All Movie Reviews of Ghajini Here!

By Taran Adarsh, December 23, 2008 - 13:18 IST

The wait is finally over! An Aamir Khan film is nothing short of an event. The supremely talented actor acts in one film a year and no two films are ever identical in terms of plotline. No wonder then that you await an Aamir starrer with bated breath.

GHAJINI, the Tamil version, has been a massive hit and so was its dubbed Telugu version. Will the Hindi adaptation live up to the humungous expectations? The hype is unmatched and you expect no less than a present-day masterpiece.

Write your own movie review of Ghajini Now the good news: GHAJINI demonstrates how strong film-making can enhance and elevate an already solid concept.

GHAJINI is a revenge saga, one ingredient that has been the staple diet of Hindi films since time immemorial. It is a powerful film. It has the power to sweep you off your feet from the word 'go'. It has a riveting story, which has been told with flourish by director A.R. Murugadoss. And, of course, it has a knockout performance by Aamir Khan. If at all there's a shred of doubt whether Aamir is The Best in the business, all you've got to do is check out GHAJINI.

Flaws any? Running time [almost 3 hours]? Not at all! There's so much happening in every scene and the screenplay is so gripping that you don't feel the need to look at the auditorium ceiling or at your watch at brief intervals. You aren't restless. As moviegoers, we've watched countless good versus evil fares over the years and although GHAJINI belongs to the same family, not once does it take the beaten track. The story has been told differently and most importantly, the story offers so many twists-n-turns that you just can't guess what would unfold next.

Is it violent? It is, at times, but the violence here is justified. In fact, every time the protagonist bashes up the evil-doers, you clap and root for him. The climax is jaw-dropping -- dissimilar from the original, but it's an out of the world experience nonetheless.

To sum up, GHAJINI is commercial Hindi cinema at its best. The film has 'Hit' written all over it. Let me put it this way: Cancel whatever you're doing today and go watch GHAJINI instead.

Aamir Khan is suffering from acute short-term memory loss set off by the violent murder of his girlfriend Asin. He's got to work around this handicap, but with methodical and meticulous determination. Aamir etches a path of clues that lead him on his road.

To aid him in his quest, he carries around a sheaf of Polaroids and when he is really sure of a piece of information, he has it tattooed on his body, which stands in for the damaged part of his mind. His indelibly marked torso is the repository of his grief, his rage and his reason to go on living.

Any more revelation would do gross injustice to the film and to its viewer.

First things first! GHAJINI is not MEMENTO. There're minor similarities, but GHAJINI takes a completely different route to tell its story. Director A.R. Murugadoss tells this one differently. It starts off with what happens in the past, comes to the present-day, goes back in time again and returns to the contemporary again. This is a breathless, exciting story, heart-breaking and exhilarating at the same time.

Hindi movies have often depicted people suffering from amnesia/memory loss, but GHAJINI is poles apart because the protagonist recalls events only for 15 minutes. The story is its USP, without a doubt. But what adds sheen and glory to the story is Aamir's portrayal of a man suffering from short-term memory loss. Aamir hardly speaks. In fact, the leading lady [Asin] speaks more than Aamir in the film. But Aamir speaks volumes with his eyes, he conveys whatever has to be conveyed through his body language, he says it all with his facial expressions and that only makes GHAJINI a memorable, never-seen-before experience.

Director A.R. Murugadoss deserves brownie points for not just coming up with an interesting story, but also presenting it [refreshingly] differently. The storyteller balances the light moments and the ones demanding intensity with expertise. There's dum in every sequence. Even if the director has to depict violence, he doesn't resort to blood-n-gore or knives-swords-pistols for effect.

A.R. Rahman's music is top notch. At least three numbers have the unmistakable stamp of a genius -- 'Guzarish', 'Behka' and 'Kaise Mujhe'. Ravi Chandran's cinematography is stunning. The film bears a stylish look all through. The action sequences are brilliantly executed. The Hindi moviegoers haven't seen such scenes ever.

Aamir delivers his career-best performance. In the first place, it requires courage and maturity to name the film after the villain. Knowing how egoistic our stars are, something like this is next to impossible in Hindi films.

A lot has been said and written about the GHAJINI look -- Aamir's hairstyle and his dream physique. It's awe-inspiring and if more and more people adopt the 'Aamir look' or hit the gym, it would be courtesy the actor.

As far as his acting is concerned, he's natural as the tycoon, but like a wounded, ferocious tiger when he goes on an avenging spree.

Without doubt, it's a concentrated, layered performance. He acts with his entire being. His body movement, the details of his performance, everything rings true. He is both vulnerable and hard. The pain in his face when he can't remember, is palpable. It's not only the plot that carries GHAJINI. It's also the mood and the expression on Aamir's face that makes GHAJINI a treat.

Asin is fabulous. To share the screen space with an actor of the stature of Aamir Khan and yet remain in your memory even after the show has ended is no cakewalk. She looks fresh and photogenic and acts her part brilliantly. Pradeep Rawat, the villain, is first-rate. Jiah Khan impresses, especially in the sequence when Aamir follows her to a shopping mall.

On the whole, GHAJINI is a winner all the way. The film will set new records and has the merits to emerge one of the biggest Hits of all times. The weekend business should be historic, the Week 1 business should be unparalleled, the lifetime gross should be amongst the biggest of all times. In short, GHAJINI has 'Blockbuster' written all over it.

4.5/5

http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/movies/review/13397/index.html

REVIEW: GHAJINI

Anupama Chopra, Consulting Editor, Films, NDTV

At the recently held Indian Screenwriters' Conference in Mumbai, writer-director Abbas Tyrewala lamented the lack of villains in Bollywood. He said that clearly defined villains used to be our staple diet.

This was true until sometime in the mid-1990s, when happy smiling families and yuppies in designer clothes took over. Well, I'm happy to report that the villain is back.

Ghajini, played ferociously by Pradeep Singh Rawat, is the kind of villain who wears thick gold chains and rings on every finger. He is defiantly brutal - he runs a pharmaceutical company but for reasons never explained, he likes to smash iron rods into human heads and forces young girls into both prostitution and organ trade.

He has one gold tooth, wears shiny white shoes and keeps a posse of henchmen so ugly that they look like they were airlifted from Ram Gopal Varma's last film. And of course Ghajini routinely drops lines like: aise marenge ki uska nakhun bhi nahi milega and my personal favourite: short-term memory loss patient mujhe kya yaad dilaayega.

Ghajini, director A R Murugadoss's remake of his Tamil blockbuster, is a throw back to what Hindi films used to be: a three hour extravaganza of romance, comedy, action, set-piece songs and drama.

It's a standard revenge film given a fresh twist with a dash of Christopher Nolan's critically acclaimed Memento. Like that film, the protagonist here, Sanjay Singhania played by Aamir Khan, is hit on the head and suffers from short-term memory loss. He cannot remember anything for more than 15 minutes.

So, he tattoos his body with instructions: the most important one being that his girlfriend Kalpana was murdered, and he must find the murderer and kill him. The film is riddled with logical loopholes but Murugadoss, who also wrote it, doesn't give you enough time to think about them.

So, you never ask how Sanjay, the fabulously wealthy owner of a cellphone company, conducts a lengthy romance with Kalpana, played by debutant Asin, pretending to be an ordinary man? Or why Ghajini, a master-thug and expert killer, doesn't have a gun when he needs it the most? Or why the key conflict, which leads to Kalpana's death, is such a random imposition on the script?

Instead, you are caught up in the mystery of how a superbly stylish businessman becomes a killing machine who routinely cracks necks and in his introduction scene, plunges a broken tap into a man's stomach. Ghajini isn't for the faint-hearted. The violence is gory and elemental. The climax is pure man-on-man combat with lots of crunching bones.

For Aamir, Ghajini is a 360 degree turn from the sensitive teacher he played in Taare Zameen Par. With a buffed up, eight-pack body, here he is a brutal killer in a murderous rage. Watch him as he explodes with grief and then just as quickly forgets it. It's a memorable performance indeed.

Thankfully Asin is less animated than she was in the Tamil version. Some of their romantic scenes, and particularly her death are nicely done.

Ghajini isn't a great film or even a very good one but I recommend that you see it. It is, as we used to say in the old days, paisa vasool.

http://movies.ndtv.com/reviews.asp?lang=hindi&id=368&moviename=Review%3A+Ghajini

Ghajini - Movie Review

Cast: Aamir Khan, Asin Thottumkal, Jiah Khan

Director: AR Murugadoss

Music: AR Rahman

Rating: ***1/2

Ghajini is an out and out revenge saga. But the director has tried to amalgamate the riveting revenge story with a soft romance between the two protagonists, Sanjay and Kalpana, played by Aamir Khan and Asin.

Sanjay Singhania is a very rich man with a flourishing business. One fine day, in order to promote his venture, he decides to display a board on Kalpana's roof top, much to her anger. Sanjay's business manager comes and requests Kalpana to allow them to display the board. She rejects the offer. But her commercial director (she works as an extra in the advertising world) overhears the conversation and presumes that Asin has refused Sanjay's love offer. How he tells her to accept the offer and how the intriguing romance blossoms between Kalpana and Sanjay form the crux of the story.

But the violent murder of his girlfriend sets off an acute short term memory loss in Sanjay. How he works around the handicap to reach her murderers is the rest of the story. Hindi movies have often depicted people suffering from memory loss, but in Ghajini the protagonist recalls events only for 15 minutes. And the manner in which he works to regain his memory has been depicted meticulously and very differently. He keeps writing the time, name and dates of clues about the killers as when he remembers them. He also carries a Polaroid to keep him updated in case he forgets.

The film is three hours long and the good versus evil theme is something we've seen many a time in Bollywood films, but each scene of the film is so gripping that never once do we feel bored. The story has been told in such a novel way with so many twists and turns that it keeps the audiences on the edge of their seats guessing what would come up next.

Director AR Murugadoss has tried to de-route Ghajini when compared to the Tamil version. The climax is different from the original. He cleverly weaves in the past and the present.

Performance wise, this is completely an Aamir Khan movie. He has done a brilliant job as usual. He hardly talks. It's his facial expressions and body language that do all the talking. His leading lady Asin has put up a sterling performance, so has the villain, Pradeep Singh Rawat.

Ravi Chandran's cinematography is excellent and AR Rahman's music is top-notch.

All in all Ghajini is a refreshing change. The film does not have a happy ending as both lovers do not get united in the end. Although this concept has never been approved by the Indian audiences, but Ghajini is sure to change that for the sheer brilliance of the movie. To sum up, Ghajini has everything to turn it a blockbuster hit. This one's a must watch!

Lipika Varma / Sanskriti Media & Entertainment
Copyright 2008.

http://www.aol.in/bollywood-story/ghajini-movie-review/2008122403169019000001

Hum Do, Humaare (Memen)to - Rediff

I saw a fantastic Aamir Khan [Images] film the other night, one where his obsession with a pretty woman led to him being clubbed on the head with a generic looking rod. The blunt force trauma led to amnesia, or so claimed Khan's character, leading to a wickedly fun plot, rife with both misunderstanding and subterfuge. Awesome stuff, Andaz Apna Apna.

Then, on Monday, I watched Ghajini [Images]. And an Andaz Apna Apna this ain't.

Before going into what it is, let us first dispense with the Memento [Images] talk.

The film's makers have ludicrously attached a disclaimer that says that because their film's protagonist suffers from a little-known medical disorder called anterograde amnesia, there is a likelihood that their story could feature elements common to other stories and films. Riight. Must be easy to be a specialist in the field then, a doctor who just needs to check the patient for a series of tattoos.

And while Ghajini might feature Aamir Khan going through the exact same condition Guy Pearce does in Memento yet -- despite the tattoos, the polaroids, and the vengeful hero with a penchant for post-its -- this is a pretty original desi picture, yes sir.

Also Read: Showcasing Ghajini
For director AR Murugadoss [Images] doesn't take that 'story' credit lightly: He's taken the Memento plot, set its non-linearity into chronological order, taken out the actual investigative intrigue and replaced it with a series of convenient coincidences and -- this one's the clincher -- added a full-blown backstory about how the hero met and fell in love with the murder victim, complete with a bunch of songs. It's hard work making good masala, for God's sake.

And Aamir Khan knows it well. It's dubious as to just how much that body needed to be beefed up -- heaven knows Guy Pearce didn't resemble a steroid commercial -- but Khan's dedication is impressive, no question. As Sanjay Singhania, the killing machine dedicated to tracking down his lover's killer, the actor plays a frenzied killing machine, clinical yet with a twisted, macabre fondness for gore. And he does really well.

His anterograde condition kicks in every fifteen minutes, which means he has to now restart investigation, scribble refreshed notes, and get back on track. And he's very well-versed in habit; at a point when he's suspicious despite having no self-scribbled clue to guide him, he analyses breathing patterns. It's a role that requires much consternation -- and Khan is truly wonderful when his character is bewildered -- as well as much over-the-top, frothing at the mouth rage.

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That would have been it for his job description had this been a standard, well-produced action movie, but there is a hardcore filmi romance smack bang in the middle of it all -- one that has possibly a few minutes more screentime than the action section. And while Khan can still pour out the smitten-schoolboy charm at 43, the entire romantic part of the film is so depressingly obvious that it doesn't work at all, and only serves in slowing down the momentum of what would be an entertaining action film.

A large part of this blame must be assigned to the leading lady. Granted, Asin [Images] is straddled with a character that begs the suffix -ine to be tagged onto her name, but a strong performance could certainly have salvaged this half of the film. Her Kalpana is one of those do-gooder heroines soaking in earnestness and sympathy, the kind of character that went out of style back when Juhi Chawla [Images] was a heroine, and it needed much verve to actually make this work. She doesn't deliver -- her chirpiness is most painful -- and resultantly this rather stereotyped he's-rich-she-doesn't-know romance always seems underwhelming.

Check out cool Ghajini videos
Even with the romance getting in the way, Murugadoss' version of the amnesiac killer could have been a very compelling watch. There are times when they take huge departures from the original film, and the what-if possibilities are most intriguing. Until, you discover, that nothing is done about them. In a chilling scene, the villain's goons strap Khan down and, after painting over his meticulously graffiti'd walls and his investigative charts, take out a tattoo gun and crudely rub out all his tattoos, the clues he's investigated for so long.

This sets you up beautifully for a sequence where Khan discovers this, one where he wakes up to realise that all his investigations have been in vain. Does he even know he was investigating in the first place? And how does he feel waking up to see a body covered in hideously scratched out tattoos? It's a trauma the character begs to be dealt with, but alas... the moment is ignored, possibly in favour of giving more time to the half-hour climax. Sigh.

This is a violent film, but there is no call for that besides shock. The gore seems gratituous -- there is a tap scene bordering on the laughable -- and while Khan leaps into his adversaries with an alarming intensity, somehow its hard to stomach a film where he stands in the middle of an alley and fells seven-with-one-blow. (On that note, how come he never forgets how to fight? Or that he can actually fight?) It is the kind of cinema we thought we'd seen the back of, and even if there's nothing wrong with escapist mainstream masala, both audiences and Aamir seem a little less used to it.

Pradeep Rawat plays the titular villain with undisguised glee making up for thespian skills, and Jiah Khan [Images], glimpsed here after Nishabd [Images], is actually quite decent in a character better written than that of the heroine. Unfortunately, the only time she does look super-hot (in white, in the Lattoo song) is the one song where the director keeps cutting away to the action, darn it. The songs are completely extraneous narrative killers, but Rahman's turned in a marvellous soundtrack and we'll lap them up uncomplainingly.

Watch Ghajini, though. Watch it for Aamir Khan, because I don't think I've seen him having this much fun as an actor in a very long time -- and that's always great to see. Not that I mean it's as good as Teelu, of course.

The film itself is impressive in bits, with some terrific sequences, but the romance takes away its thunder. It is a breezy watch that could have been a really crackling one, and while there really is timepass fun to be had, the overwhelming feeling is one of regret.

For what can you say about a film on memory loss that turns out forgettable?

Rediff Rating:

2.5/5