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2.0 out of 5 stars
Analyzed from a (Black) Western Perspective, September 29, 2010
This review is from: Crimes (DVD)
I'm not sure if I've ever seen a Bollywood film in its entirety. This is just my inexperienced two cents.
In this film, a female cop tries to get info from the potential killer who saved her life. There were a few musical numbers here, but there weren't extravagant dance numbers with many extras, etc. It's similar to US films that emphasize their soundtracks over plot.
On the one hand, this film had one woman amongst a ton of men. Why the half-a-billion other women in India are rendered invisible is beyond me. The men were diverse in terms of skin complexion, age, weight, and chest hair status. Still, as you can guess, the female lead was just as light and close to European as possible. This film does touch upon issues of women trying to succeed in a formerly all-male workplace. It can be seen through feminist eyes.
There's a lot of slapping people here. In US films, I'd think there'd be more emphasis on punching instead. The main character is not only a detective, but drives inmates to prison too. I highly doubt in the real world one person would hold two jobs like that.
A lot of things seemed overly dramatic. This felt more like a US soap opera than a film. Most foreign language films that I've seen have English subtitles as a default. You had to actively click for that feature with this DVD. There were grammatical errors all over the translation. They also sped by too fast. I've heard of Spanglish, Singlish, and Taglish, but this must mean there's Hindi-glish too. Characters littered much dialogue with English phrases. I'm sure there are Hindi words for "please," "encounter," etc. The boss seemed to break into English the most. I wonder if Indians with the most money or prestige are the most likely to code-switch like that.
In a book on films and Indian masculinity, the author said Indians feel that Western movies are too short and they prefer to get lost in lengthy films. This film is much longer than the typical 90 minutes for a US film.
I wouldn't give this film an Oscar, but it wasn't absolutely horrific either. It was not funny in a campy way too. Kinda B-/C+.
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