MOVIE REVIEW
BICYCLE KICK
Director: Debasish Sen Sharma, Sumit Das
Writer: Debashish Sen Sharma, Sagnik Roy Chowdhury
Cast: Sourav Bandyopadhyay, Ridhima Ghosh, Ritwick Chakraborty, Sumit Samaddar, Dwijen Bandopadhyay, Soumitra Chatterjee, Monalisa Datta Bhowmik
Runtime: 110 Minutes
Strength: Acting, editing
Weakness: Viewers not into sports unlikely to enjoy the message
Showbiz rating: 3/5
Plot: Rubayet, a 19-year old boy, stays at his cousin's. Rubayet is unassumingly quiet, reticent, shy, lonesome and in a way, scattered. A jubilant life in Kolkata bubbles around Rubayet who remains distanced. Moti is a football coach who feels an urgency to reach out to this shy, unconfident guy, to find out why there is no stir in his life. He starts searching for another self of Rubayet. Moti da weaves a mind game to cure this boy. For Moti da, the journey at the same time becomes a path that leads him to dig into his own self.
Review: Ritwik Chakraborty's performance is vital to the movie where Rubayat, the main character, is not the best of actors. Others play to their characters well. The first half of the movie is interesting enough to keep the viewers seated to learn more about the two main characters. Once both character's mysterious life is revealed the movie loses its momentum a bit. The film could have been cut at several places in the second half, making it end sooner and making the movie more enjoyable. The extra dimension of the film is the psychological development of the character as Rubayet fights depression to achieve his objects. One might enjoy the movie if one can ignore the little flaws here and there; there is definitely a good story with a strong message for viewers to enjoy.
Reviewed by Zia Nazmul Islam
***
47 RONIN
Directed by: Carl Rinsch
Written by: Chris Morgan, Hossein Amini
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ko Shibasaki
Run Time: 118 minutes
Strength: Compelling visuals and CGI, action and fight scenes
Weaknesses: Predictable and fault-ridden storyline, and weak story telling
Star Showbiz rating: 2.5/5
PLOT: While hunting in the forest, Lord Asano of Ako and his samurai find a young half-breed and take him with them to live in the castle. Several years later, Lord Asano holds a tournament to welcome the Shogun to Ako. The night after the tournament, Lord Asano is bewitched into hurting Lord Kira of Nagato, and is punished into committing seppuku by the Shogun. Realizing that it was a Lord Kira's evil plot, the samurais and the half-breed sets out for revenge against the Shogun's order.
REVIEW: “47 Ronin,” an old Japanese fable about a group of rogue samurai, starts off with a lot of promise. Keanu Reeves returns to a high potential role after a long time, as Kai – the gaijin who lives amongst samurai. With demonic powers, witches and mythical creatures thrown into an age-old story of dedication and loyalty, this is Japan the way J.R.R Tolkein would have imagined it. Keanu Reeves was great, but the plot was not – neither was how the story was told. The forced circumstantial twists, which largely rely on the witch's powers to fill in the gaps in the storyline, were far from convincing.
One might say that Director Carl Rinsch couldn't find a balance between the classic Eastern tale and the more Western touches like a CGI dragon and the addition of an American star, Keanu Reeves, to a mostly Japanese cast. Reeves, who hasn't opened a box office blockbuster since the 2008 remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” had expressed his worries in playing Kai, and feared that the character wouldn't feel integrated into the main arc of the story. Not to mention the disaster-ridden post production stage which delayed the film's release by a year from its original launch date.
With fantastic visuals, surreal imagery and costumes, and dramatic fights, 47 Ronin is a great painting, but a good movie it is not that. It's a fitting conclusion for a big-budget adaptation that has left Universal deeply in the red, having suffered one of the costliest box office flops of 2013.
Reviewed By Zakir Mushtaque
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