Narcos - Indian Edition

Movie - Raees
Director - Rahul Dholakia
Cast - Shah Rukh Khan/ Nawazuddin Siddiqui/ Mahira Khan

A boy with empty pockets but sharp wit and tall ambition grows up to be a key figure in a booze smuggling empire.


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Young Raees is street smart and when Seth (Atul Kulkarni) needs his booze bottles smuggled through a curfew, Raees volunteers. That is the head start he needs in emulating an Escobaresque life. A kid that flamboyant was bound to grow up to be a Shah Rukh Khan. That he does! But every Escobar needs a Steve Murphy, and that Raees finds in the form of a cop Majmudar (The freakishly awesome Nawazuddin Siddiqui). These two relentlessly stumble upon each other so much so that they begin to develop a grudging admiration for one another.
Raees indulges into some Robin Hood shit in the second half with building a resident colony and doling out stationery supplies to poor kids but the moral compass of the movie is still off. Mahira Khan, Shah Rukh's love interest in the movie is little more than a prop, showing up routinely at dance numbers. Speaking of, there are so many songs in this movie that if you removed them the movie would be half the length it is. And as soothing as Zalima is to the ears right now, the only song that makes sense in the movie is Sunny Leone's item song Laila Main Laila.

Raees is fundamentally flawed by hokey one-liners, tad generic storytelling and an overly romanticized ending sequence. But despite all this, this movie shines through as a Shah Rukh Khan showcase though and offers enough for you to enjoy.

Simple And Charming

Movie : Love Sasha
Director: Prachanda Man Shrestha
Cast: Keki Adhikari, Karma and Asif Shah

A girl returns home for her engagement to an NRN, but love, as it is wont to do, has someone else set for her.

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Sasha (Keki Adhikari) is your run-of-the-mill rom-com heroine.
She asks the hotel receptionist to switch the Delhi time on the clock over the main desk with Sydney's because India and Nepal have mere 15 minutes difference in their time zones.
Quirky yet oddly sensible theories - Check ✔
 She lowers her chin and fondles her hair when she sings because people told her when she was little that it looked comely.
Amusing habits - Check ✔
She counts the number of streams and rivers that fall in the route between Kathmandu and Pokhara because she wants to use it in a cheesy dialog in her short story.
Admitting her oddities and pursuing an artistic passion - Check ✔

Sasha is just returning to Pokhara from Australia when she meets Prahlad aka Pearl (Karma), a photographer as well as a heartbroken anchorage to our heroine. Suddenly we feel like we are in Jab We Met territory. He finds her attitude charming, she finds in him a confidant. Love between them is unspoken but palpable. To concoct a classic love triangle out of it, add to the mix, Sid (Asif Shah) to whom Sasha is to be engaged. He is someone who skirts the gray line and makes you root for Pearl and Sasha.

But amidst the tropes, the storytelling of the movie is nuanced, the crises engaging, the dialogues fresh and the direction controlled. Also it was shot mostly in Pokhara, so plus one for that. Love Sasha is a simple and powerful movie that makes you see love from conflicted perspectives. If you love a simple and quiet movie to while away a weekend, Love Sasha could be it.