Movie Reviews: Red- The Dark Side - Page 2

Film Review: Red - The Dark Side By Sanjay Ram
9 March 2007, 12:36 PM

Film: Red - The Dark Side
Director: Vikram Bhatt
Cast: Aftab Shivdasani, Celina Jaitley, Amrita Arora and Sushant Singh
Rating: 1/5

Red is what you get when you have a mid sized budget and choose to sign two actors who refuse to act and one who can't.

Red - The Dark Side is all dark and honestly has no side whatsoever to it. Initially when the movie commences you are actually led to believe that it might just turn out to be interesting. With cuts between time and well captured moments it's all too good to be true. What follows lets you down hard and fast.

If you sat to see the first 10 minutes of the film you will have figured out the plot for yourself. The moment Celina's character is introduced you realize that she is playing games. There is so much happening in the movie that your mind is tossing around. There is no thrill or even an ounce of surprise when the end is revealed.

It's a typical mad wife kills her husband and has the facts twisted to escape trial movie.

Neil (Aftan) is the recipient of the heart that once belonged to Anahita's (Celina) husband. He insists on meeting the donor's wife and at first glance falls in love with her. Little miss no good has him dancing to her tunes and leads him to believe that her husband was murdered by none other than Riah (Amrita Arora), who subsequently is her best friend. So off goes the knight to seek revenge for his lady love's lost husband. What is expected to come as a surprise is the fact that, miss no good, Anahita is actually the culprit (As if we did not know!!).

The whole reason of watching a thriller is for the fact that you are thrilled and are on the edge of your seat. With Red you find yourself sharing a bucket of popcorn and throwing it all around out of boredom.

With corny dialogues the movie is a bummer. The highlight dialogues of the movie would have to be those like "You have not only given me my life, you have also given me a reason to live," or an even more corny one was Celina saying "You used me in bed, I used you out of it."

With shoddy dialogues like these you are left laughing. Undoubtedly the icing on the cake was the final dialogue by Aftab in which he tells Amrita, "I'm ready to die in love, I'm ready to kill in love but I am not ready to be a fool in love." This leads you to believe the film was never meant to be an intellectual thriller intended to keep you hooked on.

The camera work is so-so but what is yet another letdown is the fact that the whole movie looks dull and as though the colour was drained out from it. The red looks dull (please don't try to take this as symbolism for something) and all the night shots look heavily corrected.

If it was not for Himesh's songs the movie would not have much to offer whatsoever. This film is yet another one in the line of no good films provided by the director. With hit films like Raaz, Kasoor, Awaara Pagal Deewana in the past, Vikram Bhatt's Red is a miss by a long shot.

The actors fail to make an impression. Aftab who seems to fit the part, fails to deliver it. Celina and Amrita seem as though they have decided not to act whatsoever throughout this film. So what you see is their act of not wanting to act. The only laudable performance is that by Sushant Singh essaying the role of the inspector assigned to investigate the case, he does it with much ease.

Red can be expected to do a below average business since it the script lacks by leaps and bounds and there is no grip whatsoever in the plot. What could have possibly been a great thriller, manages to be a huge let-down.

www.businessofcinema.com

Masand's verdict: Red
Rajeev Masand

Cast: Aftab Shivdasani, Celina Jaitley, Amrita Arora
Direction: Vikram Bhatt

Some films should never be made and Vikram Bhatt's Red, which releases this week, is exactly that kind of film. Disguised as a thriller, Red is the most predictable film you've possibly seen, even a four-year-old can correctly guess where it's all leading up to. What's worse, you can make that guess 10 minutes into the film.

The sorry excuse for a plot centres around Aftab Shivdasani who's saved from imminent death by a heart transplant. The heart in question belonged to a man who just died in a car accident. This man happens to be Celina Jaitley's husband and less than 10 minutes since he's discharged from hospital Aftab starts stalking Celina.

Before you know it, the two of them are chewing each others lips off and making out like a pair of rabbits.

As the affair continues, Aftab learns from Celina that her husband had been having an affair with her best friend Amrita Arora, who's responsible for her husband's death.

When Celina complains she's being harrassed by the person who killed her husband on Amrita's instructions, Aftab kills the guy to protect his lady. But it all becomes an ugly mess when the police discover enough clues that are traced back to Aftab.

You know, it doesn't even take an expert to point out the root cause for why this film doesn't work – it's got a plot that's as flimsy as Celina Jaitley's nightgown.

Believe me, I've read class five essays that are better written.

What amazes me is the fact that nobody who worked on this film realised that something as basic as common sense was so badly missing in the script. As a result, every minute of this film is sheer torture to endure.

When you don't have a story to tell, why make a film at all? That's the question I'd like to ask the producer, the director and the writer of Red who have wasted both money and time in bringing this nonsense to screen.

Vikram Bhatt once made some half-way decent Hollywood rip-offs, remember Kasoor and Raaz – they weren't too bad.

Red as far as I can see, is not a copy of a Hollywood film – which makes perfect sense because Hollywood wouldn't be so stupid to make such a rubbish film.

I must add here that throwing in a generous dollop of love-making can't salvage a film as lame as this.

So, all the heaving and sighing, all the grunting and moaning, all the bumping and grinding between Aftab and Celina, does nothing for Red.

Of the principal cast, it's a miracle Amrita Arora manages to show what a lousy actress she is in barely five minutes of screentime. Celina Jaitley, for her part, has close to two hours to display her incompetence.

Doused in make-up, even while doing a wet, shower scene, she simpers and whimpers and plays the damsel in distress so unconvincingly, you're willing to pay her admission fees to a good acting class.

By virtue of the fact that the other two perform so badly, Aftab Shivdasani comes off looking just marginally better, although this is hardly the kind of work to be proud of.

There are very few films that have no merits at all, usually you'll like at least something in every film. But Red is a picture that's devoid of any artistic credibility at all.

And that's why I'm left with no choice but to go with a zero out of five for Vikram Bhatt's Red, believe me I still don't know what's the significance of the title.

Did they call it Red because they anticipated the colour of anger that you'll be consumed with after seeing the film? Or is it because Red rhymes with "dead" which is how you feel when you leave the cinema?

Rating: 0 / 5 (Such Trash!)

www.ibnlive.com

Masand's verdict: Red

Rajeev Masand

Cast: Aftab Shivdasani, Celina Jaitley, Amrita Arora
Direction: Vikram Bhatt

Some films should never be made and Vikram Bhatt's Red, which releases this week, is exactly that kind of film. Disguised as a thriller, Red is the most predictable film you've possibly seen, even a four-year-old can correctly guess where it's all leading up to. What's worse, you can make that guess 10 minutes into the film.

The sorry excuse for a plot centres around Aftab Shivdasani who's saved from imminent death by a heart transplant. The heart in question belonged to a man who just died in a car accident. This man happens to be Celina Jaitley's husband and less than 10 minutes since he's discharged from hospital Aftab starts stalking Celina.

Before you know it, the two of them are chewing each others lips off and making out like a pair of rabbits.

As the affair continues, Aftab learns from Celina that her husband had been having an affair with her best friend Amrita Arora, who's responsible for her husband's death.

When Celina complains she's being harrassed by the person who killed her husband on Amrita's instructions, Aftab kills the guy to protect his lady. But it all becomes an ugly mess when the police discover enough clues that are traced back to Aftab.

You know, it doesn't even take an expert to point out the root cause for why this film doesn't work – it's got a plot that's as flimsy as Celina Jaitley's nightgown.

Believe me, I've read class five essays that are better written.

What amazes me is the fact that nobody who worked on this film realised that something as basic as common sense was so badly missing in the script. As a result, every minute of this film is sheer torture to endure.

When you don't have a story to tell, why make a film at all? That's the question I'd like to ask the producer, the director and the writer of Red who have wasted both money and time in bringing this nonsense to screen.

Vikram Bhatt once made some half-way decent Hollywood rip-offs, remember Kasoor and Raaz – they weren't too bad.

Red as far as I can see, is not a copy of a Hollywood film – which makes perfect sense because Hollywood wouldn't be so stupid to make such a rubbish film.

I must add here that throwing in a generous dollop of love-making can't salvage a film as lame as this.

So, all the heaving and sighing, all the grunting and moaning, all the bumping and grinding between Aftab and Celina, does nothing for Red.

Of the principal cast, it's a miracle Amrita Arora manages to show what a lousy actress she is in barely five minutes of screentime. Celina Jaitley, for her part, has close to two hours to display her incompetence.

Doused in make-up, even while doing a wet, shower scene, she simpers and whimpers and plays the damsel in distress so unconvincingly, you're willing to pay her admission fees to a good acting class.

By virtue of the fact that the other two perform so badly, Aftab Shivdasani comes off looking just marginally better, although this is hardly the kind of work to be proud of.

There are very few films that have no merits at all, usually you'll like at least something in every film. But Red is a picture that's devoid of any artistic credibility at all.

And that's why I'm left with no choice but to go with a zero out of five for Vikram Bhatt's Red, believe me I still don't know what's the significance of the title.

Did they call it Red because they anticipated the colour of anger that you'll be consumed with after seeing the film? Or is it because Red rhymes with "dead" which is how you feel when you leave the cinema?

Rating: 0 / 5 (Such Trash!)

www.ibnlive.com

Red

By Subhash K Jha

Starring Aftab Shivdasani, Celina Jaitley, Amrita Arora, Sushant Singh
Directed by Vikram Bhatt
Rating: *

She's a widow, though not the weeping kind. He needs a change of heart, though not in the way you would expect him to.

Aftab Shivdasani, muscles pumped up to the gills, tattoo on forearm and scowl in place, plays a man so out of touch with reality he actually thinks he could woo and bed the widow of the man whose heart has been transplanted into his body.

This is Vikram Bhatt's rather startling attempt at a noire thriller. Can't say why it's called Red unless you're looking at a man who sees red every time the slinky widow passes by. He grabs her. They cuddle and kiss as the camera caresses the contours of their heaving body in search of erogenous convictions.

Bhatt gets a chance to look into lives that are as star- crossed as they are unable to control their primeval urges. True to its noire genre Red is shot mostly in the rain and in dark interiors lit up with a passion-play that's largely supported by Himesh Reshammiya's pounding tracks.

The first - half of this blessedly brief movie moves at a fairly frisky pace. But the nicotined narrative runs out of breath and breadth later on, leaving you looking at a film that's high on moods but pretty low in terms of credibility.

Sushan Singh as a copy investigating a murder hardly gives the plot the hand-up that he's expected to. His two buffoon-like deputies seem straight out of Doordarshan detective thriller.

Bhatt aims for a bizarre kind of eroticism where the characters cease to be people and are instead projected as emblems of greed, lust, melancholy and dark machinations that send them swirling into damnation.

There's just a scattering of characters supporting the lovers at the centre who play a game of hearts and heartlessness with a ruthless ruggedness that makes them as prone to selfdestruction as it makes them impervious to conventional relationships and behaviour.

Tragically the actors fail to rise to the call of the heart's thundering fall. Aftav Shivdasani takes the fall the hardest. The film is almost a showcase for him to display his variety of emotions. Shivdasani goes through the motions from A to B with nothing more to see.

Celina Jaitley as the fidgety femme fatale seems like a shriller more hyper version of Esha Deol in Bhatt's last film Ankahee. Poor Amrita Arora is allowed no space in the narrative forever in search of pace and grace. But the slippery world of lust and treachery lets the characters and finally the film down.

What you see is certainly not what you get in this thriller about two people who deserve each other.

We deserve a lot better.

www.santabanta.com

By Martin D'Souza, Bollywood Trade News Network

Red is a thriller that manages to keep you guessing till the end. There's enough dose of love, lust and betrayal. Moreover, it's editing is slick and the movie ends in 1 hour 40 minutes. No unnecessary sub-plots. Director Vikram Bhatt gets straight to the point and down to the details in no time. He also makes intelligent use of sepia-toned flashbacks to give the movie that Hollywood feel.

The kissing scenes between Neel Oberoi (Aftab Shivdasani) and Anahita (Celina Jaitley) reflects the maturity of the film-maker. No awkwardness here between the two stars as they get steamy and hot. Gone are the days of two flowers meeting, signifying a mating scene and the quick peck on the cheek to signify love. Today, the scenes have gotten bolder and better. The actors are also more accepting of such 'requirements'.

Neel Oberoi is a billionaire bachelor, diagnosed with a hole in the heart. He needs a donor and help comes in the form of a fatal accident. Set right, he wants to thank the one who has helped him get a new life. After persuading the doctor to give him the name of the one who gave him the heart, he sets out to meet the woman to thank her. It turns out that Anahita is lonely after her husband, Anuj's death and Neel's entry brings a spark in her life.



There's also, Ria (Amrita Arora) who completes the love triangle. How Neel goes about setting Anahita's life back on track is what the movie is all about. Learning that Anuj did not die in an accident but was killed and the killer is now out to get Anahita, Neel goes on a killing spree himself, having fallen in love with his donor's wife. Anahita informs Neel about the affair Anuj had with Ria and also shows him his very personal diary which convinces Neel about Anahita's terror.

Vikram Bhatt uses his characters well to emote love, lust and betrayal, all in that order. Aftab Shivdasani as Neel is vulnerable, desirable and adorable, while Celina as Anahita is calm, composed and goes about her life, after Anuj's death, like any other rich widow. Displaying innocence when needed and aggression along with her passionate scenes, Celina impresses. By far, this is the actor's best performance. The director does well focusing more on long shots of Celina than tight close-ups to his advantage.

Amrita Arora does not have much of a role but she does manage to impress, allowing the director to have the audience guessing as to who the real killer is. Music by Himesh Reshammiya adds to the tempo while the dialogues are interesting.

I won't spoil your suspense on this one. If you are in the mood for a racy thriller, RED is recommended.

Colour Blind

Khalid Mohamed
Mumbai, March 9, 2007

Red
Cast: Aftab Shivdasani, Celina Jaitly, Amrita Arora
Direction: Vikram Bhatt
Rating: *

After Red, you might just turn into the colour of an ash-tray. This film noir of sorts is about a oven-hot woman (Celina Jaitly, to live for), a man colder than a thousand frigidaires (Aftab Shivdasani, forget wood, he's rubber) and a dead man's heart (relief, director Viks spares you the surgery). And it turns out to be as entertaining as Mahesh Bhatt without a microphone.

Certainly, Jaitly and Shivdasani go for each other's lips as if they were vacuum cleaners. Himesh Reshammiya's music score is worth remarking for Tera chehra aafreen.

Snag: the plot about a deadly dil, all sorts of bozos playing boss, Amrita Arora getting much less space than she gets in the gossip columns, and finally some funky flutes of poison sharbats, all force you to look at the exit..and run through the streets as fast as your feet can carry you home. Stay indoors and you'll be safe from this laali-paap.

aftab rules anywayz thnx 4 tellin us luv sanya 😃 😃

saw da movie...
man day was making out for no reason... i was like wtf... u know...

tfs...ill watch it coz it seems abit like kassor's storyline 2 😛