If you haven't yet seen the trailer for Naughty@40, the Bollywood 'remake' of The 40 Year Old Virgin, then here. Feast your eyes.
And here's a song promo:
Even as an obsessive Govinda fangirl...I have my doubts about the objective worth of this film. I will see it, if it ever gets released. OH I WILL SEE IT. But will it be any good? Govinda's recent track record has me worried.
"Vintage Govinda is back"? The "return" of the Govinda of the '90s?
Can I get a HELL YES?
In case you are unaware: '90s Govinda = FREAKING AWESOME. '90s Govinda looks like THIS:
and THIS:
The eternal optimist in me wants to believe that Naughty@40 won't suck/be extremely depressing/impossible to get through without cringing/crying/wincing. I want to believe that vintage Govinda can ride again. THAT HE CAN RULE AGAIN.
YOU BETTER NOT BE LYING TO ME PUBLIC RELATIONS MACHINE.
Who is our good friend Prakash Raj talking about? None other than "Chiyaan" Vikram, of course!
Amaluu over at Bollystalgia put out the call reminding us that today - April 17 - is Vikram's birthday and encouraging us to post something in the birthday boy's honour. Like I need an excuse to get one of my shamefully unwatched Vikram dvds down off the pile!
Bheemaa (N. Linguswamy, 2008)
Is it too shameful to admit that pretty much the entire reason I ordered this film in the first place is because Vikram looks like THIS:
in the promo shots for it?
You know what? I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. Fortunately for all of us who sometimes order films for such flimsy, shallow, yet TOTALLY understandable reasons (just take a good long look at that picture. DRINK IT IN):
a) Vikram is as talented an actor as he is SMOKING HOT (that is to say: the man is blessed in all areas); and
b) Bheemaa is, not to put too fine a point on it, ABSOLUTELY, GRIPPINGLY, RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME. It twists, it turns and is entirely unpredictable and engaging (and I don’t want to write too much about the plot because you need to watch it for yourself, SERIOUSLY). I laughed (a lot), I gasped (a lot) and I cried. And I drooled a little bit. I mean – watch THIS:
“Chiyaan” Vikram plays Shekar, an enigmatic man who is pretty much a fighting machine – blessed with stealth, eagle eyes, perfect aim, fists of steel, and all the other awesome skills that enable him to repeatedly take on entire mobs of armed men single-handedly and unarmed, and emerge victorious, barely even breaking a sweat.
Shekar ends up offering his considerable talents to one of the two powerful gang lords in Chennai: his childhood idol, Chinna (Prakash Raj). Chinna is respected and loved by the public because he and his men are known for ‘cleaning up the streets’, righting injustices like vigilantes and ensuring that real lowlifes are punished. Chinna and his gang are technically criminals in that their methods of dispensing justice go outside the law – but it is this freedom that makes them super effective, and certain officials (like the D.I.G) recognize that Chinna and his gang can do things the police can’t legally do (if the police turn a blind eye). When fighting machine Shekar joins Chinna’s gang, Chinna’s status is elevated to the point that nobody in Chennai can touch them…which means EVERYBODY wants to bring them down. And EVERYBODY sees Shekar as the reason for Chinna’s success, calling him the “Bheemaa” of the gang.
At war with Chinna is Chinna’s former mentor Old Man, the leader of the other big gang in Chennai. Morally opposite to Chinna et al, these guys don’t care who is implicated in their gang war or in their lust for power and domination; they don’t care about justice or appear to have any kind of moral code. They want to kill Chinna and Shekar and be back on top.
And into the middle of it all comes a new police commissioner, intent on cleaning up Chennai and eradicating the gang war altogether. His strategy: shoot any goonda on sight. Clean up the streets. Forget the formalities of policework: just kill them all.
So it sounds pretty heavy right? It does get action packed, with SO MANY hardcore superwow fight sequences…but seriously, DON’T BE MISLED.
It’s also hilarious. Sometimes on purpose – one of the things I noticed Bheemaa does is something I noticed in another N.Linguswamy film I watched the other day (Paiyaa): set up a male protagonist who is uncomfortable expressing his emotions, and have him fall in love, and try to explain it. Shekar eventually falls in love with a girl – Shalu (Trisha) – after falling through her roof and landing on her as she is practicing for a dance recital (which is funny in itself):
Also: I REALLY got the impression that he didn't just...uh..."fall" on her and "roll around".
and the killer suddenly finds himself looking at flowers differently and trying to discuss them with his goonda friends, to little avail.
Sometimes unintentionally.
*SNORT*
And I haven’t even touched on the BEST PART.
One of the things I love THE MOST about this film is the sweet, utterly ADORABLE bromance between Shekar and Chinna.
FORGET THIS. THIS IS NOT THE ROMANCE TRACK IN THE FILM.
This is the ONE TRUE PARTNERSHIP.
YEAH WE LOVE EACH OTHER SO WHAT?
Before I saw this film, I would have said “Who doesn’t love Prakash Raj?” because seriously, who doesn’t? But after watching this – if you are not COMPLETELY SMITTEN WITH THE MAN, then there is something wrong with you. Or we can’t be friends.
HE'S SO AWESOME!
This is the point in the film where he won my heart for good.
I think I took more screencaps of Prakash Raj in Bheemaa than I did of Vikram. AND YOU KNOW THAT’S SAYING SOMETHING. He’s just so adorable as Chinna, and the bromance between him and Shekar eclipses EVERYTHING ELSE.
Prakash Raj is just the same as you or I - BEREFT without Vikram.
I don’t want to write too much about this film and give it all away – but seriously? AWESOME. You cannot go wrong with Vikram and Prakash Raj, and this film totally backs that theory up.
The fact that the opening credits are in the devil's typeface - COMIC SANS MS - should have acted as my first warning.
THIS IS THE WORST FILM I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.
I do not make that statement lightly. But when I say I had to force myself to watch the second half of Khatta Meetha, I am not kidding. Nor am I remotely exaggerating when I summarise my entire experience of the film like this:
Okay, maybe that's a bit drastic.
When I wasn’t astonishingly, mindnumbingly bored (which was a good 75% of the film), I was confused. When I wasn’t confused, I was disgusted or just plain angry at what was playing out onscreen.
Basically, the mantra that was echoing in my brain the entire, painful two hours and thirty two minutes was “WTF AKKI WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOUR CAREER?”
THERE’S NO STORY
Or if there is one, I missed it entirely. Allegedly a comedy and apparently a satire, the film follows struggling road construction contractor Sachin Tichkule (Akshay Kumar) - who is big on ambition but short on the funds needed for the all important bribes that grease the wheels of bureaucracy – as he bumbles from one disaster to the next. Unfortunately for Sachin, the new municipal commissioner is his ex-girlfriend (played by Trisha) and she hates him ever since a kind of unfortunate incident in the past (I’ll come back to this). Plus there are like A MILLION OTHER MINOR CHARACTERS. Like, all of Sachin’s family, and his workers, and every random person who ever set foot in the stupid municipal building, and everyone gets about five seconds of screentime and A LINE until two hours later it turns out they were actually important and there’s a whole subplot devoted to them, so I HOPE YOU REMEMBERED THEIR NAMES AND RELATIONSHIPS SURPRISE I HATE THIS FREAKING FILM.
But actually I just made the whole movie sound about 4 billion times more exciting than it actually is. Because GUESS WHAT?
MYTH A: SHATTERED! Because there is a FEMALE in the film who was the male lead’s ex-girlfriend, combined with song promos that came out like this one:
you could be forgiven for thinking there is a romance thread in the film.
WELL FORGET THAT. Seriously. Forget it.
MYTH B: SHATTERED! All that stuff about Sachin bumbling from one disaster to the next and the ex-girlfriend nemesis and stuff, IT SOUNDS LIKE A FILM WITH A PLOT, so what the eff, Ness? And even if the film sucks, it’s AKKI, right? Akki’s hot! WE LOVE AKKI? Don’t we?
Don't worry Akki. I STILL LOVE YOU. Though I SHOULDN'T, after this travesty.
SEVENTY PERCENT OF THIS FILM CONSISTS OF MEN OTHER THAN AKSHAY KUMAR TALKING ABOUT EXTREMELY DULL, BUREAUCRATIC THINGS THAT NO-ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD BOTHER TO MAKE A MAINSTREAM FILM ABOUT.
This conversation goes on for another three hours. Or maybe it just felt that way.
TEN PERCENT is Akki screaming his dialogue at the top of his lungs regardless of whether the scene demands it or not. (Akki, I swear to god, I love you. I REALLY DO love you. But I am rapidly losing faith).
And (at least) TWENTY percent is incredibly disgusting, appalling, absolutely gratuitous, unjustifiable violence against women. Remember that “unfortunate” incident between Sachin and his ex girlfriend Gehna I mentioned? In their idyllic college days, Sachin was organizing a protest and wanted Gehna to skip an exam, which she refused to do. So he PUNCHES HER IN THE FACE.
Um...ha ha? More like
WHAT THE FUCK?
ARE YOU SERIOUS?
DID THAT ACTUALLY JUST HAPPEN?
And I thought it couldn’t get worse than that, but it does. When Sachin meets Gehna later on in her role as Municipal Commissioner he can't stand that she actually does her job which is to stop him from cheating people/skimping on materials/bribing/etc. So he SETS HER UP and frames her as being corrupt; prompting her to ATTEMPT SUICIDE. Yep. A real laugh riot.
Later in the film, a woman – a minor character who we have barely seen – is shown as being gang-raped;
and then it is suggested that she commits suicide or is murdered when she tries to escape. We find this out pretty much as an afterthought. It’s…appalling, the way it’s handled, and I can think of absolutely NOTHING that justifies this particular scenario being included in this particular film; there are plenty of alternatives that could have driven the plot forward the same way without being so…seemingly exploitative and lurid. In a film billed as a comedy/satire about corruption in the system.
IT’S NOT REMOTELY FUNNY NOR IS IT PARTICULARLY CLEVER, THOUGHT PROVOKING OR INTERESTING
The film is just a mess – not only is it not AT ALL funny – it doesn’t seem to know WHAT it wants to be.
For one thing, the songs appear to have come from A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FILM ALTOGETHER, and have just been slotted in randomly.
I want to see the film these songs BELONG in. Because THAT FILM WOULD BE AWESOME.
The romance track dies before it gets off the ground because if it was ever intended that Trisha and Akki be the next…err…Katrina and Akki (??) then having Akki PUNCH HER IN THE FACE and then provoke her to attempt suicide kind of killed it, as does the fact that Trisha is literally in the film for about five minutes all up. The ‘comedy’ seemed to be limited to Rajpal Yadav being a sleaze and Johny Lever (love him or hate him, I was actually relieved when he turned up because the film got less boring) and really really irritating interludes where everybody was yelling at each other slapsticking and misunderstanding and falling over.
But most of the time Khatta Meetha seemed to want to be some kind of dry lecture on economics and road construction and the bureaucracy involved in bridge or road construction in India, or how local government works; to which I really, seriously issue a big fat I DON’T GIVE A SHIT. A good, well constructed film can MAKE me care about the dullest, most mundane subjects: Khatta Meetha is neither good, nor is it well constructed.
GOVINDA PROJECT! I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN YOU! First on ChiChi’s filmography: Love 86, which I have actually previously covered here. So my rule is: I can skip it, since the whole point of the Govinda Project is I watch the stack of UNWATCHED DVDs that taunt me at night. So next up…sigh, the holy grail, Tan Badan.
OMIGOD OMIGOD HYPERVENTILATING.
Though Love 86 was released first, Tan Badan was actually Govinda’s first film – his first leading role in a motion picture. You may have heard of it, given I have written about it several times. I’ve been kind of obsessed with it. To put it mildly.
AND I JUST WATCHED THE WHOLE MOVIE, thanks to the generosity of a lovely, lovely blog reader, Jennifer, who read about my obsession and sent me a copy of the film.
AN ACTUAL COPY OF THE ACTUAL FILM!
So, before the write up, here come the disclaimers:
1. As far as I know, Tan Badan is still currently unavailable anywhere on DVD or VCD. The copy I have is a transfer from VHS to DVD (complete, AWESOMELY, with advertisements for things like Vicco Vajradanti Ayurvedic tooth powder and paste,
and ZANDU BALM!
dotted at intervals throughout). You can see from the screencaps that the picture quality is pretty iffy.
2. Along with dodgy picture quality, there are no subtitles, and really poor sound. So the major disclaimer is that, given my extremely limited grasp of Hindi, my interpretation of the story as it played out does involve some…wild guessing and extrapolating. Like every time I do a “No Subtitles Sunday”.
3. Let neither of the above points detract from the fact that this film is pretty much the Holy Grail for me, and I am SUPER DUPER GRATEFUL to be lucky enough to have finally seen it, and of course, POWERS THAT BE, if you ever release it on DVD (with English subtitles!), I will be first in line to buy a copy too.
Tan Badan (Anand, 1986)
I am by no means an expert on first films – you’ll have to go and read TotallyFilmi for insight into that – but if this film was ever actually intended to be Govinda’s launch to the public (when in fact Love 86 claims that title, and Ilzaam – his 3rd release – was the hit that really ‘broke’ him as a star) then it’s a very…interesting, unusual choice of film to introduce a new young hero to the masses.
Because at the heart of it, it’s ALL ABOUT SEX. I’m not kidding, either. The way this film deals with the issue of sex is unlike anything I have ever seen in Hindi cinema, and I found it actually really fascinating, and ultimately, a satisfying, sweet way of presenting the done to death “boy and girl at odds who eventually fall in love” storyline. That might not make much sense now, but bear with me, I’ll get there.
The story is centred on Ravi (Govinda), a spoiled, good for nothing rich kid, the son of Deewan-saab (Iftekhar), a successful businessman. Deewan-saab is increasingly disappointed in Ravi’s behaviour, because all Ravi wants to do is hang out with his dodgy girlfriend Kamini, drinking, fighting, and gambling away all his father’s money.
SO CUTE! SO YOUNG!
So – when Ravi shows no signs of growing up, Deewan-saab cuts him off – NO MORE GAMBLING MONEY FOR RAVI! and decides, along with his brother (?? or advisor…or both maybe, it’s hard to tell) Kareem Chacha, that the only way to straighten Ravi out is to get him married. Preferably to someone with simple, honest values. Like an innocent village girl. And it seems that Kareem Chacha has someone in mind. Gauri (Khushboo).
Gauri – the village girl – is seemingly incredibly naïve – she hangs out with a bunch of kids, and when she childishly decides she wants a baby, she asks her grandma how she can get one and her grandma, apparently unwilling to start Gauri's sex education, fobs her off with: “you have to be married”.
So Gauri hilariously tries to marry a little kid – thinking that a husband, any husband is the only requirement.
Gauri's would-be husband.
Gauri, childish as she is, is actually hilariously likeable and spunky and awesome. And, importantly, is NOT childish and naive in the irritating, whiny little-girl way, or the bratty, annoying, spoilt and entitled overgrown child way; she is merely naive in that there are things she doesn't yet understand about the world, things she is yet to learn and be exposed to.
Then her pregnant friend Seema arrives in the village and enlightens her a bit more as to the ways of the world – telling her something about how a baby is made on the wedding night and how it involves the groom entering the bedroom and drinking a glass of milk and then BOOM, BABY. Seriously - I know my grasp of Hindi is limited, but I am PRETTY SURE this is what Seema tells Gauri - and I think she's dumbing it down for her a bit (um, no kidding) so as not to scare the living daylights out of her.
Unfortunately, that happens anyway, quite traumatically, when Gauri witnesses Seema dying violently in childbirth.
Just like that, the innocent dream of someday wanting a baby is gone for Gauri and the equation she remembers is this: SHAADI = WEDDING NIGHT (= SEX) = ULTIMATELY TRAUMATIC DEATH. So, understandably, she’s not especially willing, when the time comes, to marry Ravi.
Nor is Ravi willing to marry Gauri. Ravi is a massive spoiled brat, and is in love with Kamini, and when Deewan-saab issues Ravi with the ultimatum: get married to Gauri or no paisa for you, son, Ravi’s response is an exceedingly mature emo scream: “If I have to marry, it’s Kamini or NO-ONE!”
But UNBEKNOWST TO RAVI, Kamini is cheating on him with a violent goonda named Janga (Sharat Saxena).
It seems that Janga and Kamini are plotting on how they can get Ravi’s wealth: if Ravi marries Kamini, then his wealth will be hers, and thus, her wealth will be Janga’s.
So Janga MURDERS Deewan-saab, making it look like an accident, presumably to prevent him from stopping Ravi and Kamini getting married.
BUT THEN: Deewan-saab’s will decrees that the only way Ravi gets anything is IF HE MARRIES….GAURI. I have to give Kamini credit for her uber evil greedy bitch skills – Ravi is all like “NAHIIIIIIN! My love for you is more important than any amount of money in the world!” and she’s all like “NAHIN RAVI! This is your father’s dying wish, it’s his HONOUR we’re talking here! YOU WILL MARRY GAURI AND YOU WILL LIKE IT! ”
Actually, what I THINK the will must decree, based on the rest of what happens in the film, is that the wealth goes to GAURI’S CHILD. The implication being that Deewan-saab wanted Ravi to marry Gauri and settle down, and the only way for him to ensure that happens is to leave his wealth to their offspring.
Because this is where the emphasis on sex comes in.
Ravi and Gauri get married because neither of them really has a choice, in the end, but on their wedding night, Gauri is terrified as soon as Ravi enters the bedroom with a glass of milk. Remembering what Seema told her, and Seema’s death in childbirth, she stops Ravi from drinking the milk, telling him she will die if he does. Then she feigns sleepiness, forcing him to leave obviously…frustrated.
And as frustrated as the lack of consummation of the marriage makes him, Ravi never takes it out on his wife, which is something I was very glad to see. He never pressures her to even let him touch her – Gauri is 100% in charge. Instead, we see Gauri’s gradual loss of naivete; her husband clearly wants to be with her but will not touch her unbidden, treating her with respect, teaching her about sex when she asks but not pushing further than she is willing to go;
This is the painting at The Honeymoon Hotel where Gauri and Ravi go to stay; Gauri asks Ravi to explain it to her and it leads to them getting a little more...comfortable with each other, momentarily.
...until Gauri realises she's not ready. So Ravi backs off.
housemaid Bijli informs her offhand one day something along the lines that childbirth and death do not go hand in hand, not everyone dies after their wedding night; and then accidentally, Gauri witnesses Bijli in the throes of passion with another servant – sex as recreation, not procreation. And at this point, she clearly has a realization that she WANTS to sleep with Ravi – she goes and looks at him sleeping scantily clad,
This scene is really kind of cool - Khushboo does a great job of conveying Gauri's gradual enlightenment. Also, good job on not just molesting ChiChi in his chuddis.
and imagines the BEST SONG IN THE FILM, Gale Lag Jaa which is totally her sexual awakening.
It (my heir theory) also explains why Janga comes after Gauri in the climax of the film and tries to rape her – if he can impregnate her, the wealth inherited by her child will be partly his. (Like I said at the start though, I am extrapolating a bit and my interpretation could be WAY off). It’s disturbing enough as it is, but knowing that Gauri has up until recently in the film been deathly afraid of sex anyway makes it seem even more traumatic, and makes Ravi’s heroic rescue (he kills Janga) all the more satisfying – Gauri is safe with a man who loves her, who respects her boundaries and will never force her – he never remotely pressured her when he stood to gain the most from it.
It’s…not your average launch film, and actually, it’s not your average HINDI film. I...find it fascinating, and love it with an obsessive's passion, but I think my bias is pretty clear: I don't think, objectively, that this is a fantastic piece of cinema.
Govinda didn't make his mark with this film, and for good reason - though Govinda’s youthful good looks, and his dancing are both amply spotlighted,
Gratuitous youthful mancandy.
it’s not really a “hero” film in which he’s given a lot of range to show off what he can do; thematically, it’s really quite unsettling, the emphasis on actual sex, birth control, and sexuality. I don’t think I’ve come across anything quite like it before, and I really hope one day I can find a copy of this film with subtitles so I can comprehend it all a little better.
I’m not at all familiar with the short story this film is adapted from, and thus I went into viewing 7 Khoon Maaf (7 Sins Forgiven) as the ideal filmgoer – open to what the director was going to show me. I had the idea, based on the promotional blitkrieg surrounding its release, that it was something of a dark, disturbing thriller about a woman who becomes a Black Widow figure when her string of husbands die in mysterious, suspicious circumstances.
And that’s KIND of what 7 Khoon Maaf is. The “Black Widow” figure of the tale is Susanna Anna Marie Johannes (Priyanka Chopra), a woman who, we are told, lost her mother as a young child, and her father when she was a young adult, and who spends the rest of her life trying to marry a man who would measure up to her daddy.
The problem with Susanna is that when her husbands DON’T measure up, because she has an unfortunate knack – like so many of us do, of picking PRECISELY THE WRONG PERSON to give her love to - instead of leaving them (the film isn’t set in a society, as far as I can tell, where divorce isn’t an option) she engineers their deaths, with the help of her loyal, trusted, loving staff. MURDER, but it looks like an accident. And through skillfully using her feminine wiles just enough to get around any pesky suspicious police on the scene (because of course, there are no female police officers) she gets away with it.
We've all been there, Susie. We're not all murderers, though.
That’s pretty much it. And I wanted SO MUCH MORE than I got from this film.
FIVE THINGS ABOUT SAAT KHOON MAAF BECAUSE I COULDN’T THINK OF SEVEN
1. With the film so obviously focused on the central figure of Susanna, I expected to feel something for her – to glimpse some insight into why she was so desirable to these various men; why she kept getting married; some inkling that each failed relationship had some impact on her. Or even that being implicated in multiple murders had some impact on her. Or not.
I FELT NOTHING. Honestly – yeah, there are themes or whatever in the film I could think about but the film itself is so annoying I never want to think about it again.
I don’t know if it’s the awkward episodic structure of the film, breaking thing up into weird chunks WITH NARRATION (and also, in a film you’re not particularly enjoying filmmakers: KISS OF DEATH. I knew how many more husbands there were yet to come, and waiting for each new segment felt like an eternity); or Piggy Chops - I actually do sometimes like PC, BUT NOT IN THIS FILM. There was no…light or shade in her performance, just two notes: crazy-glam and crazy-drab; the public over the top doll-face versus Miss Havisham.
Doll face
Morning after face
I feel like the role was too big for PC to take on, so we get the MEH version, aided distractingly with special effects aging hair and makeup (Priyanka ages from 30 to 65 in the film; I honestly sometimes couldn’t tell the difference). It was a mistake, Vishal Bhardwaj, putting Konkona Sen Sharma in this film for the 3 minutes screentime she had, because she emoted more heartbreakingly, believably and effectively in her pathetic, unjust screentime than Piggy Chops did the entire film.
2. It’s true, there’s an abundance of heavy symbolism – AN ABUNDANCE – and imagery running through the film – by the end, the common thread is abundantly clear, and is a huge, unsubtle let-down, like being hit over the head with a brick repeatedly.
3. The film actually is quite dark and disturbing at points – one of the only moments I actually felt anything for Susanna, prompting me to wonder more about her actual motivations for being with and staying with these men (I guess that’s the point of the film though – and it is answered STUPIDLY by Susanna herself at the end, so don’t hold your breath for an awesome satisfying answer) was during her marriage to a poet who turns out to be a sadomasochist.
Luscious Irrfan has hidden darkness in his soul.
The film gets very graphic for Hindi cinema and it’s immensely troubling to watch what Susanna will subject herself to.
Also: if you have warm squishy feelings for Irrfan you want to eliminate, this scene will probably help. He is...not a very sympathetic character.
But then Susanna gets no further deeper character exploration following this nasty, violent sexual episode, (and nor does Irrfan's character) so it (and another part in the film, Susanna baring her body to the person she regards as a son) comes off as being there for the shock value. Which is kind of horrible, because both episodes raise a lot of questions in terms of the narrative, and are interesting in terms of being unusual for recent mainstream Hindi fare, and have larger repercussions in terms of representation of women and sexuality on film.
4. When John Abraham looks like this:
why would you turn him into this?
Definition of WTF?
Sadly, poor Johnny, who I have praised elsewhere on this blog – I AM a fan – is saddled with the WORST role in this film. I think he was BADLY miscast. And that his whole segment is pretty much London Dreams: Redux. Look at his freaking arms too?
Like, seriously? Someone's been spending WAY too much time at the gym.
Johhny, lay off the weights a bit. I don’t like men with TOO many muscles.
5. You know who actually stood out in this film, giving a really surprising, impressive performance? NEIL NITIN MUKESH. He plays Susanna’s insecure, domineering first husband, an Army guy whose leg gets blown off in battle (or something, I don’t know).
Whatever, it's gross.
I always think of Neil as slightly…effeminate – he’s so pale, and kind of slight, and would be the last person I would think to cast as a domineering, controlling husband. If anything about this film made a lasting impression, it was Neil’s intimidating performance – bulked up and snarling, he’s nearly unrecognizable as that sweet kid from New York or the goonda with the heart of gold from Lafangey Parindey.
SHUT UP PEOPLE WHO SAY THAT NEIL CAN’T ACT BECAUSE NEIL CAN ACT.
