: Excellent

Kahaani is a thriller movie. The plot revolves around a pregnant lady (Vidya Balan), who comes from US to Kolkata in search of her husband, who she believes has gone missing while on an assignment. She lodges a complaint with the local police and seeing that police is of no help, starts the search by herself. Seeing her determination a police inspector joins her with the search. Further we see how both of them together unfold mysteries and are able to create links of why her husband went missing and what his connection with a poison-gas attack in a Kolkata metro was. They slowly identify people behind the crime and are able to infiltrate to obtain more data. The final scene is the best as this is where the story turns around and audience is thrilled. The twist is a totally unexpected one. While watching you keep developing many possibilities of what could have become of her husband. But the twist seemed too fresh and exciting. Though the final scene has been compared with some foreign movies, it seemed to fit the plot well and is very fresh.

This thriller is one of the best ones I have seen in Bollywood yet. The film makind techniques used also are nice. The colors have been kept natural. The makeup is minimalist. There is no feeling of any created sets in the movie. Everything seems to be shot in natural locations among the unaware crowd.

Almost from the beginning of the movie, one gets a feeling of being involved in the movie and being at the places shown. As the plot gets serious, we also get curious of the mystery.

Vidya Balan's performance is highly commendable. She has portrayed the character with ease and naturally. Her body language is also one thing to be appreciated. Vidya has taken extreme care of her walking, facial expressions, and other movements to make the character realistic.

A must watch!

The Town

Year: 2010

Genre: Crime

Direction: Ben Affleck

Cast: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jeremy Renner.

Rating: Okay

The Town is a crime movie and the plot is based on a novel Prince of Thieves.

The movie opens with a bank robbery operated by Ben, Jeremy, and two more friends. Rebecca, who is the Bank Manager, is taken hostage and later freed. The story moves on to show the lives of these gangsters and the crimes they get involved in. Ben and Rebecca start a relationship and Rebecca is not aware of Ben's background. Rest is a cliche story - cops are involved, Rebecca comes to know of Ben's activities and breaks off the relationship with him, like all good gangsters there is bad crime lord governing them, and so on. Finally in one of the police operations, three of the gang members are killed. Ben escapes and kills the crime lord. He buries the looted money at a place where Rebecca is sure to find it and leaves her a note. The note is a hopeful one that they meet. She donates the money to the local ice hockey rink in Ben's mother's memory. The final shot shows Ben somewhere in Florida, looking over the waters from a small house.

Nothing seemed great about the movie and the story seemed to be a usual one. It seemed very much predictable. Just seemed like the old wine still in an old bottle itself.