Mission Istaanbul.....Daar ki aage JIT hain...

Starring:

Zayed Khan .... Vikas Sagar
Vivek Oberoi .... Rizwan
Sunil Shetty .... Owais Husain
Shriya Saran .... Anjali
Director : Apoorva Lakhia
Producer : Sunil Shetty

Guys and gals! Please put your hands together to felicitate the one and only Apoorva Lakhia for making the worst film of the year so far – Mission Istanbul .
First of all, my sincere congratulations to the audience and the critic brethren who have survived this two hours of sheer stupidity, inanity and cinematic profanity. Forgive me if I sound harsh, but I feel battered and bruised, and my heart swells with sympathy for those who have already endured this torture and caution for those who are about to make the same mistake.
To put it mildly, ‘Mission Istanbul’ is the murder of cinema. It has such a cruelly contrived story that you wonder if the writers of the script are truly in touch with the real world. Guess what! Al Qaeda roams free in Kabul post the American invasion of Afghanistan and the public killings still take place in football stadiums under the rule of the new Afghan government. Not just this, Northern Alliance is still fighting its battle with Al Qaeda. I truly feared that Lakhia would next show Ahmed Shah Masood alive and kicking the sh*t out of Al Qaeda. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.
Welcome to the world of ‘Mission Istanbul’, where Turks speak fluent Hindi, and Arabic news channels work clandestinely as terror network.
At the center of the story is Vikas Sagar ( Zayed Khan ), a top class Indian journalist who takes up a job at Al Johara news channel in Istanbul much against the wishes of his journalist wife ( Shriya Saran ) back home.
Al Johara is a news channel that honours its slain journalists by putting their framed photos in its ‘hall of martyrs’. It is a channel that keeps its secret well hidden on the 13th floor, the entry to which is strictly prohibited.
Vikas goes on his first assignment with colleague Owais Husain ( Sunil Shetty ) to Afghanistan where Owais gets killed while fighting the terrorists. Upon his return, Vikas meets a stranger who tells him that Owais’ death was no coincidence and was preplanned by the channel itself. The stranger happens to be Rizwan Khan ( Vivek Oberoi ) a long-haired Turkish commando fighting his own personal war against the terrorists.
As Vikas digs deep into the secrets of Al Johara, he discovers a terror network working in the guise of a news channel. But it is a discovery that makes Vikas himself a target of the terrorists.
From thereon follows mindless action – heroes jumping off from buildings, dangling by flying choppers, chopping off the hands of the baddies and blowing up buildings.
Apoorva Lakhia’s style of filmmaking is to take stylish shots and put them in quick succession to each other and add the remaining impact by loud background music. He really needs to work as an assistant under some truly qualified director to get the basics right.
There are so many flaws in the film that one review may not suffice. But here are just a few examples. Zayed (as Vikas) lands in Istanbul, gets a short briefing from his boss who then announces ‘it’s time to party’. Enters Tanyeli, the flabby belly dancer. And our brave and much-married journalist on his big job in Istanbul decides to make merry with a tempting colleague (female, obviously).
Or check this out. Zayed and Sunil Shetty on their assignment to Afghanistan decide to switch over from journalists to soldiers and fight with the Al Qaeda terrorists to save the foreign hostages.
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.The performances by Zayed and Vivek are nothing to write home about. But yes, Vivek gets a role that is likely to evoke whistles from the front-benchers. Shriya Saran is totally wasted as a journalist who takes phone calls from her husband in between her live reporting. Mercy again.
The true hero of the film is the audience who brave sitting through it.
The best part about ‘Mission Istanbul’ are just two scenes showing the Bush-lookalike Brent Mendenhall who plays George W Bush aboard his Air Force One on his way to India. Brent steals the show with his superb dialogues like ‘we don’t interfere in other countries, unless, of course, we have to invade them’.
The movie deserves just half a star and that too because of Brent.

Kistmat Connection

Starring

Shahid Kapur .... Raj Malhotra
Vidya Balan .... Priya
Juhi Chawla .... Haseena Banu Jaan
Om Puri .... Sanjeev Gill
Director : Aziz Mirza
Producer : Ramesh Taurani
Music Album : Kismat Konnection

It is the onscreen konnection between Shahid Kapur and Vidya Balan that saves this film from a doomed kismat.
Imagine a funny farce where the out-of-luck protagonist battles one misfortune after another until a girl enters his life as a lucky charm! Aziz Mirza’s film Kismat Konnection tells such a tale that is enjoyable in parts but has several dragging disconnections in between.
Set in Toronto, the flick has Shahid Kapur playing a struggling architect whose own life is out of structure because of his phooti kismat. The poor lad has to brave a barrage of misfortunes in doing even as mundane a thing as using an ATM card or rushing to office in his car. A defeated victim of endless misfortunes, he is told by a hamming crystal ball reader ( Juhi Chawla ) that a lucky charm is about to enter his life.
Enters Vidya Balan, a goodie-goodie gorgeous girl who makes things go right for our hero whenever she is around. The luckless architect feels he has found his lucky charm. But unlike other charms, he can’t keep her wrapped around his finger. He loves her. But then, he’s also ambitious.
Thereby begins that legendary divide between ambition and love that has spawned tomes of romantic stories both on paper and celluloid. The protagonist follows his ambition and manipulates love with a sweet lie. And when the lie is exposed, there’s heartache and that customary late realization that success is where love is. So is kismat.
‘Kismat Konnection’ begins quite well – funnily highlighting the blows of fate the hero has to survive in daily life. It plods when Juhi Chawla enters the scene and hams with no holds barred. It almost comes to a grinding halt when the subplots (like the passionless romantic track between Vidya and her cheating fiancé, or the track surrounding a couple of geriatrics fighting to keep their community home intact) swell out of proportion and overshadow the main plot, which is the bonding between Shahid and Vidya that begins with fighting, turns to friendship and blooms to love before being torn asunder when his hidden lies are exposed.
The plot-holes are far too many to overlook. The end of the movie has Shahid giving a preachy speech about global warming and selfishly profiteering business corporations to convince the board of directors that it is wise to let the old folks keep their community home where a mall is to be built. Sounds ludicrous? Wait, there’s more. In the end, the final twist of fate plays out when Boman Irani (in a guest appearance) takes the dais and set things right for our hero.
If the movie becomes watchable it’s because its humour works to an extent and also because of sparkling chemistry between Shahid and Vidya.
The two actors not just look good with each other but also play their parts wonderfully well. Shahid is particularly funny as the hapless, luckless, jobless and chickless guy trying hard to turn his bad kismat around. Vidya wins you over with her incredibly believable expressions of a girl falling in love with someone she didn’t expect to.
Om Puri is given a poorly etched role but the actor even breathes life into it, playing the character of a business tycoon and a henpecked husband. Juhi Chawla is simply over the top. Vishal Malhotra, as Shahid’s sidekick, is just about tolerable.
Thankfully, the film doesn’t have many songs and they come after long intervals. The cinematography is pretty average.
Aziz Mirza has the right story idea but he gets trapped and tangled in its telling. Too many subplots keep veering the movie off its main course. And whenever it happens, a viewer feels diskonnected.