Mumbai Meri Jaan (2008) movie image gallery :
Mumbai Meri Jaan (2008) Movie Rating and Review :
Rating :
Acting – 8/10
Direction – 7/10
Screenplay – 7/10
Music – 7/10
Technique – 7/10
Review :
Heart of the matter
On the night of July 11, 2006 — hours after seven bomb blasts on local trains had rocked Mumbai in 11 minutes — people are having their usual good time at a suburban beer bar. The younger hot-blooded constable asks how can they just carry on with their lives as if nothing has happened. His senior partner, who’s been there and seen that, chuckles: “Phir Mumbai ka spirit kidhar se aayega?”
This short scene in National Award-winning director Nishikant Kamat’s (Dombivli Fast) Mumbai Meri Jaan is fictionalised, of course, but it best encapsulates the whole idea behind the film. The whole farce of Mumbai surviving blasts — they did it once in 1993 — and returning to routine life has nothing to do with the city’s never-say-die spirit. Rather, the people of the city just don’t care who lives or dies.
Unless, of course, you are one of the main characters of Mumbai Meri Jaan directly affected by the blasts, so much that their lives are changed forever. Nikhil (Madhavan) is a daily commuter in the first-class compartment of a Mumbai local. Just for that day he is forced to take the second class by a nagging marketing friend. He goes unscathed but his colleague in the first class loses his right hand. Nikhil’s resolutions of not buying a car, saving the environment, doing something for his country are shaken and shattered.
More heart-wrenching and the pivot of Mumbai Meri Jaan is the story of Rupali (Soha), a TV news reporter who becomes a news item herself. Used to treating painful human realities as just another piece of news, Rupali loses her fiance in the train blasts. She tries to put up a brave front but before you know it, she has become a special news piece on her own channel — ‘Rupali Ki Rudali’. Will she be able to return to normal life? Well, an SMS poll is asked to decide that.
There’s Suresh (Kay Kay), a struggling computer vendor, who has never liked the Muslim guys who hang around at his favourite neighbourhood café. When he is witness to the horrific aftermath of the train blasts, he starts to believe they are the ones behind it all. From there on, not even the old Muslim pao vendor will be spared from Suresh’s wrath.
There are the two constables Patil (Paresh Rawal) and Kadam (Vijay Maurya) who go about their daily business but after that fateful evening, the younger one struggles to come to terms with reality. Patil, on the other hand, confesses of being the quintessential spectator of life, watching a film for the past 35 years but never playing a part. He tries to cool down Kadam, enraged by the city’s nonchalance to the devastation.
And finally there’s Thomas (Irrfan), a roadside chai-coffeewalla, who uses the bomb blasts to settle his personal score. Thrown out from a mall store in front of his wife and daughter for using perfume testers, the poor man starts making hoax calls to police stations about bombs planted in malls. It’s not long before he realises what horror he has unleashed on people who have done him no harm.
The theme of one event affecting many lives may seem akin to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s accident trilogy Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel but Mumbai Meri Jaan is closer to Paul Haggis’s Oscar-winning Crash in its structure. It takes the event as a backdrop and then delves into different psyches. None of the characters are physically hurt but precious corners of their mind and soul are badly bruised and bleeding.
At 140 minutes, Mumbai Meri Jaan is sometimes painstakingly slow but only for a brilliant scene to grip the audience. The heart of the film is so much in the right place that you don’t take those dull patches to heart. And there’s such a marvellous reward at the end of it all — a Felliniesqe climax where the entire city comes to a standstill mourning the loss and the familiar strains of the eponymous CID song playing in the background.
Of the brilliant ensemble cast, Paresh and Irrfan are the best. Soha disappoints again. Kay Kay is good but his expressions are getting too repetitive. Madhavan is a complete natural as the man living a nightmare.
Watch Mumbai Meri Jaan. Care.
Acting – 8/10
Direction – 7/10
Screenplay – 7/10
Music – 7/10
Technique – 7/10
Review :
Heart of the matter
On the night of July 11, 2006 — hours after seven bomb blasts on local trains had rocked Mumbai in 11 minutes — people are having their usual good time at a suburban beer bar. The younger hot-blooded constable asks how can they just carry on with their lives as if nothing has happened. His senior partner, who’s been there and seen that, chuckles: “Phir Mumbai ka spirit kidhar se aayega?”
This short scene in National Award-winning director Nishikant Kamat’s (Dombivli Fast) Mumbai Meri Jaan is fictionalised, of course, but it best encapsulates the whole idea behind the film. The whole farce of Mumbai surviving blasts — they did it once in 1993 — and returning to routine life has nothing to do with the city’s never-say-die spirit. Rather, the people of the city just don’t care who lives or dies.
Unless, of course, you are one of the main characters of Mumbai Meri Jaan directly affected by the blasts, so much that their lives are changed forever. Nikhil (Madhavan) is a daily commuter in the first-class compartment of a Mumbai local. Just for that day he is forced to take the second class by a nagging marketing friend. He goes unscathed but his colleague in the first class loses his right hand. Nikhil’s resolutions of not buying a car, saving the environment, doing something for his country are shaken and shattered.
More heart-wrenching and the pivot of Mumbai Meri Jaan is the story of Rupali (Soha), a TV news reporter who becomes a news item herself. Used to treating painful human realities as just another piece of news, Rupali loses her fiance in the train blasts. She tries to put up a brave front but before you know it, she has become a special news piece on her own channel — ‘Rupali Ki Rudali’. Will she be able to return to normal life? Well, an SMS poll is asked to decide that.
There’s Suresh (Kay Kay), a struggling computer vendor, who has never liked the Muslim guys who hang around at his favourite neighbourhood café. When he is witness to the horrific aftermath of the train blasts, he starts to believe they are the ones behind it all. From there on, not even the old Muslim pao vendor will be spared from Suresh’s wrath.
There are the two constables Patil (Paresh Rawal) and Kadam (Vijay Maurya) who go about their daily business but after that fateful evening, the younger one struggles to come to terms with reality. Patil, on the other hand, confesses of being the quintessential spectator of life, watching a film for the past 35 years but never playing a part. He tries to cool down Kadam, enraged by the city’s nonchalance to the devastation.
And finally there’s Thomas (Irrfan), a roadside chai-coffeewalla, who uses the bomb blasts to settle his personal score. Thrown out from a mall store in front of his wife and daughter for using perfume testers, the poor man starts making hoax calls to police stations about bombs planted in malls. It’s not long before he realises what horror he has unleashed on people who have done him no harm.
The theme of one event affecting many lives may seem akin to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s accident trilogy Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel but Mumbai Meri Jaan is closer to Paul Haggis’s Oscar-winning Crash in its structure. It takes the event as a backdrop and then delves into different psyches. None of the characters are physically hurt but precious corners of their mind and soul are badly bruised and bleeding.
At 140 minutes, Mumbai Meri Jaan is sometimes painstakingly slow but only for a brilliant scene to grip the audience. The heart of the film is so much in the right place that you don’t take those dull patches to heart. And there’s such a marvellous reward at the end of it all — a Felliniesqe climax where the entire city comes to a standstill mourning the loss and the familiar strains of the eponymous CID song playing in the background.
Of the brilliant ensemble cast, Paresh and Irrfan are the best. Soha disappoints again. Kay Kay is good but his expressions are getting too repetitive. Madhavan is a complete natural as the man living a nightmare.
Watch Mumbai Meri Jaan. Care.
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