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Home > Bollywood Movie Reviews > No Smoking Absurd Surreal Imaginative APK | October 27, 2007 Rating: **.5 (***** Very Good, **** Good, *** Fair, ** Average, * Bad) User comments Action: Jai Singh. Choreography: Ashley Lobo. Cinematography: Rajeev Ravi. Editing: Aarti Bajaj. Lyrics: Gulzar. Music: Vishal Bhardwaj. Sound: Kunal Sharma. Screenplay & Direction: Anurag Kashyap. Presenter: Eros Enternational. Producer(s): Vishal Bhardwaj-Kumar Mangat. Co-Producer: Sunil Lulla. Banner: Big Screen Entertainment-Vishal Bhardwaj Films. Release Date: 26th October, 2007.  There are two kinds of cheekiness. The first is the infamous Ram Gopal Varma kind, where he has a I-care-two-hoots-about-making-a-watchable-movie attitude (this is admittedly recent). Then there is the Anurag Kashyap kind, where he has a I-will-make-something-I-like-no-matter-how-much-the-audience-understands attitude. You know what's a great idea, at least for those who get a good laugh out of confusing, intimidating, irritating, imitating, scaring people by all other means than physical? Take a commercially viable star, or someone who at least has some visibility and make a movie with a surreal screenplay and an end that one reads in a crazy Russian short story.In case the first paragraph makes little sense, or you have to read it again to grab the threads of each unconnected sentence, then No Smoking might feel the same to you. Anurag has previously made Black Friday, a movie that has seen the light of the day after a long-drawn court case. So like they say, love him or hate his guts, it seems difficult to ignore him. K is a chain-smoker. His wife wants to leave him. Then they meet a friend, Abbas, who's quit smoking, but at the same time lost two fingers and now wears hearing aids. Oh and his brother is ill, with one surviving lung and is bed-ridden. Abbas gives him a reference-Kalkatta Karpets, a 'rehabilitation center'. When Anjali announces she wants a divorce, he decides to get help. He goes to this Baba, and there begin his trails and tribulations. Okay, first things first. The story is the bizarre misadventure of one Mr. 'Just K'-that's his name, K, just K. So you get the idea. His wife doubles as his secretary. We see Ayesha Takia as a wife, Anjali, fed-up with her husband's attitude and his chain-smoking, deciding to leave him. Then we see her doubling up as his secretary, complete with a new name 'Annie', red lipstick and extra padding. So you get the idea.  All this starts from a dream K's having about being lost in snow-capped Siberia without his cigarettes. Now, the whole Kalkatta Karpets set-up is in one downtrodden area, but with hi-tech devices and a supernatural aura. There is also a call-center, with women covered from head to toe in a burkha attending the calls.Each character has been written to make the plot more and more bizarre, as if the director's trying to see exactly how crazy he can make the script. Good idea. With just one flaw. This movie is like making the regular, innocent Hindi movie audiences smoke-not cigars or cigarettes, something that gets them higher. The problem is, it is perhaps the first time for many, and the side-effects are scary. By the way, Bipasha has one song, after the end titles. What must be given special mention are the art work and the editor. This must have been one hell of a script to work on. Vishal Bhardwaj and Gulzar combination spells magic in music, but they fall slightly short of their usual standards, but give good compositions nonetheless. You've got John taking his shirt off, his pants off in fact, and showing off his toned abdomen-but not like SRK or Salman, just to show off. No, it's a part of the script. The story, as they say, demands it. Plus, there's humor. No kidding. The Baba calls K 'Ka'. Anjali asks K for a divorce for their anniversary, and K says it's beyond his budget. Finally, this movie has some good performances by John Abraham, who's an underestimated actor, Ranvir Shorey (always dependable) and Paresh Rawal. Then there's some good music. It is a movie where the writer and director wanted to see how much they can imagine. For Hindi cinema, this movie has perhaps been made 30 years too early. People are bound to come out cursing, or squint-eyed like Ranvir in the movie. But just for that, it seems worth the effort to watch the movie. Kashyap has tried something truly 'different', even if the audiences at large are not ready for that, it seems to be still worth the effort, at least for him as a writer/director. How many people will understand this artistic indulgence is another matter altogether. |