Kaminey — Film Review

SAN JOSE, Calif. — It’s not every day that one sees a Bollywood hero dancing in the streets dressed up as a giant red condom. With the reckless urban crime thriller “Kaminey,” director-writer Vishal Bhardwaj — who earned accolades with “Omkara” and “Maqbool” — is challenging mainstream Indian audiences to accept his left-of-center sensibilities. The film likely is to enrapture critics, but despite powerful performances by two of India’s top stars, former Miss World Priyanka Chopra and musclebound Shahid Kapur, its hollow emotional core might render it unable to pull in huge boxoffice numbers.

Guddu (Kapur) and his lover, Sweety (Chopra), are part of a new wave of NGO activists who use street theater to spread AIDS awareness while handing out condoms. So when Sweety turns up pregnant, the irony is not lost on Guddu.

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But that’s only the start of their troubles. Guddu’s estranged twin brother, Charlie (Kapur again), is a smart but rough-around-the-edges bookie with grand dreams of ill-gotten millions. A failed drug deal — and a case of mistaken identity — throws the two brothers together, and they find themselves fighting not just the Mumbai mafia but also the demons in their past.

“Omkara” and “Maqbool” were modernized adaptations of Shakespeare’s Othello and Macbeth that wowed critics and festival audiences with smart dialogue, dynamic music (Bhardwaj composed the soundtracks) and searing emotional punch.

“Kaminey” shares the cleverness, dark politics and blazing visual sense of those two films: Witness a blistering chase sequence through the hallways, suites and kitchen of a five-star Mumbai hotel and a speeding car ride through monsoon-drenched streets.

Bhardwaj extracts memorable performances from his cast, most notably Kapur, who plays Guddu as smooth-faced and sensitive and Charlie with a darkly shadowed sense of menace. But while Bhardwaj’s previous films attained the extremes of ecstasy and tragedy, “Kaminey” is an entertaining thrill ride. It’s fun, but it’s not Shakespeare.

Opened: Friday, Aug. 14 (UTV Motion Pictures)
Cast: Shahid Kapur, Priyanka Chopra, Amol Gupte, Shivkumar Subrahmanyam, Tenzing Nima, Rajatva Dutta
Director: Vishal Bhardwaj
Screenwritesr: Vishal Bhardwaj, Supratik Sen, Sabrina Dhawan, Abhishek Chaubey
Producer: Ronnie Screwvala
Executive producer: Rekha Bhardwaj
Director of photography: Tassaduq Hussain
Production designer: Samir Chanda
Action director: Sham Kausal
Costume designer: Dolly Ahluwalia
Music: Vishal Bhardwaj
Editors: Meghna Sen, A. Sreekar Prasad
Not rated, 135 minutes