Bond Baaja Baraat
“Stirred not shaken” says the only man I know who has this
fancy for his martinis. The name is Bond, of course, James Bond. Alas, his last
adventure is not a stirring one but manages to leave the viewer totally
shaken. True to its title this “Spectre”
of a film leaves one totally spooked.
Bond’s films have been all about supermen; Super-villains
from Dr No, Goldfinger, Sir Hugo Draxs and how the super-hero JB manages to
outwit them maybe just by the skin of his cigar stained teeth. But Spectre is
in a class by itself. Here you have our
man fighting a dangerous assassin in a helicopter over Mexico City, managing to
throw off both the assassin and the pilot, have a ultra high speed road race in
unnaturally deserted roads of Rome, flies an aeroplane with most of both the
wings missing etc but what takes the cake is the destruction of (a city-sized)
secret hide-out of the Super Villain -
Blofeld in some remote part of North Africa. All without breaking into
sweat, well maybe just a little bit.
But it is the Super Villain Blofeld who should get all the
kudos. Here is Bond departing on a chopper, Blofeld’s hide-out somewhere in N
Africa totally wrecked and still Blofeld
manages to reach London (presumably before Bond does) and lays out a precise plan
to kidnap Bond and his girl-friend Madeleine Swann, prepare an elaborate trap
where Bond gets 3 minutes to find Madeleine before the time-bomb brings the
building down. I mean guys, why not just shoot the two of them while you still
have your victims under your control???? I mean just encash the Bond and let
Madeleine have her Swan song !!! But No; these Super Villains are cast in a
different mould. Why restrict yourself to a couple of bullets when a few
megatonne equivalent of TNT, PETN or some such exotic explosives are available
to do the job? All the more bang and pyrotechnics for the buck poor viewer is
spending.
And while all this is happening, there is a sinister plot
afoot to usurp everyone’s freedom by bringing intelligence agencies of 9
countries under one mega intelligence organization Centre of National Security.
Shades of 1984. The Centre of National Security is going to be run by “C”, a
career bureaucrat who conveniently happens to have switched over to the dark
side.
Spectre BTW is the name of this deadly organization which is
surreptiously controlling everything,
drugs, arms-trafficking, human trafficking you-name-it all over the world. It
has seven arms controlled by the boss man. Since they could not find an animal
or an insect with seven appendages they used an octopus engulfing a few PYTs in
the title sequence. For one brief moment I entertained hope that they will
persist with the octopus theme and have Aishwarya in the film. No such luck.
Of course the movie has its plus points, beautiful locations
in Swiss Alps, aerial shots of Mexico City and Rome and last but not the least
a beautiful new Bond girl Lea Seydoux (aptly pronounced as ‘seduce’. I did a
quick check to see if this was an assumed name. No, some people somehow get
borne in a family with right name).
For long the Hollywood types have insinuated that Bollywood
plagiarizes their plots, music and sometimes the entire movies, but the same
guys refuse to see the reverse transfer of ideas. Take for instance the startling
disclosure that Blofeld is Bond’s foster brother (son of Bond’s foster parents
not brother of Bond’s foster wife or foster girl-friend as some of you may be
thinking), now is that in any way different from the “melemein bicchde huye” brothers? Or brothers sundered adrift in a
dam-burst or separated in an earthquake?
But let me tell you, these Hollywood
guys are far behind us. There was no emotional embrace of brothers or “tumhare paas kya hai?” “mere paas maa hai” type scene. I understand from reliable
sources that the next Bond movie will have something on those lines. Sufficient
groundwork has been done to ensure that Blofeld is very much alive and kicking
at the end of Spectre. Minor details
like how to bring back the dead parents of JB are being worked out. We
understand that MGM has approached Farah Khan to help out with her expertise of
creating Om Shanti Om! Bond’s baraat will
go on. Doesn’t matter if the viewers’ brains get bajaaoed in the process!!
LazyBee
27th November 2015
