Exclusive Review: Sudhir Mishra’s Tera Kya Hoga Johnny
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Quick! What’s common in Johnny Gaddar, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, 99, Sankat City? Besides the fact that they all represent the fast growing Indo-Indie genre, they were all heist movies. Each of these movies made good box office gains together with appealing to the mojo of urban film goers. So, the obvious question is, is heist drama the easy bait and the formula for commercial success? If it is, I definitely fell for that bait (again!) with Sudhir Mishra’s Tera Kya Hoga Johnny.
Johnny (played by Sikandar Agarwal), the title character is a migrant kid who makes his living in Mumbai serving chai. His daily routine brings him closer to a few of his customers – a drug addict, Vishal (Karan Nath), a model/ actor, Preeti (Soha Ali Khan) and Parvez (Neil Nitin Mukesh). Johnny hopes that someday one of his customers would help him find a better life and facilitate his goal to work in Dubai. Sudhir wastes no time in providing rich topographical details of Mumbai, exposing the vagaries of a city fractured by the socio-economic class system. The characters of Vishal, Preeti and Parvez are introduced with an elaborate voice over from Johnny’s perspective. This is probably the only part that made the writing look a tad sloppy. Yes! I am indeed referring to the classic, cardinal rule – “Don’t Tell, Show! ”
Johnny’s customers include Begum, the trans-gender ‘madam’ operating a brothel (played by a ridiculously convincing Saurabh Shukla) and Chiple (Kay Kay Menon), a corrupt police officer. Parvez carries on an extramarital relationship with Chiple’s wife Divya (Shahana Goswami). With these characters as a backdrop, Parvez, with Johnny’s help carries out a heist from an apartment where Chiple stores his corrupt earnings from bribes.
Preeti and Vishal on the other hand share a dysfunctional live-in relationship. A TV Network owner exploits Preeti’s vulnerability (played by an extended Hitchcock-ian cameo by Sudhir himself). He obsessively stares at TV monitors only to pick out Preeti as his object of desire. I felt it was not rationale enough for me to question that – Why her? If you are still keeping up with me, here are a few more characters; Vishal’s client played by Aditya Bhattacharya whose business dealings are dubious and has for some reason employed henchmen whose only job is to collect money that he lends to others. Don’t ask me why he lends?
Begum has a love interest, a drug dealer. The drug dealer, besides giving blowjobs to Begum and using Johnny to push drugs plays a trivial role in the plot. Then there is Johnny’s friend, another struggling kid, whose only characterization in the movie is that a middle-aged man sexually abuses him. While we are with the subject of sexual abuse, Johnny himself comes close to getting raped by a police officer. I am not sure if Sudhir’s recurring references to the act of sodomy had anything to do with newly passed section 377 that has now decriminalized same sex intercourse.
So with this many characters in a movie, one might question if Johnny is indeed the protagonist? But, that’s where I was clearly mesmerized walking out of the theater – Johnny was able to sustain my interest, helping me sympathize with these characters, rooting for Johnny mostly and then be agitated about some of the other characters wanting them to fail in their motivations. And oh! did I forget to mention about Anurag Kashyap – he makes a cool cameo as well as Sudhir’s henchman.
I have to confess, the style of narration and Johnny’s character reminded me of Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop, a story about a tough Dominican kid in Queens who tries to provide a better life for himself and his 16 year old sister by stealing auto parts from cars parked near Shea Stadium. Of course, Ramin presented his unique sensibilities and grip of the subject in Chop Shop by keeping the camera very unobtrusive and almost giving it a neo-realistic texture.
All said and done, Sudhir’s Is Raat Ki Subah Nahi and Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi will still remain my top picks followed by Koya Koya Chaand. Johnny is slated to release in India in January and if you are a Sudhir Mishra fan, you will walk away very pleased.
Tags: Anurag Kashyap, chopshop, giri coneti, girimohan coneti, johnny tere kya hoga, Movie Review, neil nitin mukesh, ramin bahrani, Soha Ali Khan, sudhir mishra, Tera Kya Hoga Johnny, Tera Kya Hoga Johnny movie Review
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Rahul Dholakia
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Varma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Sachin Kundalkar
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Eagerly waiting for it.
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your writing “Sudhir Mishra’s Johnny Tere Kya Hoga” may start a whole series of jokes if emphasis is given on “Tere” instead of “Tera“.
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Thanks for letting us know…when is it releasing?…BTW I just can’t resist pointing out the irony of such an early review when a huge debate is going on in PFC about whether reviews should come out on thursdays or fridays or even later…
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link seems to be broken…update with new link..i read the article on PFC anyway
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@jit: I specifically focus on characters and first act without giving away the middle and third. So, I guess there is a lot more in store for you watching the movie:)
@cherish: what link are you referring to? Thats just a bold tag in teh first para, if thats what you meant
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yes I perfectly understand your intentions…I am also awaiting for this one eagerly …just couldn’t resist the temptation of a PJ…
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Hmmm. This is not a *negative remark*; I am not here to discourage you. But, I have to point this out, In my opinion: Neither Oye Lucky Lucky Oye nor Sankat City are heist movie. Sankat City is sorta a caper film (perhaps sub-genre of Heist?). And Oye Lucky Lucky Oye is more of a Crime Drama. Classifying a film under a particular genre can be very debatable – would be your response – but then all Hindi Films can be classified in all genres. All those three films had (lyrical) music, so musical films?
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Point taken Honhaar! Lets take a even more platonic and broad viewpoint and call it “genre= drama”.
The common thread is **money as a motivation** for characters, caper or crime drama or some other vehicle for that motivation.
That singularly creates enough drama it seams – that was my point
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How was the music? I was really impressed with the song that I heard in the promos – especially with the poetry (Shab ko roz jagaa deta hai, kaisi khwab sazaa deta hai; Mujhe bandh kamre me rakh, kyon tu pankh lagaa deta hai.)
Thanks for posting the review. A favorable one, at that!
Eagerly awaiting to watch this one.
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Now that you tell me , I dont think the music stood out, which is not a bad thing for a movie with no dedicated song sequences
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Sudhir Mishra.. any day..
Girimohan.. I am not in favour of VO narrations.. but some directors do embrace it assuming that it is a cool thing to do for gangster/organized crime genres.. Maybe a method of setting the backdrop when you have little scope for moving out of the genre.. I hate it nevertheless.. the thing which should have ended with the times of ‘CKane’ , ‘SBoulevard’ and the 40, 50′s hollywood dramas has somehow prevailed …
Thanks for the detailed review.. and the whole world is interested in article 377.. as if there were a dearth of more important things to address in a country like India.. nothing wrong if SMishra took a dig on it..
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One recent film that did some clever VOs was Soderbergh’s “The Informant”.
He uses them through out the movie, but the VOs are random things that have no cause and effect for the plot line – you will know what I mean if you have checked out the film.
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Khoya-khoya Chand is sudhir mishra’s third best work? Did you know he was the script writer for the epic ‘Jaane Bhi Do yaaron’ was back in 1983?
‘Chir-haran ka plan Cancel!’
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One of my friends suggested that I see his yeh woh manzil toh nahin
I like khoya khoya.. simply because of how effortlessly he transported me to that period, special props to the costume designer as well
yes!! who can forget that unparalleled comedy in Indian cinema – “thoda kaon, thoda fekon”
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In second paragraph you advised “Don’t Tell, Show! ” and in fourth paragraph you asked Why her ? and Don’t ask me why?
Generally I don’t react on oversights but these comments prejudices viewers to particular scenes/characters in negative manner.
No hard feelings though. Cheers!
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My “dont tell, show” comment was with reference to the voice over and my “why her?” comment was because it was never shown:) which lends itself to the my previous comment “show”:)
Did I confuse you even further?
I kind of know why after the fact because the film was riding on atleast 5 subplots! answering why her for sudhir would have become a nightmare for the length of the film
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I don’t know about the movie but I am a Neil Nitin Mukesh fan so I will watch it
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Sorry, but it was not a heist movie because there is a difference between a theft and a heist.
“I felt it was not rationale enough for me to question that – Why her?”
I think they came in contact online (those are mainly computer screens that he is watching and not TV screens) way before the movie and Preeti had become an object of obsession for him. All she had to do was to put up a web-cam show for him, in return of small favours, which grew as the movie or her life progressed. She saw him as an admirer.
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