Recently Seen Movies - 11 - Page 8

Ending dialogue "Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from ships, 'cause they knew death was better than bondage."

5/5 for this scene

4/5 movie rating (3.5 for the movie 0.5 for the villain and his last scene)

Review has spoilers

Raazi is the true story of an Indian female spy who was deliberately married to a Pakistani army man in order to gain military secrets of Pakistan and succeeded in getting vital information about the movement of a Pakistani submarine named Ghazi during the Indo pak war of 1971 . This helped the Indian armed forces counter it's attack .

The big thing about this female spy was that she was a muslim , and that too kashmiri muslim to boot . That itself makes the topic worthy of a film . Her name was Sehmat and is played by Alia Bhatt .

Sehmat's father is spying for India in Pakistan . He belongs to a family of freedom fighters . But he is dying due to cancer and wants to keep the legacy of his patriotism alive . So he selects his daughter Sehmat to carry on the family tradition of spying for India in Pakistan .

This is a life defining decision for Sehmat . She does not merely have to go to Pakistan but she has to live there . Above all , she has to marry a pakistani and to literally sleep with him . And to top it all , she has to give birth to his half pakistani son...

In the midst of all this , Sehmat has to spy on vital documents that contain secrets of pakistani military and pass them to Indian agents . To deal with potential danger , she is trained in physical combat and trained to kill people by Indian intelligence . She has to carry the required equipment for espionage to her marital home .

The film's big concession to filminess is the love story of Sehmat with her pakistani husband played by Vicky Kaushal . He is shown to be a real gentleman and that is too filmy . He refuses to sleep with her until she really falls in love with him and is too nice to her , even when she has been caught spying for arch enemy India . Does not sound like a real character to me . Certainly his oh so nice character has been built up to bring about a romantic angle to the film .

In fact the film shows all pakistanis in the household that Sehmat is married into to be nice people , and one sees the hand of the liberal lobby behind this . The liberals would like us to believe that across the border live nice people without a trace of hate for us in their minds . Inspite of being a pakistani military family , no one among them has really anything bad to say about India in the film . No repetitions of Bhutto's language of thousand year war against India and no mention of jehad . In fact when Sehmat's husband comes to know that she likes hindustani classical music , he brings records of that for her to listen . To a nationalist like me , the whole atmosphere built up in the house of Sehmat's in laws sounds too fake and pakistani appeasing . Pakistanis are jehad crazed barbarians with fanatical hatred for India and that should have been brought out in the film to stay close to reality .

Of course , one person who does not really gel with Sehmat is the family servant Abdul ( Rafiq Zakaria ) . He is the one who finds out about her being a spy and Sehmat has to kill him by crushing him under a truck . Then her own brother in law comes close to finding out the truth and Sehmat dispatches him by hitting him with a poisoned tip of an umbrella . She has a team of Indian spies helping her in pakistan and they help in the second killing . After that she has to live normally with her sister in law whose husband she has just killed , and all this takes a toll on her especially the brutal manner in which she has to kill Abdul .

Finally her cover is blown off and Indian agents try spirit her away . But complications occur and they have to kill innocent people and are ready to kill even her herself , so that she is not caught alive . In the midst of all this , she is confronted by her husband with the truth . But he shows grudging respect for the fact that she is doing all this for her nation India !! No trace of hatred for her inspite of her betrayal of his love !! Way too filmy man and way too liberal !! Such people exist only in films and not real life .

In the end Sehmat is disgusted by the behaviour of the Indian agents in killing innocents including trying to kill her , and does not really appreciate her Indian handler's well meant words that in this sort of confrontation it is winning the war by hook or crook that is more important and not individuals like herself or others who got killed . She gets disenchanted from the whole spy business and becomes lonely and depressed . But the pakistani secrets she gave prove vital for India's war effort , and her son joins the Indian military .

Alia Bhatt is a wonderful actress who brings about every emotion of the character of Sehmat all too well . Background music is good and photography is decent . There are many unknown people who have done countless secret missions with great personal suffering and sacrifice for the country without getting recognition for it and the film will make us remember them all .

Verdict---Good .

Three and a half stars out of five .

___________

😆

Directed by : Meghna gulzar

I think after talvaar and raazi , Meghna have perfected the formula of crime thriller type genre movies.

Being a spy movie , it covers all the usual tropes one could find in such movies ,and that's something which made me not enjoy this movie as such, since the formula is pretty much written spy would do spy things would get close to being caught ultimately would be discovered by some support character with lil importance ,who would get killed and trying to cover that person death ultimately in the end protagonist would get exposed but not before it do the job.

And that's disappointing that after talvaar Meghna couldn't brought something new to this story.

Execution is good , technically and the location, inclusion of pakistani culture and to show how spy thing is actually done.

As far as acting goes, Alia is neither good or bad ,she does what is required ,this is something any competent actress could have done,so I won't say there is any scene that she makes her own.

There is some scenes that she is good but some are moving through motion.

Supporting cast was good ,all of them delivered.

It is what it is.

If you are in such stories watch it.

good 1 time watch

climax ma aunties scene was wTf 😆

It is pretty predictable but has some very cute scenes. Also, I am so in love with the male lead. I really really like him 😃 The female lead is also cute. Acting isn't great but the movie overall is fine. Especially the first half. Typical teenage drama.

I love to watch horror movies alone at night 😆 the impact will be really good if we watch it in night .

Hence I opted Pari for saturday night thinking that it will scare me but at the end I had good laugh 😆

There were moments in the beginning which gave horror effect but after 20 minutes the movie was quite predictable .

Surprisingly I loved Anushka's acting in this movie , she was really good as docile Ruksana . Her acting was really endearing . I liked the "l love you too scene" .But that is all good about it .

I was concerned about the second season. After all the original movie was only about the "Blackface Party." But plenty has happened in race relations and campus culture to keep the show going. Season two explores deeper into various faces of blackness in America, including some of the darker sides of blackness.

We continue with the characters deeper exploring their identities. Lionel is exploring his homosexuality, Troy realizes he's erased himself to please his father, while Reggie deals with the trauma of having a gun pulled on him in the previous season.

Coco's struggle for power has her facing pregnancy and calls for an episode that deals with abortion very poignantly. Gabe begins to make a documentary titled "Am I racist" which creates some great dialogue on white allyship, white guilt, and white savior complex.

Joelle gets an episode for herself. We learn how she has always been number one and being the second fiddle to Sam is new for her. She finally meets a man who appreciates her and her darker skin, but he turns out to be a hotep (a new term I learned this season.)

There is a great arc about an Alt Right twitter account that trolls Sam throughout the season. The reveal of the person behind the account is a shocker, and further explores the complexity of race relations.

Finally, there is Sam herself. The show explores her identity crisis due to having a black mother and white father. It shows her strained relationship with her parents and eventual reconciliation. However, the most brilliant stroke is having Tessa Thompson (who played Sam in the movie) come in as a conservative speaker Rikki. Rikki shows Sam a very startling future of her unbridled anger causing Sam to make a very shocking decision.

Despite its heavy material the show is poignantly funny and totally bingeworthy.

Bill Nye is back with his science show. As a nerd, I find this show informative and fun. Science for the win. Bill seems to have addressed some criticism and softened his approach. He's shifted his tone to bridge building rather than attacking counter views. He gets cutesy with episodes focusing on pets and appeals to human vanity with the cheating death episode. The most relevant episode is probably the "Addiction Episode"

This documentary about Bill Nye traces his journey from mechanical engineer to television host to science celebrity. What I like about the documentary is that it doesn't try to paint Nye as a hero or all good. It paints him as a grey character. He's genuinely concerned about educating people, but he has a thirst for fame as well. He has trust issues and doesn't take criticism well. It shows how his debate with creationist Ken Ham turned the tide for conservatives and many people blame Bill Nye for the resurgence of creationism. It also shows some of his rivals in a humanistic approach especially metrologist Joe bas***di and his son Garrett. It is a mature exploration of how you can disagree and be friends or look up to someone yet be upset at them.

Edit: Hilarious how IF is censoring a persons actual last name. Thats dumb.