Rocky Handsome Hindi Movie
The moment they set a movie in Goa, you can be sure there will be reference to drugs and tourists. But the predictable can be rendered in interesting ways, but not in this case. Plus they introduce the hero who's like this smile-less, unhappy, prone to flashback lad. If there ever was someone trying to live an incognito life, this man wouldn't be it. He walks in the rain wearing a hoodie, scowls, entertains a kid who sneaks into his home cum pawn shop, and is known as 'Handsome' in the neighborhood.
Then there's the kid. Annoying simply because she's trying desperately had to be precocious. The lines are all there. But the delivery is slow and deliberate, as though the child has been directed to be slow and careful. She's as slow as slow can be. In fact you must be wondering why i have used slow in the review so many times. 'Pata hai...(pause)... What people call you? (pause)... No? (pause)... They call you (pause)... Handsome'
In fifteen minutes you are fed up of the kid and wish something would happen.
They say, be careful what you wish for...
Suddenly, there are villains everywhere. Cavorting, contorting their faces, eating, smoking, posing with guns and flick knives, stealing from unsuspecting tourists, torturing bar girls by branding them with hair dryers, laughing like a maniac, contorting faces, driving wildly, beating, punching, kicking, killing bar girls, manufacturing drugs, making kids manufacture drugs, employing rogue doctors who cut out eyes with scalpels when victims are alive...
They even find time to blackmail the hero into doing their bidding: smuggle drugs to a mafia boss (more over the top clothing, acting, goons as bodyguards, the whole mafia don in a den act) because he wants to save the annoying girl. Why did he want to save the girl?
You regret asking.
Well, here comes the back story, He's living incognito because he has given up a life of killing for the government. His pregnant wife was killed by unknowns and he was shot as well. Nd he has developed an empathy for the kid. We know all this because the cops who are chasing the drugs and the villains want to know his equation with the baddies and see that his files are classified. Before you groan silently, the cops give you a chance to groan real loud.
Their plan is to get the government to de-classify the information on Handsome is something like this: Let us send an email from 'this' computer to the US President. The mail reads: I Kill You. The CIA will then ask the Indian government to share the information about the writer of the email. The Goa cops will then intercept that mail and get to know who he is.
If that's not hilarious, the action is. Now John Abraham has an awesome ripped body. But we've seen the bullet extracting scene in movies since the 70s. We've seen the shootouts in men's bathrooms in many hundred movies. We've even seen good guy imprisoned by bad cops making an escape by beating everyone up. We've even seen comical fights (funny hero like Jackie Chan bashing a frying pan on the big ugly goon, the frying pan is dented but nothing happens to the big bad guy). The only thing interesting in the film is the continuous stabbing with the knife and the throat slashing in order to add gore to the fights.
The really cool scene for which the film gets a half star is when John Abraham and the kid are eating fish curry and the child's mum comes looking for her. The child does not want to go, and hides under the table. John Abraham extends his foot and pushes the plate away (the child catches it) so that the mother then sees only one plate on the table and concludes the kid is not with 'Handsome'.
Nishikant Kamat the director (shows up on screen as the main villain) and all his goons try hard to sound thuggish. But everyone speaks in such thick Marathi accents, you wonder why the film is set in Goa. It's a sound effects heavy film. So you will come away with a headache and the amplified stabbing sounds, 'Khach-khach-khach-khach' (yes, like apples being sliced!) stay with you longer than reasons why Handsome has a 'code word' Rocky assigned to him.
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