Hindi
Yet another disappointment from RGV
MUMBAI: When Ram Gopal Varma makes a film, one is a bit sceptical. He has not made a sensible film in a long time after all! When you go to a movie expecting nothing, you do usually come out happier than if you expected a masterpiece.
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Producer: Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, Uberoi Line Productions. |
This, however, is not the case with Department, the latest Ram Gopal Varma film. One does go in expecting nothing but one comes out exasperated and mentally fatigued. Department is an exercise in senility: it tries your patience, it tests your nerves and it challenges your sensibilities. After a run time of 2 hours 13 minutes, you come out not knowing who was who in the film, what his motives were and, to top it all, you are threatened with a sequel!
There are some cops on a killing spree in order to get the better of the underworld. Rana Daggubati, one of them, is singled out for suspension for being trigger-happy. The other one, Sanjay Dutt, knows to hide his tracks well. Since there is too much of underworld, some unknown and unexplained face decides to form a special task force called Department, which will not be answerable to anyone and which will not exist on paper.
But, this being a Ram Gopal Varma film, all and sundry know of its existence the moment it is formed. That includes a crazy looking Mumbai don, Vijay Raaz, and a secretive Dubai-based kingpin, Ghouri Mohammed. Rana and Dutt both embark on a shooting spree killing some random faces to reach Vijay Raaz. The charade goes on until a little before the interval, when Amitabh Bachchan makes his entry. He is an idiosyncratic character who ties a small bell to his wrist and has a weird story to tell about it which he never really tells. He is some sort of a minister who pulls all the strings even as he behaves like he is off his rocker. He is a don turned politician after attaining sakashtkar under Dharavi Bridge.
The Department, which is a small band of shooters, soon has different sponsors. Sanjay Dutt obeys the faceless don in Dubai, Rana listens to Amitabh Bachchan and the rest, including Deepak Tijori are incidental.
Having killed most of the Mumbai underworld, the Department heroes end up killing each other: long live the Don in Dubai; he is spared for Department 2 if you care.
Department has a sequence of events but no cohesive script. Ram Gopal Varma grossly misuses his artistes and takes the audience for granted. He makes this narration into a perfect torture device. Dialogue is pedestrian. Music is irrelevant and forced. Ram Gopal’s experiment with student cinematographers becomes a joke as he goes overboard. Editing is nonexistent.
As for performances, only Rana Daggubati looks sincere. Amitabh Bachchan’s character and getup are designed to make an impact; all they do is make him look like a psycho. Sanjay Dutt is his usual self. Vijay Raaz is unlike any don one has known or heard of. The characters of Abhimanyu Singh and his girl, Madhu Shalini, border on insane. This bunch shows the maker’s taste for the macabre.
Department is a rank bad film with poor box office prospects.
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Lacklustre scripting, doomed to go unnoticed |
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Producer: Chandra Pemmaraju. |
Love Lies And Seeta (English with few Hindi dialogue) is directed by Chandra Pemmaraju, who clearly has a passion for filmmaking. An Indian-American, his two earlier shorts have been a part of various film festivals. The film is a shoestring-budget love story about an Indian-origin girl, Seeta (Melanie Kannokada, a former Miss India America), and three boys who fall in love with her.
The boys, Arjun Gupta, Levrenti Lopes and Michael Derek, are all students who vie with each other to win Seeta’s love and attention. They get into a silent war of deception amongst them, which verges on violence. Seeta dates all three simultaneously which further adds to the misunderstandings among the boys.
Seeta, who was adopted as a child by an American couple, seeks counsel from her father, Rob Byrnes, after which she decides to tell all three boys that she likes them as friends but is not in love with any of them. She also discovers her true love in Ryan Vigilant, with whom she had played in her childhood and who has been in love with her since then. Seeta also has her two close friends who are nursing a silent love for two of the boys but can’t open up since the boys are in love with Seeta. Eventually, all end up getting their partners.
Chandra Pemmaraju chooses the New York summer as the backdrop of his narration and presents some pleasant visuals of the New York landscape. The drawback is with his scripting which is like oral storytelling and is slow without dramatics. Music is apt and soothing.
Love Lies And Seeta, released without any sort of promotion, is fated to pass unnoticed.
Hindi
UFO Cine Media Network unveils ‘India’s biggest cinema moment ever’
Dhurandhar 2 and Toxic tipped to deliver rare pan-India scale for brands
MUMBAI: UFO Cine Media Network is pitching an upcoming dual-film release weekend as what it calls the largest advertising opportunity cinema has offered in India, banking on an estimated 100 million cumulative footfalls nationwide.
The initiative, branded “India’s Biggest Cinema Moment Ever”, is anchored around the simultaneous release of Dhurandhar 2 – The Revenge and Toxic, two high-profile action films expected to dominate screens across regions and languages. Trade projections, supported by cinema measurement tool Procat, suggest the combined lifetime theatrical run could deliver one of the widest audience concentrations seen in recent years.
Dhurandhar 2 – The Revenge, an India–Pakistan spy thriller, is set to release in five languages, broadening its appeal across northern and southern markets. The franchise has already built a sizable multilingual following through theatrical runs and streaming platforms. Toxic, fronted by pan-India star Yash, is expected to draw heavy footfalls across southern circuits and beyond, buoyed by the actor’s proven box-office pull.
UFO, which operates an in-cinema advertising network spanning more than 4,100 theatres, is positioning the release window as a rare moment of synchronised national attention. Its footprint covers multiplexes and single screens across over 1,500 towns and cities, allowing advertisers to deploy campaigns at scale during a single weekend.
Executives at the company argue that cinema’s value lies not just in reach but in attention. Unlike digital or television, audiences are captive, emotionally engaged and free from distraction, they say, translating into stronger recall and measurable returns for brands. With advertisers increasingly focused on performance-led media planning, UFO is framing the dual release as comparable in scale to India’s largest broadcast and sporting properties.
Industry observers note that as theatrical exhibition expands deeper into Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets, such tentpole weekends are becoming anchor moments for annual media strategies. If Dhurandhar 2 – The Revenge and Toxic deliver as expected, the weekend could set new benchmarks not only for box office numbers, but also for cinema’s evolving role as a high-attention advertising medium.
