Perhaps, it’s love-at-first-sight struggling model Kalpana ghumao-ing her jadoo ki chhari; a streetsmart talkathon champ who has a thing for social work, pretends to be Air Voice owner Sanjay Singhania’s girlfriend on one hand and jumps at the prospect of marrying her struggling model boyfriend Sachin (who, of course, is Sanjay Singhania himself, surprise! surprise! Only she never finds out, poor girl) on the other, dreams of owning three ambassadors (seriously, man, those brutes are still manufactured?) of her own some sweet day, and frequents Cheenjpokhli gallis and other such dubiously named places and all. So we have our pint-sized powerhouse hero travelling around on autos (definitely not 2-stroke ones!), trying to pay for golgappe with his Bank of America card and turning up in a limo for an event at Kalpana’s employer agency pretending to be himself; all for the sake of looove.
A couple of silly songs later, a business deal goes through and he has to leave on the pretext of “maa bimar hai, gaon me zameen bechni hai, etc etc”, Kalpana seizes the chance to land herself in trouble through her foolhardily noble ways, mobile phones are left where they should not have been left and they ring when they should not ring. The heroine gets stabbed even as the hero is kicking down the door, heroine falls into hero’s arms and whispers the password into his ears, then hero gets whacked, hero-heroine stretch out their hands for each other’s across the floor – (no luck darlings… the living room’s turned out to be too big, it seems) -- very teary end, very silent audience.
Back to the present and Amir Khan’s famous Ghajini mowed-lawn hairdo. Less restricted by his retrograde amnesia than you’d expect, he now spends his nights in the same apartment that he has managed to turn into some sort of MI headquarters; has instructions for himself imprinted all over his body and his walls, goes about taking snaps and killing people (after he has killed them he writes on their snaps things like “over” and “done”…real cute!)… and still travels by public transport. He also stuffs cops into his closets and seems to have developed Wolverine immunity.
Enter sultry med student Jiah-whatshername-Khan who dances in scraps of clothing at her college events, goes poking her nose in places it doesn’t belong, doesn’t think twice about trespassing and stealing private stuff, lands Sanjay in even more trouble than he is in and then insists on fishing him out of it. Ghajini, who just happens to be a public figure, is tracked down (one wonders why it took so long, in spite of the memory loss bit)… the bad guys are taken care of with a lot of punches and rods and clanging metals… then of course Sanjay has to suffer one of his : poof-wtf-am-I::, but only after you’ve grown tired of expecting it… but fear not, Rab reigns supreme here as well, so the bad guy dies anyway and the good guy lives through all his hard times and troubles and makes it to a very Forrest Gump – like end scene. (No, his memory doesn’t return miraculously, but that would be unnecessary and we’re all the better off for it.)
Asin is a seasoned actress; you see it in her expressions, her actions, her voice, her moves…she is funny, warm, coy, scared, etc etc when she needs to be funny, warm, coy, scared, etc etc respectively. Jiah serves her purpose, looks good, but sounds bad… her voice doesn’t match up. Ghajini looks, talks and behaves like a crude mob boss, and if that’s all he is meant to be, too bad. A few notches more of serpentine mystery, terror and frostiness about him would have been great… in fact, Amir would have been a better Ghajini than Ghajini (Pradeep Rawat) himself.
As for Amir... Sanjay Singhania starts down his no-memory lane after being hit with one of those metal rods we spoke about, the same one which ensures his girlfriend’s departure from the mortal realm, and ends up being stabbed by another metal rod which he rips out of himself and uses to hit a drive straight home with Ghajini’s head. Going by this rate, he will soon be rivaling our South Indian superstars with his death-defying stunts!
The film serves the purpose of flaunting Amir’s six-packs well. They stop being a treat to watch whenever you zoom from past to present, so kudos to the man for achieving what he wanted! He is very much the monster he intended to act out, and is as accomplished at playing the action stud meat-pack as he is at being the lover-boy. No wonder I can’t remember any of his lines to pepper this review with – he spends almost all his screen time screaming and grunting – except the sweet and memorable “I love you”. Now that’s what I call beginning the new year with a bang!
Ghajini achieves what very few films have done so far… not in making us laugh aloud, but in making us (me especially) shriek out loud. Not only did my friends and I sit through certain parts with hands clasped on mouth, but actually yelled out loud in a couple of shots…like when Sanjay, in the climactic pursuit of Ghajini, slaps one of the goon’s head around (literally!), and sends him reeling in a cloud of dust to the ground with his head turned backwards by a complete 180 degrees… see if you can stifle your own gasps when you watch it yourself.
Here’s to the hope that the metal rods stop ringing in your head once the show is over!
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