Vikram Bhatt's Speed gets it all wrong

By indiabroadcast
Friday Oct 19 10:55 PM

Direction: Vikram Bhatt

It's not money, it's not recognition, it's not even the power to influence people's choices that is compensation enough for the kind of movies one has to watch as a critic sometimes.

It's only that unconditional love for the medium of film, and that inherent sense of responsibility to one's readers or viewers that is the reason why many like me spend precious time every week sitting through the kind of films one wouldn't even subject one's enemies to.

Which brings me to this week's cinematic milestone, director Vikram Bhatt's Speed, a film that earns the unique distinction of having not one single thing right about it. Based on a plot whacked from the American film Cellular, and a screenplay constructed while the writer was emptying his bowels probably, Speed features an all-star cast of the hammiest actors in the country, trying to bring alive a premise that's as unbelievable as a flying panda.

Let me take you through it - Aftab Shivdasani, looking like he hasn't shaved or bathed for a week, plays some kind of an international Mafioso having a bad hair day.

Along with his dominatrix-like partner Sophie Choudhary who's dressed in super-tight hot-pants and a top that reveals more than it covers, Aftab hatches a plot to bump off the Indian Prime Minister when she arrives in London .

But because he doesn't want to get his hands any dirtier than they already are, Aftab involves helpless MI5 agent Sanjay Suri who's blackmailed into committing the assassination. You see Aftab's kidnapped Sanjay's hyperventilating wife Urmila and their smart-alec son, thus leaving Sanjay with no option but to carry out his orders.

Into this mix throw in roadside romeo Zayed Khan, who's too busy trying to woo his sweetheart Tanushree Dutta, till he inadvertently gets embroiled in this tamasha.

Also there's the good-as-gold police officer Ashish Choudhary who's assigned the job of protecting the PM, but who's clearly not what he seems. And his girlfriend Amrita Arora, straight out of a B-grade slasher flick -- she shows up in the film, has sex, and gets killed immediately after. It's an ensemble of actors who seem handpicked for their roles because nobody else in the world would be dumb enough to do this film.

Speed has nothing going for it, because quite frankly, nobody associated with the film even bothered to try. The script -- if you can call it that -- is an unruly mess of ridiculous scenes and banal situations.

For a film that's titled Speed, it's got to be the slowest moving screenplay you've ever come across. If you've seen the Kim Bassinger-Chris Evans starrer Cellular from which this film takes its idea, you'll know that despite the exaggerated premise, that film was engaging after all because it had a narrative that moved so fast, it left you with very little time to sit back and question the logic.

Speed, on the other hand, takes forever to set up its plot and wastes too much time establishing its characters, thereby never quite letting you plunge into the action.

You're distracted in fact by all the inconsistencies in the production. Like why you're expected to believe that a ramshackle Film City set is meant to stand in for a stable in the London countryside. Or that the Prime Minister of India would eavesdrop on a young man's telephone conversation, and play cupid between two stupids.

Now I'm not one to encourage plagiarism, but just this one time, how I wish Vikram Bhatt had stayed entirely faithful to the original film instead of adding his own two-bit nonsense to the plot and ruining it completely.

At its core, the tension in Cellular comes from the fact that a random guy happens to get a call on his cell-phone from a lady who's been kidnapped, and he's got to help her without ever disconnecting the line. It's about all the obstacles he must face in order to help her.

In Speed, that track becomes almost like a subplot in the film because there are so many other insane things going on that the director chooses to focus on, the most ridiculous being the Prime Minister's assassination drama and the whole conspiracy behind it.

Also, what's very important in a film like this, is the courage of an actor's convictions. It is an implausible premise -- that we know right at the start. Now the only way you might suspend your disbelief and go along for the ride is if the actors perform like they believe in the story themselves.

But just look at this bunch of losers -- starting with Aftab Shivdasani who wears one blank expression throughout the film, and Urmila Matondkar who quivers and shivers and simpers and whimpers and goes into such convulsions, you suspect someone's put itching powder in her clothes.

Also Zayed Khan who gives the word over-acting a whole new meaning with his hyperactive delivery. The best moments in Speed are the ones that turn out to be unintentionally hilarious -- like the ones in which Sophie Choudhary lives out your dream by thrashing the daylights out of Urmila Matondkar, or those scenes in which a sobbing Urmila in her Lalbaug-meets-Leicester Square accent urges Zayed to rescue her son. Honestly, whatever pleasure you take from this film is entirely unintended.

No review of Speed is complete without some discussion on its director Vikram Bhatt, once a dependable chap when it came to ripping off Hollywood films -- Ghulam, Kasoor and Raaz being case in point.

With Speed, however, Bhatt seems to have made it abundantly clear he's lost the plot. It is after all his tenth consecutive turkey. You do the math -- Footpath, Inteha, Aetbaar, Elaan, Jurm, Deewane Hue Pagal, Ankahee, Red, Life Mein Kabhie Kabhie, and now coming in at number ten, Speed.

So if you haven't guessed it already, it's one big zero for Vikram Bhatt's Speed, it's one those films that make you wish you hadn't stepped into the cinema at all.