I wanted to watch these Indian made biker movies out of a pure intellectual curosity. I thought I would like moments and suffer through the rest (ever seen the American low budget Steal Wheels?-had to be better than that).
So it arrived the other night. My inlaws were in town so after they left me and my wife needed a little down time to de-stress. We decided we'd pop in the first movie and check it out. Had to figure out how to turn the subtitles on on the laptop since it is not an English language film.
The movie opens with a wordless action sequence of the bike hijacking the truck (see above). Slick. Looked like "Torque" "Biker Boyz" or "Fast and Furious" on motorcycles. Stylized to say the least, but nice camera work. The purple sparkle flame of the Nitro was a bit odd, but otherwise.
Then it cuts to a man waking up trying to convince his wife (who is painting the house while he sleeps in) to make love to him...one of the hottest sexless scenes I've ever seen. It's a song and dance number. Reminded me of old holywood movies, "Singing in the Rain" and the like but with better music.
Then the husband, a supercop detective sort of fellow, gets a call to respond to the robbery on the highway.
He winds up suspecting the wrong biker-Ali a mechanic/racer, but then teams up with him to go under cover to catch the real biker thieves.
The plot is fairly decent. It is a strongly character centered film which makes it possible to care about the police and what they are doing even though the bad-guys/bikers are clearly a cooler set of morally ambigous characters. The action is a bit over the top and stylistic, cinematography cues from "Mission Impossible 2" and "Matrix" abound alongside the afore mentioned films. I wasn't suprised to find out one of the stunt guys was a stunt guy on "MI2".
The resolution was a bit predictable from the intermission to some degree but it was a nice ride getting there.
Overall, I think this movie had a better plot than "Glory Stompers," or "C.C. Rider."
The music is an interesting element that makes this movie unique from other films that I've seen. I suppose the musical numbers need to be compared to "Grease 2" in frequency and character development like a musical film.
So, if you ever wanted "Grease 2" to have the sound track to Sarah Brightman's "Eden" album and the action packed fights of a kungfu movie and racing of "Torque" (which apparently I did!) then this is the movie for you.
It was suprisingly enjoyable.
So after watching Dhoom I was excited to pop in Dhoom 2 as late night fare.
My wife enjoyed Dhoom 2 as much as Dhoom. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed. The story wasn't as tight, it almost felt like 2 episodes of a tv show because characters from the first half vanished before the second half of the film which hurt the plot unity in my opinion. The action was slicker, but the story was weaker. Visually it looked a lot more like MI2 a lot more.
The dance scenes didn't seem as much a part of the film but instead a distraction and filler.
The music was still decent, but it just didn't work for me as well.
Honestly, if they make Dhoom 3(director of first 2 left, and India thinks the youth are being inspired to drive recklessly by the first 2) then I'd probably watch it!
