Jannat Movie Review

Cast: Emran Hashmi, Sonal Chauhan, Samir Kochar, Javed Shaikh, Vishal Malhotra
Director: Kunal Deshmukh
Ratings: ***

More, more, more...The motto of motorised materialism seems to have overtaken contemporary life. Everyone wants the good things in life in the shortest time possible. The acquisitive spirit has seldom been defined with such economy of storytelling as in "Jannat".

Not surprisingly, a lot of Mahesh Bhatt's latest exposition on the excesses of materialism is shot in shopping malls, expensive restaurants and posh stadiums where money flows like unadulterated honey.

And when our hero sees the love of his life staring at a diamond ring he walks into the showroom and breaks the display window.

Get what you want by force and forget those homilies that papa preached at the dinner table about the virtues of honesty. "Honest money means hard work and little reward," says a wry character in "Jannat". He's obviously not read Ayn Rand.

Sanjay Masoom's scathing dialogues scamper across the film's lush skyline to create a language of wannabes who would stop at nothing to get that new villa on the Gold Coast.

Let's then applaud one more moral fable from Bhatt's sensible stable.

"Jannat" tells us to waste not, want 'nought'...By all means covet the zeroes on that pay cheque. But don't forget that if you run after the zeroes your life ends up in the zero zone.

Forty years ago in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's "Satyakam" Dharmendra had refused to succumb to all the temptations of materialism that were strewn in his path to salvation. Lying dying of cancer, he's asked by his wife: "Finally what do you have to say about your life of integrity?"

"I've lived," Dharmendra says at the end of "Satyakam".

Can Emran Hashmi (playing the small-time wheeler dealer who turns into a cricket match-fixer, criminal and moral transgressor) turn around before his gruesome death to say he has lived?

Yes, Arjun (Emran) has loved. At heart "Jannat" is a dark tragic love story. While the girl's innocence and the man's corruptible countenance resembles "Kalyug", the whole dilemma of the beloved being instrumental in destroying the criminal hero echoes "Gangster".

Both "Kalyug" and "Gangster" were superior in content and treatment.

Debutant director Kunal Deshmukh cannot escape the clichés on existentialism that have come to surround Bhatt's cinema...the morally conflicted Shakespeare-meets-James Hadley Chase hero, the independent-minded strong and value-based heroine, the hero's trusted and loyal friend (Purab Kohli in "Woh Lamhe", Shaad Randhawa in "Awaarapan", and now Vishal Malhotra), the ideologue father whose principles are held up to ridicule until the hero discovers the hard way that dad's remedies are the best to deal with ethical ambivalence.

These lingering leitmotifs get a renewed, if not luminous, life in every Bhatt production. But "Jannat" lacks the resonance and staying power of some of Bhatt's earlier films about crime and punishment from "Naam" to "Gangster".

Cleverly and cautiously Deshmukh's film brings in the cricket element, which has audiences ignoring the pitfalls of rejuvenating Bhatt's age-old iconoclasm.

The stock footage of real-life cricket matches are used well and sparingly in the plot. The stress, as ever in Bhatt's saga of our stressful times, is on the clashing colliding crisscross of human relationships.

Emran's father's sequence in his son's luxurious bathroom where he comments on the basket of soaps is a whammer.

But the wheeling dealing in the greenroom and clubs with cricketers of indeterminate nationality behaving like debauched goblins smacks of amteurishness. The murder of the Australian coach turns the Bob Woolmer scandal into a climactic add-on. May his soul rest in peace.

But what stays is the protagonist's passion for money as opposed to his love for Zoya (Sonal Chauhan). The end-game where the engagement ring is juxtaposed against the gun is arresting in more ways than one.

While Emran interprets the over-reaching get-rich-quick schemer's part with a native cunning, one misses that suave and smooth transitions in the character that perhaps a Naseeruddin Shah or even a Shahid Kapoor would bring on the table.

But Emran is charming enough to let the protagonist's journey from a chawl to Cape Town look interesting. He's constantly getting author-backed roles of the angst-ridden social outcast (a garage-sale version of Amitabh Bachchan) which he plays with a fair amount of sensitivity.

Debutant Sonal has much more to do than be the decorative doll she seems equipped to be.

She's the weakest link in the powerplay where the politics of the playing field is extended to an engrossing exposition of greed atonement.

Some of the supporting cast, especially Jawed Shaikh as the cricketing don and Abhimanyu as his silent henchman, come to grips with their characters better than you would expect in a film that has scant space for anyone except the man who would be king.

Johansson, Penelope share Hot Lebian Kiss

Two of Hollywood's most lusted after actresses Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz are set to steam up screens with a lesbian kiss.

The scene, set in a red-tinted photography dark room, features in Woody Allen's upcoming release Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Later, the women have a menage a trois with Oscar winning actor Javier Bardem.

This is not the first time that Cruz is sharing an on screen lesbian kiss.

Allen's muse Johansson plays Christina, one of two American backpackers in Spain who get involved with a painter (Bardem), and his jealous ex-girlfriend, played by Penelope Cruz.

"It is extremely erotic. People will be blown away and even shocked," the Daily Telegraph quoted a source, as telling the New York Post's Page Six column.

Cruz and Bardem's on screen chemistry was more than just fine acting - the pair sparked a romance while filming the movie Barcelona in their native Spain last year.

There are even rumours Bardem, who won an Oscar this year for his role in No Country For Old Men, proposed to the actress during a recent trip to France.

Both Johansson, who became engaged to actor Ryan Reynolds last week, and her costar Cruz are expected to attend the Cannes Film Festival this week to promote the new film.

Ben Affleck regrets rubbing JLo's butt

Hollywood actor Ben Affleck has revealed that he regrets starring in ex-fiancee Jennifer Lopez's music video as it almost killed his career.

The 35-year-old star had made a cameo in the Latina star's music video 'Jenny From The Block', where he was seen rubbing sun tan lotion onto Lopez's bottom.

"If I have a big regret, it was doing the music video. But that happened years ago. I've moved on," Contactmusic quoted Afflick, as saying.

However, the Pearl Harbour star insists he isn't blaming Lopez for his career's downfall.

"It not only makes me look like a petulant fool (to blame Lopez), but it surely qualifies as ungentlemanly? For the record, did she hurt my career? No," he added.

Affleck started dating Lopez in 2002. The pair got engaged in 2002 but called off their relationship in 2003.

I d Become Lesbian For Angelina: Hayden

Hayden Panettiere has revealed that she doesnt mind being considered a lesbian and admitted that she’d love to have a gay affair with Angelina Jolie.

The Heroes star, who plays indestructible Claire Bennet in the BBC2 sci-fi hit, has been dogged by rumours she is a lesbian.

The 18-year-old insists that she doesn’t care if the press think she’s gay, because she would happily date a string of Hollywood’s leading ladies.

“That’s fine with me. If I’m going to be linked with someone, I could do an affair with Angelina Jolie, Jessica Alba or Charlize Theron, The Sun quoted her, as saying.

“And Kate Beckinsale is gorgeous. There are so many beautiful girls,” he added.

Cindy Crawford has Turned Wild

Cindy Crawford has revealed that she couldn't have fun during her modelling days, as she was "too boring.

The stunner believes that she missed out on regular fun in her days of glory as a supermodel, as she was too straight-laced and sensible. However, Crawford claims that it"s now that she has explored her wilder side, after marrying and becoming a mum.

The former catwalk queen, who became one of the biggest beauties on the planet in her 20s, claims that she was a geek then and missed out on the sex and drugs her model friends were indulging in.

"I regret that I wasn't wilder. I was working and I was nervous. I was the one in the corner with the book, being responsible," Contactmusic quoted her, as saying. However, she insists that those days are behind us and she is much more wilder now than she was in her 20s.

"I can be wild now. I'll sometimes dance on a table for my husband and his friends. But not naked, those days are gone," she said.

I dated Cruise when he was just a shy boy

Cher says she dated Tom Cruise when he was just a "shy boy."

The singer-actress discussed the relationship on an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" taped Saturday in Las Vegas before a crowd of 4,000 people, according to Harpo Productions.

The episode, which also features Tina Turner, will air May 8.

Winfrey plans to feature Cruise during episodes airing Friday and Monday. She told Cher that when she was at Cruise's Colorado home recently, the actor stressed that Winfrey should say hello to Cher for him.

"So how much of a date was that?" Winfrey asked, according to advance remarks released Wednesday by Harpo Productions.

"Oh, that was a long date," Cher said. "Really. I lived in his apartment."



Cher is now 61, Cruise 45. "He was so wonderful. And I was so crazy about him," said Cher, an Oscar, Emmy and Grammy winner who has released 25 albums that have sold more than 100 million copies. "And he was so, like, different. He was a shy boy. He didn't have any money."

It was unclear from the remarks released by Harpo exactly when the relationship took place.