I’ve never been a big TV buff and neither do I have any plans to be one in the future. Movies, well I don’t know what’s it about movies and me. I go weeks, months without watching anything and then suddenly might watch a few back to back. I don’t believe in genres, I don’t believe in ratings or reviews, its usually on impulse, the kind of movies i watch and my priority list.

I picked up Dev D last week, eons after it was released. Didn’t feel like watching anything post that but yesterday on a weird Sunday afternoon, I just saw this movie, 99. i wasn’t as blown as with Dev D but its far better than the Kaminey thing.

I say I don’t believe in movie reviews and funny that my last 2 posts are about movies. Weird? Well not quite, cause I had no plan to write about this movie 99 but then I was reading an extract from an Osho Book and there were these few lines that hit me. They said that, retrospectively one always looks at things in a way one would not have looked if life had moved in a different direction. The same things would not have given you the same indications.

Come to think of it, all autobiographies are written retrospectively. There is no doubt that the author writes in the light of what he or she has become and starts looking at the past as what he or she is now rather than what he or she was at that point in time. Doesn’t that make autobiographies more fictitious as fiction can be?
So this movie, 99 is set in the Y2k year and hence the titled 99 and its also a woven story of people who are stuck on 99 and need that one run to bring them in synch with their respective lives. Truth be told, I didn’t think much of Kunal Khemu or others before I saw this movie and it was just Boman Irani that made me watch the movie but I was pleasantly blown by Kunal Khemu’s work. I don’t know if that’s his ability or the magic of a well read out script. May be both. Anyways coming back to Boman Irani, there is not much doubt that he is one of the best actors in India today and far above the overrated people who we see in everyday bullshit (bs) movies we are bombarded with.

In the WWII, Adolph Hitler used something called as propaganda with brilliant effect. It was called Nazi propaganda. What we see in Indian entertainment scene is much similar. The people are flooded with BS cinema and they can escape once or twice but then in the end would end up hailing some or the other BS and claim it to be the best work and needless to say we have these so called best actors and best this and best this. Its BS at its best.

Then amid all the chaos we get some real people, making real movies, telling real stories unlike the BS, the real way, writing the real books in a real way, working around everything and weaving them in a creative way. Its sad to see that majority of this work is obscured by the bs that’s dished out but a good movie is a good movie irrespective of empty cinema chairs, a good book is a good book.

One thing I do best is fucking digress, heh. So Coming back to 99, the movie begins in 1999 and follows the story of Sachin (Kunal Khemu) and Zaramud (Cyrus Broacha), two small time con guys who dabble with SIM Cards (The Mobile revolution was just taking off at that point!). They end up working for a small time Bombay bookie and a ‘paisa vasool’ trip takes them to Delhi and into the world of Rahul (Boman Irani) and JC (Vinod Khanna) where they get fully pulled into the match-fixing racket that was making headlines in 2000. The casting is spot on and the performances are brilliant. For once, the jokes in a bollywood movie were intelligent and funny. My favorite was all girls in Delhi are usually called Pooja or Neha. Watch it the believe it. It was also funny to see that the movie got pretty average ratings.

I don’t know what happened to the movie commercially but creatively for me i think it was smooth and subtle and had its highs and lows and nothing actually drags in the movie. For now is in my list at number 2 behind Dev-D and way above the hyped Slumdog and Kaminey which is nothing even remotely close to what the so called cinema big shots are calling it. If Kaminey is path breaking and bold new Bollywood cinema, then its like serving bs wrapped in a new glossy pack.

Amid all the bs, 99 is cool. Watch it if you haven’t and you would sort of agree with what I am trying to say.

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