QGM : Bulletspoof Machismo !
Mind it
I saw the Tamil English version of QGM, though intention was to see the Hindi-English version. I was hooked to QGM music for last few weeks and was really keen to identify the hilariously innovative Hindi dialogues in the movie, which were highly enjoyable, interspaced within the songs. For the record, I don’t understand Tamil, not even little little, so to speak (or understand). However, language had never been an impediment for me to watch and write about movies. I did that with my Sivaji review. (Read it, I say)
Sambhar Westerns
Being born on early seventies and have been fed with 60’s and 70’s cinema aired on Doordarshan afternoon slots and have seen few of the Tamil ones featuring Jayashankar, NTR, MGR, Sivaji Ganesan and other legends of the time, I understood the importance of powder, lipstick and curly hairs for men on screen. In due course of time I became the fan of Kamal Hassan and the spooferhero of all screen gods, Rajinikant. On the other hand, like any Bengali teenager in Kolkata I too grew up with Franco Nero, Clint Eastwood and the awe inspiring visual Eastman-colour bravura. We revered Django’s courage. We practiced trotting and spinning guns on our hands. We bought posters of Clint Eastwood, flashing guns in both hands, holding the cigar at one end of his lips in his unique style and that furrowed expression around his half closed eyes. We all wanted to become ‘the man with no name’. I even made a cowboy hat out of cardboard but could not complete my attire for the want of a holster and belt !
Sambhar Western- Eastwood and Murugan
So, in 1990s when the Tamil Cowboy appeared with Channel [v], we first had the taste of the bizarre blend – a spoof on spaghetti westerns and tribute to Tamil masculinity. ‘Mind it !’ became a cult phrase. Shiva, the original Murugan appeared just for two minutes but gave us the awesome Murugan experience to remember for a life. Action, drama, dialogues, romance and lost love- all packed in 60 seconds. We loved his attire, attitude, his locket and most importantly a ‘houseful heart’ behind his vicious valor against the villains. ‘ You blink before I shoot, I say’- grammar didn’t matter, attitude and delivery did.
That being the back ground, with QGM expectation was high. It was like a revisit to me teenage days, knowing the creative duo Director Shashank Ghosh and writer Rajesh Devraj, the mastermind behind original Murugan.
Plot (Spoilers protected)
Murugan, our multicolored Tamil cowboy is a stern veggie (so stern, doesn’t even like non veg jokes), hangs his lost love in a locket around his neck with an ambition to protect cows from becoming beef. He encounters the evil gang lord Rice Plate Reddy( Nassaer) and his heavy hand Gun Powder (Shanmugha Rajan) who want to take over and convert all Udipi restaurants to McDosa joints, strictly non-vegetarian, as a part of his business plan. Like a typical western, Murugan’s chronicle is a 2 hour revenge trip, to be concluded in Mumbai, which started 15 years ago somewhere in South India.
Foolspoof filmmaking
QGM is primarily a burlesque entertainment. It’s a movie lover’s movie. It’s a take off on certain genres of Indian and western cinema to provide an element of entertainment. For the audience, the degree of enjoyment of a spoof is directly proportional to his/her degree of exposure to the originals, which it’s based on. Also, any spoof would definitely qualify one of the greatest criteria of mock humour. It runs the risk of offending some while amusing others. That’s what happened when SRK did the spoof on Manoj Kumar and later Rajinikant. I won’t even try to fathom how QGM would appeal to those, who are not exposed the Tamil westerns, make-ups, acting style and not seen the Dollar series, Good Bad Ugly, Crocodile Dundee or Django. Because, I simply can’t. For the same reason the music, created by Sagar Desai and raghu Dixit which is a lovely tribute to 60’s and 70’s Tamil songs as well as western blues, would contain it’s own charm to those who would identify with it. Ofcourse there are the remix versions – Dialouge Mix, Aunties on the dance floor, Space Goddess to be in sync with the music of today. However I didn’t find my favourite number ‘Ek tha Murugan’ in the movie, may I need to see the Hindi version to see where did I miss it.
“Main terepe google kiya hai Rice Plate”
QGM is epic legendary at places, outrightly riotous at other, while being deliberately slapstick, quirkily intelligent and entertaining on most part. Bur mostimportantly it’s completely Desi with Jugaad, Well Known Lodge and Masala Dosa. I am actually suppressing my bursting desire to describe the numerous scenes, details, dialouges and how I found a childish to joy to relate to the originals or unfold the wit, layered in almost every sequence of the movie. For example, the walk on the crowded Mumbai street in his attire was a sweet simple spoof of Crocodile Dundee. The characters are very desi and ubiquitous, dialogues are notoriously funny [it deserves to develop a wikiquote page soon], the costumes, and settings are loud, authentic and flawless. The sarcasm towards Govt bureaucracy is Douglas Adams Indianized. The movie is expectedly high in humour quotient which traverses from being slapstick actions, intelligent verbal and visual innuendos, sarcastic signboards, witty body language, dark and shady death scenes and sometimes plain silly.
The unassuming superhero in his red leather tights, fluorescent green shirt, leopard skin waist coat, pink scarf portrayed by Dr. Rajendra Prasad is outstanding. The ‘Terminator’ disemberkment in front of Gateway of India is one of the treats to spoof lovers. The locket lover Anu (Lola Kutty) is the subconscious guide to Murugan, his pathfinder towards a secured and safe life. Thus, when confronted with lusty seductress Mango Dolly (Rambha) with her buxom assembly and Helen-ish oozing oomph, Murugan’s dilemma to taste the forbidden payasam is understandable.
What is not understandable is why there was the need to show graphic violence and blood, which could have easily be avoided making it a more universally acceptable creation, to the censor board and to the children may be? The now clichéd Matrix slo-mo has become an obvious and only way to dodge bullets in films these days. Here’s no exception, infact there’s an overdose of it. I wish we could get some more innovative ideas there, alongwith biting bullets (literally) and flying sideways. The shooting scenes for me was kind of letdown, except for the final duel with Rowdy MBA on the traffic jam. The last scene was somehow disconnected and can probably only be related by them who has seen Django.
Exclamation Marksheet !
Overall, I had a great time revisiting the hero, the fascinating catch phrases and relating to the original cults. The movie does have its momentary lapse of reasons, but why seek reason in everything and always? QGM was like an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence. The sentence to laugh ! Mind it !
Bring ‘em on and hang ‘em high. I am eager for the sequel ‘The Good The Bad and The Idli’.
Tags: cowboy, Desi, movie, Quick Gun Murugan, Review, spaghetti, Spoof., Tamil, Western
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
great one bro uh! but where the hell fawk is the bloody fotu wid da quirky caption? i bloody well MIND IT!!! YENNA RASCALLA!!!!!!!!! and the rebel without a cow will trot on, in the collective imagination of our generation of cinephiles!
Dude, he is more a Rebel with the cows
Did you watch the Hindi version or the Tamil ?
Now try writing it without the words ’spoof’, ‘western’ and ‘cowboy’.
Why try to make cxhcocolate without cocoa ?
(snarls) barkley baad mein aao
well, the bloodshed was as cartoony as Zaitoitchi and posed absolutely no issues and i was surprised, but the bullet-time thing was absolutely zero-interferance in the whole fun scheme of things.. and the last scene was the fuckin bee knees man.
and i don’t think, ’sambhar western’ is appropriate vocabulary. I mean there’s spagetti, there’s noodle and i think, ‘idiappam’ fits better.
I found few of the scenes little graphic, for kids.
I have used the terms and vocabulary as disclosed by Shahsnak Ghosh in an interview published on HT cafe on 29 Aug Saturday.
Total time waste…….paisa waste……..too much of voilence
Regards
movies in Mumbai
movies in Pune
Good review and thanks for not giving away the awesome dialogues that people have been raving about. Waise, wasnt the gal’s picture in the locket kind of like “For a few dollars more”? Anyway, will catch this film and revisit your review. BTW, Interesting sequel title. Do they hint at it in the film or is it your wishful thinking
ya, that is a total rip-off, like all the other things in the film. cheap remake I say.
Tushar, I’ve been meaning to say it since long. Your sense of humour is terrific!!! And it borders of sarcasm sometimes, just the way I enjoy it. It’s such a rare gift….
lol….btw, I loved the jugaad on the horizon scene.
Yeah, I was concsious about not revealing anything which the viewers could enjoy without reading. That also helped me to keep the review short
Once you see the movie you will find a many spoof of our favourite westerns including the Dollar series.
The sequel title was given away on the interview published on HT cafe on 29 Aug Saturday.
Though, I would love to see the sequels- A Fisful of Chillar or They call me Murugan.
A ‘fish’ful of chillar is not vegetarian.
Or is it?
Yours Truly,
-tejas
@Tejas:lol…good observation, I agree. Let’s change it to A FEAST FULL OF GAJAR. Hows that?
Neeraj- the title of the sequel has been mentioned by the QGM team itself.Uh- glad you were able to relate to the movie so well.It was non stop entertainment for me.Will watch it again for sure.I want to go back, I want to go back, I want to go back……mind it!!!
Sethu – which is the version playing in Chennai? The Tamil-English version or the Hindi dub?
Vijay- Sathyam,Inox,Mayajaal and Sangam are playing the English-Tamil version and all the other theatres are playing the full Tamil dubbed version.The Hindi dub version isnt playing in Chennai to the best of my knowledge.
Awesome! I wanted to go see it again but was turned off by the Hindi dubbing I saw in the trailers.
Have you seen it yet? How was the reaction in the theater? Because when the trailer was screened at Satyam during Love Aaj Kal, I was the only one who laughed.
Oh! yes I did watch it @ Satyam cinemas.To be honest I would say that if Shashanka and his team were present during the screening they would have been mighty pleased.The entire audience had a blast- extremely positive reaction both during the show and after the movie.Best comment – two guys telling each other after the movie- “why would someone spend 40 crores and make a Kanthaswamy?why cant they make movies like QGM”?
Hahahah! Yet to see Kandaswamy too. Most probably will never get to it. But if QGM topples Kandaswamy…man! That will be historic.
Very sad state of affairs with some theatres:
http://moifightclub.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/fame-big-cinemas-big-lie-for-40-rupees/
@Oz, while we are celebrating Quickgun Murugan, I think PFC should have allowed the “Guerilla reviews” for the other movies that released over last friday (I believe in total 7 hindi movies released including QGM + a list of ther movies)… anyways, I ended up watching Yeh Mera India… my word for it, the movie definately does not have any technical finesse, or the subteleties that we are seeing in movies these days, however would definately recommend this movie, cuz this one has a story to tell … definately the story has been told in different ways earlier… definately loud at times, stereotyping goes on, predictablitity is high, stretched emotions, yet the movie has a WELL WOVEN STORY, which I THINK is absolutely notches above any of the other releases that we have over the well… I wish the movie was made better.. still is worth a watch for all the efforts … last thoughts, I guess as much as PFC supports new and upcoming filmfolks, maybe they should (and maybe already are.. ) support fading movie makers as well in case there is a huge effort that they made … (I can see film fraternity growing only this way, alas.. just in case N Chandra had written this movie, with one of the upcoming directors directing it, this movie could have pretty much been brilliant) nonetheless, watch it… for the SQ (Story Quotience)
Or Love Khichdi, which here is drawing more people in than most other films. Even my father wants to watch it, jeez! :D
It is???? Though not a great actor, for some reason I want Randeep Hooda to have some success… that guy for some reason looks like he is bound to be an A- actor through out his life.. will not slip to B but will never make it to A+/- as well …
Yes. Actually very few reviews have favored the film. I am yet to see it, but seems like lot of people are loving the out-and-out adult comedy that it promises to be.
I am definitely up for a sleeper hit. It’s been long time we had some sleeper hits like Hyderabad Blues or Bombay Boys..
@PS, the movies in Guerrilla reviews section are put in based on the lists provided by a volunteer team. They may have missed the other movies. Perhaps the team and you can connect and see that lists in Guerrilla reviews are more accurate.
Thanks oz… I hope they would ve read this post as well …
“Can the real volunteer team please stand up… please stand up… please stand up..
“
PS, I’ll get them in touch with you via email.
Sure… just to elaborate… I have no complaints with them, they are doing a great job of collecting movie release dates et al… I would want to know if I can join them, or if they would want maybe an email from all other PFC members who can let them know of upcoming movies that they might miss out on knowing (in a day’s hard work, who does not miss out on things
)
I have not seen this movie but after reading this i’m least interested in watching it..
If you want too see how online campaigns for QGM fallen flat face and turned to its negative side plz visit…
http://abhinavsahai.com/quickgun-murugun-online-marketing-campaign