SIMRAN | Reviews and Box Office | Hansal's Highest Grosser - Page 4

Omg it released?? Cannot wait to watch it! I hope it makes a lot of money!!

All the best Kangy 👍🏼

👏 All the best to the team Simran. Would rely on WOM as usual over critics. 😃

Simran Movie Review: Kangana is effortless in this film that merely flirts with brilliance

Kangana raunat is pure brilliance. I think that is common knowledge now but did she only on her brilliance make me like simran the movie..unfortunately NO

Can't wait for Sunday man! Wishing the entire cast and crew all the best for Simran's success! Especially my Queen K <3333333 I am very sure you will win this one too! Love uuu ❤️

All the best to Kangana and Team Simran 👍🏼

Simran Movie Review: Kangana Ranaut makes 'badass' look simple, human and full of heart

By Mohar Basu | Mumbai | Posted 34 minutes ago.

'Simran'
U/A; Drama
Director: Hansal Mehta
Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Sohum Shah
Rating:

In one of the film's standout scenes, the protagonist Praful Patel - played effortlessly by Kangana Ranaut tells her bride-to-be cousin about good girls and bad girls. The former can only manage a single boyfriend and the latter are lucky enough to land many, she declares quoting a worldly-wise mum. Early on in the film, we know Kangana was entrusted with the Herculean task of finding the grey space between good girls and bad girls. She had at hand a character who could trip over to the negative side too easily. Praful is unapologetically materialistic. Greed drives her actions and her scheming side spares none, not even her own family. But Kangana creates an affable entity of her, who is funny, emotional, warm and kind. A housekeeper at a hotel, sneered at by her own parents for her life choices failed marriage and barely respectable profession, Kangana still manages to lend to Praful a striking sense of independence and confidence, making her relatable. After a chance bachelorette trip to Las Vegas, Praful is addicted to gambling which sucks away her finances in no time. The returns of her first win has her smitten till she loses all her savings to the game, besides becoming a target of blood-hungry moneylenders.

Director Hansal Mehta and his writers Apurva Asrani and Kangana, herself, give a novel spin to this dark and twisted story. They borrow the title from DDLJ, making a realistic parody of how women have changed since 1995. 'Jee le apni zindagi' is no longer about finding the man of your dreams. It's about achieving what one's heart desires. The narrative is layered with deep-rooted optimism, giving it the edgy fairytale feel. And they achieve all of it without romanticising or glorifying Praful's crimes. It must've been tricky but therein lies the power of the plot. Despite being ridden with several clichs, the effort to be inventive is unmissable. A special mention here is for the dialogues which are bound to leave you in splits. The beauty of Hansal's direction is that the story has its grim, poignant, heartbreaking and a few high-strung emotional moments but he never lets the humour go missing.

The first half of the movie casts a spell as you travel with Praful on her misadventures boys, beer and betting included. Kangana never allows you to stop rooting for Praful even when she is wrong. In the second half, Mehta falls for the usual traps. It's disturbing how easy he makes bank robberies look but Praful googling videos on how to rob a bank makes it an easy offense to forgive. The romantic angle is purposeless. Sohum Shah, who plays Samir Praful's love interest - is beautifully cast but that's one character the film could've easily done. I wish Mehta-Asrani-Ranaut had explored more of the volatile bond between Praful and her father. A tighter second half, fewer songs and a less hurried ending would have made Simran a watch for keeps.

But there's more reason to celebrate Simran than diss it. The quirky perspective at finding laughs in troubled times is a refreshing way of viewing problems. And then there's Kangana, making badass look simple, human and so full of heart.

Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Mark Justice, Soham Shah, Hiten Kumar
Director: Hansal Mehta
Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

Robbing a bank is traditionally a man's job. According to the FBI, the few women caught in bank robberies are mostly accomplices or driving the getaway car. Of course, the phrase "traditionally a man's job" is anathema to Kangana Ranaut and the defiant characters she plays, which is why Simran - a story based on a real-life female bank robber - sounds tailored for the actress. At one point in the film during a quick Pretty Woman tribute, Ranaut, like Julia Roberts in the 90s film, covets dresses she can't afford but, unlike Roberts, she's the one who singlehandedly raises the money, goes back and shocks the sneering shopgirl. It is a smart and telling alteration. Kangana may well be a pretty woman, but she is also her own Richard Gere.

This can be both amazing and alarming. It is super to watch a self-assured performer vault over any challenge a script throws, but never ideal to see a script contort in order to give the actress room to show off everything she can do - including things that don't necessarily suit the film. Hansal Mehta's Simran works best when breezing along with a light touch, when Ranaut effervescently befriends bartenders and cheerily refuses to take no for an answer. Unfortunately the film, doubling up as a showreel for the actress, pretends also to be a drama, a thriller, even a sweet romance. None of these other gears work well enough, and the eventual result is tedious.

Simran opens well, with Ranaut's character Praful Patel cleaning a hotel room. Part of the Hilton housekeeping staff, she picks up an upturned Milan Kundera book, dusts beneath it, and replaces it carefully as it was, before she makes a bed and scrubs a sink, thorough as can be. This is a laser-focussed Gujarati girl who wants to buy her own house, even though the "Indian temple" in the neighbourhood holds no attraction (it's a Gurudwara), and neither does the nearby kebab shop (she's vegetarian). She wants it because it's a minority housing bargain, and the divorcee can't wait to move out of her parents' house and do her own thing.
One evening, Praful Patel meets the game James Bond plays. Everything changes once she wins her first hand of baccarat, and soon she's looking up YouTube videos on how to hold up banks and spook cashiers. This is the meat of the film, yet the robberies soon feel repetitive. In a film that seems otherwise realistic and grounded, they come across as unreal and convenient. All her robberies are performed in the same outfit using the same technique - handing a bank teller a note scrawled in lipstick - and while news channels are constantly showing footage of her thefts, people in banks seem blissfully unaware of her modus operandi and fall for it over and over again. Most banks, it seems, don't even have security guards. Just cashiers, one of whom Patel even blows a kiss to as she escapes.


Besides Praful, every character in the film is one note, from the rigid father to the helpless mother to the scary moneylender to the sincere suitor. These actors seem particularly stagey and theatrical in contrast with Ranaut, who shines with a spontaneous and often irresistible performance. Sure, her character's English improves and worsens inconsistently, but Ranaut makes it work, especially in brilliant moments like when, about to confess to her crimes, she compares the feeling to that of losing control of her bowels. This may feel like a familiar Kangana performance with a Gujarati accent thrown on, but there's something special about the way she makes the character appear constantly amused by herself.

Ranaut and a few clever lines keep the film watchable, until the third act where the script sadistically starts piling misfortune on the character to ratchet up the dramatic tension. This is a bad move, leading to a prolonged climactic chase sequence featuring a leading lady who - we were told near the start of the film - is a poor driver. The last half hour has cringeworthy pacing and feels more mean-spirited than the rest of the film for no good reason. Perhaps we are only allowed one spectacular bank robbery film set in the city of Atlanta in one year.



Based on the fascinating story of young nurse and compulsive robber/gambler Sandeep Kaur, this is a film that - judging from the warm, funny bits - would have benefited from an overall jauntiness, in the vein of Catch Me If You Can. Instead we have a film that wants to tell jokes, make us cry and make us gasp, and - with no real flow between the tonally different sequences, save for jarring songs every now and then - only the jokes ever work. (And not all of them. There is a terribly cheesy moment, for example, where we learn why the film is called Simran.)


The finest scenes in Simran are the ones where Ranaut is playfully bantering with a Las Vegas bartender. There's true charm and crackle to these moments where he takes a shine to her. She asks him for free fries and, undeterred by their absence, demands and settles for free peanuts instead. I was reminded of a old buddy from school who, when offered cheap beer, used to say, "Free mein toh hum phenyl bhi pee lete hain" - "for free I'd even drink phenyl" - a sentiment Praful Patel would likely applaud. That happens also to be the least disappointing way to consume this film: go watch a good performance and get the rest of the film for free.