Kaminey – one of the 100 films to watch before you Die!
“Ikeesvi sadi hogi
Dariya se nikalenge neki
Aur saar pe baji hogi….hogi…hogi…
Dhan Ta Dhan…tana tana….tana tana…..”
This was a song Vishal Bharadwaj had composed for his debut tele-serial “Dhan Ta Dhan”. Folklore now and hearsay then had it that it was a terrible film and apparently many advised him to stick to music and not make films.
One decade into the 21st century and Dhan Ta Dhan……Kaminey might well be the film to rewrite the way films are written and executed.
The painful countdown to watching this began as soon as we came to know VB is back after 3 years. The title itself had generated such a buzz, the music a rage and the trailer a mouth watering appetizer.
People usually sniff good films. Had almost thought that was a thing of the past. For this you don’t even have to make an attempt to like. It has CULT written all over it.
Charlie walks with dreams in his eyes. He believes in taking shortcuts or shorter shortcuts.
“Who chalta hai, main bhagta hun”
This is in reference to his brother Guddu who works at an NGO. Good boy written all over him.
Bad boy messes up at the race course and is in deep shit, Good boy knocks up the girl of the Bad Man (Bhau Bhope) and is in deeper Slumdog Millionaire shit.
One sees his dreams shattered, the other has to get married and maybe die on the first night a la Parinda at the hands of the angry Bhope.
Guddu and Charlie have not spoken in years. A certain incident that happened 10-12 years ago.
Enter Tashi, Lele and Lobo and the guitar which holds ‘white’ worth 10 crores.
One race horse mishap, one condom misplaced and one drug deal gone wrong. All wrapped in a breathtaking 2 plus hours.
I love my mother’s cooking and used to love it even more when she fed me with her hands. Have grown up and have to eat my own food now. Cinema changed too as I grew. With Kaminey, cinema too has become self-help. No pampering, no spoon feeding but as delicious and sumptuous and mouth watering made with a lot of care and heart.
VB shows the way. No one scene a precursor to the next. Finally a film which follows the dictate get in as late and get out as early and in doing so breaking all the other rubbish presets we were used to.
I am not listing my favorite scenes and spoil your experience. Watch it and maybe post Monday or Tuesday have a deluge of thoughts flowing on this monster.
So even my thoughts on the film will not end with the mandatory he was so good, she was superb, music was tan tan, cinematography was dhan dhan…..editing was …..I don’t know what that means but ‘crisp’ seems to be the new buzz word for editing.
Fuck all that. Go watch this and get drunk on this Acid Rock Ballet.
Tags: Kaminay, Priyanka Chopra, Shahid Kapoor, UTV, Vishal Bhardwaj
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
OMG cant wait..cant wait!
….when was the last time i felt THIS excited before a film…not in a LONG LONG time
VB – thanks for that!
“I love my mother’s cooking and used to love it even more when she fed me with her hands. Have grown up and have to eat my own food now. Cinema changed too as I grew. With Kaminey, cinema too has become self-help. No pampering, no spoon feeding but as delicious and sumptuous and mouth watering made with a lot of care and heart.”
that line though is a killing tease… you *beep*!!
8 more hours to nirvana. f_k!!
i just watched the movie and loved it. Everyone must watch this movie. Great performances and Great movie(USP of this movie) Story was ok but climax was a bit weak and the movie lacked humour in the middle
aaah, machcha can’t wait to watch it re machcha… anyways its been long haven’t had good film releasing.
A review as tantalizing as the trailer , not that one needed any more enticement to go watch the movie! My roommates and I are treating this as the movie event of the year here in Los Angeles and our non-filmi friends have been wondering what we have been talking about for the last 10 days or so and unable to understand the excitement over a movie they’ve probably only heard of in the passing.
I think I personally advertised this movie to about 15 people just based on the trailer and the music.
Deliciously bloody awesome! Loved the teaser-review…Is a new genre in review-writing seeping in? May be it aint a bad idea to not write detailed reviews till the first weekend and let people watch the movie and form their own ‘deluge of thoughts’ in their heads. Any thoughts, anyone?
And swine-flu couldn’t have struck at a worse time…Has completely fcked my plans to watch the movie back2back on Friday and Saturday! 
Kaminey was always gonna be a sure shot killer all the way!!! More power to VB!
waiting for the release in Mumbai…the unfortunate shut down of multiplexes in Mumbai stopped the release in the B Town.
Hope its gonna release in Mumbai by sunday.
@VB – thanks for sharing this.
~Cheers
Ashu Bhai MAPRM Wale.
for once i dont hate being in bangalore aka idli-dosa pradesh. am watching the evening show today! yay! review coming foon after that!
Even I said that to myself. I never felt good about being in Delhi apart from Nizam’s kathi kebab.Well, it happens to me tonight!! Excited like a kid going to school after summer holidays
faala, freading falt over the wound ?
Fometime Mumbai fucks,i mean like fucks as vaccuum cleaners do ;-)
True…I was hating bangalore after the sankat city fiasco…but I’m loving it again…going for the 3pm show today
Same here. What a KLPD :(
Have to wait some time for this Acid rock ballet.
cheers!
Finally kaminey is releasing…i can’t wait to see…kudos!!..to vishal!!
Oh what a movie. I am so awestruck, dumbstruck and mesmerized after that 2.5 hour deluge that happened yesterday night. Never thought Shahid could be so enticing – his Charlie is so wonderful and I love the song that Guddu recites during the police interrogation (sans the stammer that is). Maqbool was quite, understated and powerful. Omkara was loud, and more powerful. Kaminey is all that and “I don’t give a damn to popcorn crunching movie watchers”, “go figure it out yourselves” written all over it. Go watch it and get focked
“I don’t give a damn to popcorn crunching movie watchers”,and i dont give a damn about what you say
Have booked for Sunday show…nice article VB for a gr8 movie from VB
again
Jale par namak chidak diya tumne toh. Swine flu ne plan ko chaupat kar diya hai. Im not sure whether they’ll allow the screenings from Sunday too.
Once in a while comes a movie that gets you so excited….its a pity that people like me in mumbai wont be able to watch it on Friday or Saturday.
Its a excellent movie. I have seen it. Mumbaikar stop Piracy . Its worth going in theatres and watch the movie.
it is awesome a pure delite .
I am boooked to watch Kaminey at saturday night…
there is new cinema in C.P opened today…Odean(big cinema)and eagerly waiting for 8:15 pm..Tab tuk meri aarzoo kamini…
This beats everything that has been made by vifal before…
Indias entry to oscars !! may be :P
facfy hai…har angle fe….
fiderman fider man …
aa aa aa aa faying alive faying alive
what a superb writeup Vasan ! as tantallising as the trailer itself!
but but…Swine Flu proved to be the biggest Kamina :( Waiting for next week to see.
Hey Vasan,
What are those 99 movies before i take ma last breath!
btw really like the way u wrote the moms cooking bit.. n btw where dd u watch this movie.. wid all the cinema halls closed down in mumbai…
ya definitely dont wanna miss this answers Indian way to sir tarantino..
Awesome movie!!…Period. The only thing lacking was a kick ass action sequence…a la Tarantino style…having said that I think this movie will be too hard to digest for the “Sing is king” lovers, but anyways who cares about them.
VB,
Thanks for the first rate account of the most anticipating film of the year.. Will be watching it shortly..
btw its “Sar pe badi hogi” not “baji hogi”
means 21vi sadi me sabhi kaminey honge..
Neki kar dariya me daalne ki bajaay dariya se nikaalenge neki..
aur badi (neki-badi) would be the call of the day..
21vi Sadi Kamino.n ki sadi hogi! Jai Ho Kaminey Ki!
Finally a Hindi movie I want to see is releasing in theaters close to me (Connecticut, USA). 9 more hours to go…
Fuck swine flu!!
Excerpt: Vishal Bharadwaj’s attitude-laden KAMINEY lets the world know one more time that the real thing about a cinematic story is not the story itself; but the whole art of actually telling it. Strongly recommended.
Review: It’s sequences like the pre-climax of KAMINEY that real admirers of the emotion called cinema wait for, every single friday of their lives. It has got adrenaline-pumping background score; it has got hopelessly aimless mayhem of guns, gore and violence; and then it has got that deafening silence of the moment, which makes us think about the futility of it all. Futility of living and killing for money, identity and power. Yes, it’s largely cinematic violence. Yes, it’s largely larger than life. But it’s the life of the film. Life, which is replete with Kaminey of all hue. So unreal. Yet so much like life. KAMINEY.
KAMINEY is a story of twins Charlie & Guddu who are separated by the death of their father and the deeds of their lives. Charlie lisps (speaks ‘f’ for every ’s’) while Guddu has a stutter problem. Neither of the two can stand each other; and lead their lives away from each other, till a fast-moving sequence of events one night bring them face-to-face with each other and gangsters, rebel soldiers, regional, divisive thugs-turned-politicians and corrupt cops. While Charlie’s sole aim is to come out of it alive, possibly with Rs. 10 lakhs, for Guddu, the primary cause of getting sucked into it is Sweety (Priyanka Chopra), his wife of a few hours.
It is a mad-cap, dark humour laced, stylish noir piece of cinema.
Shahid Kapoor is first-rate as both Guddu and Charlie. Hindi cinema has now well and truly discovered one more actor-star. It is difficult to make out which is more overpowering, his double act or the sheer screen-blazing star charisma. He put is an awefome performance; a performance that would now pitchfork him fraight to the big league.
Ditto for Priyanka Chopra. She looks, acts and comes across as so much of a girl next door that it would be difficult to make an uninformed believe that she is a former Miss World and the bikini-strutting gal of Dostana. Very inspiring performance.
And yet, what steals the thunder from right under the lead actors are the performances of the rest of the ensemble cast. Amol Gupte as Bhope (a slimy, thug-turned regionalistic political leader) comes up with a truly rivetting performance. He looks so convincing as a cheap politician and goon that it almost makes us wonder if he really wrote the script and screenplay of Taare Zameen Par.
Deb Mukherjee as Mujeeb, Rajatva Dutta as Shumon and Chandan Roy Sanyal (exceptional) as Mikhail, the three Bengali brothers of the underworld; Tenzing Nima as Tashi (the drug lord) and Shiv Subrahmanyam as Lobo & Hrishikesh Joshi as Lele, the two corrupt policemen, play their part with immaculate precision. But for the performances of these people, KAMINEY would not have become the film that it has. Credit should be given to Honey Trehan for casting such eclectic group of actors.
Tassaduq Hussain’s cinematography and Vishal Bharadwaj’s background score play as intrinsic role in the film as all the actors. A largely dark film, Tassaduq lights up the screen with his grasp over the subject matter and its characters.
But it is Vishal Bharadwaj who deserves the biggest pat on the back. Slowly evolving as one of India’s finest directors of all times, KAMINEY is an all-out Vishal Bharadwaj film. From screeplay to music, and from characterisation to direction, the film has his stamp on every frame. It is high-time that mainstream media sobers down its unceasing obsession with the candy-floss filmmakers and give homage to dirctor’s of Vishal’s ilk too.
THE INDIC POST says, KAMINEY lives up to its hype. Go watch it!
must watch!! but how i wished for a KO vaasan bhaai
VB
Great piece of passion for cinema indeed… loved it frame by frame… since the film did not release in Mumbai…went all the way driving to Vapi and Watched it yesterday, couldn’t wait till monday. No matter if people love it or not, its the best film for the year 2009. for sure people who dont like they surely dont understand hat goes into it.
I shouldn’t have watched Pulp Fiction or Snatch or Reservoir Dogs or LSTSB. ‘Kaminey’ would have been too damn awesome. Anyways, loved the movie to the core…
ITS NOT VASAN BALA,ITS ‘BLOG DEAD BALA’.