Thread: Bollywood Movie Review

The first Bollywood film I want to talk about is a film released just a few months ago called The Stoneman Murders, starring Kay Kay Menon and Arbaaz Khan; the film is written and directed by Manish Gupta, who makes his directorial-debut of a full-length feature film with The Stoneman Murders.

The film is spoken entirely in Hindi and subtitled in English, with the option of multiple subtitled languages available on the DVD.

SYNOPSIS:

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After the serial killer aptly dubbed 'Stoneman' by the media has just claimed his fifth victim, the case is still of little interest to the Bombay Police force. But to suspended sub-inspector Sanjay Shelar(Kay Kay Menon), this killer poses an opportunity. Sanjay hopes to track this killer down and thus, possibly find an entry back into the police force. With the secret aid of his patronizing superior AIG Satam (Vikram Gokhale), Sanjay takes up the arduous process of tracking this killer down. But the official police investigator of the case Inspector Kedar Phadke (Arbaaz Khan) clashes incessantly with Sanjay as both of them, separately, delve deeper into the case. 

Sanjay on the other hand is determined to find the stoneman,he takes the help of his informer.His wife Manali (Rukhsar) is upset with him and thinks that he is having an affair with another woman.Sanjay goes on with his investigations.One night someone throws a stone inside Sanjay's house through a window .Neeta thinks it to be the mischief of some boys of the locality but Sanjay feels it is the stoneman. Another night the stoneman tries to kill a beggar sleeping on the roadside but is saved by kedar and some patrolling policemen. Sanjay and his car is spotted by Kedar that night. 

Sanjay finds that his investigation house has been visited by the stoneman as sees vermilion spread everywhere. Sanjay contemplates a possible danger to his wife asks her to leave for her village.He rushes to the station to get her rail ticket where he encounters the killer but before he can catch him Kedar shoots him thinking him to be the killer. Sanjay escapes and thi incident brings him closer to his wife.He suspects the killer to be a policeman who is a tribal performing a impotency ritual and asks the informer to tell this to Satam. 

Surprisingly Kamle (Virendra Saxena) turns out to be the killer and attacks Sanjay, but both are saved by the police. Kamle is arrested and the matter is closed. In the end it is shown that the man with a voice similar to Satam is performing a ritual and asks a person to give him nine offerings of humans and this time to kill people in Calcutta.

The Stoneman Murders is based on the real life serial killings that made headlines in the early 80s in Mumbai.


Review: Kay Kay Menon is very impressive as the rogue cop named Inspector Sunjay; he really absorbed his character and brings great emotion and intensity to his performance.

All the other performances are sub-par (except for Vikram and Khan), but Kay Kay truly carries this film from start to finish.

There is also one sequence that didn't make sense, like when Sanjay gets shot by one of Kedar's men, and escapes on a train, and then immediately lands in the arms of his wife at home; the transition from train to house was not adequately shown.

The subject matter may be a bit outdated by Western standards, but the movie is still a great thrill-ride by all means. The movie also has an interesting twist at the end.

I really enjoyed this film, and I would recommend it! I give this film 3 out of 4 stars.

Here's one review I enjoyed reading.

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In the era when mobile phones weren't even dreamt of, characters in our films connected on landlines, or not at all. Into this world of conditional connectivity crept a collage of crimes and confusion only because punishment, justice and retribution were not linked closely enough.

In "The Stoneman Murders", writer-director Manish Gupta takes us into the anarchy of an era when technology was tenuous and crime meant smuggling and racketeering rather than extortion and terrorism.

Serial killing is still an alien crime in India. The phenomenon made a rare appearance on our streets in the mid 1980s when an unidentified wacko went around bashing in the faces of sleeping pavement dwellers in the dead of the night with a rock.

India's first certifiable rock star from hell?

A gruesome subject for a film.

"The Stoneman Murders" does nothing to redeem the sense of claustrophobic dread that shrouds the characters on either side of the law. The moments created to establish a link between the private life and public investigations of the cops are so stagey you wonder if they were written and shot to deliberately deflect attention from the main business at hand, namely the messy killings.

Let's face it. The mind of a serial killer is beyond our comprehension. As facts have it, "The Stoneman Murders" remain unsolved in our police files.

This is where the film's plot gets inventive. It seeks out a neat end to the messy murders involving intrigue and Satanism within the police force. The shock value is applied with jolting generosity at the climax. But the suspense element in most of the narrative is depleted by the restricted space in which the characters manoeuvre their motivations.

The enormity of the multiple-murder crimes is quite often restricted to showing pictures from the newspapers or glimpses of sprawled bodies on pavements. By the time Kay Kay Menon, as gritty and honest on camera as ever, cracks the case, our patience with this dark and gloomy chronicle of the grisly goings-on has run thin. Even the cop-and-criminal chases in dimly-lit subways and railway stations fail to get our adrenaline running.

The pit is reached in the scenes between the suspended cop Kay Kay and his screen wife (Rukhsar) whose exchanges are more in the nature of a radio skit than a film where marital discord is a vital clue to the murderous plot.

Ruskshar is even put through an entirely unnecessary bare-backed sequence. And we can only gape in wonder as ladies in a beer bar break into an item song.

This serial killing story badly needs bailing out. Kay Kay Menon with his strong, wry unsmiling presence brings grit to the feeble drama. Arbaaz Khan as his adversary in the police department has nothing much to do. A couple of supporting performances try to flesh out the shadowy scenario.

On the whole the theme of mass murder on Mumbais streets leaves us cold and unaffected.

The periodicity (the 1980s) is established through common devices like songs and films. At one point a prostitute calls out to our hero addressing him as "Rajesh Khanna".

A bit behind the times. Maybe our movies should just not get into the serial-killing space. 


SOURCE: The Stoneman Murders :: Review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG6MhzzPyrk

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