this is the latest film by vishal bhardwaj, the director of the excellent maqbool (macbeth adapted to the bombay underworld) and the pretty good omkara (othello adapted to rural/small-town politics in u.p). those earlier films were more “serious”, not quite mainstream bollywood. kaminey, on the other hand, is pitched directly at the mainstream but is pretty damned good anyway. it stars shahid kapoor as a set of twins, one a petty criminal, one a do-gooder, whose lives get intertwined with corrupt cops and drug dealers (the bad brother) and corrupt, thuggish politicians (the good brother). a case of mistaken identity brings the two narratives into collision and mayhem ensues. it’s a stylish film–though there are a few unnecessary artsy flourishes, and the editing and cinematography are great. the performances are top-notch. particularly good are the two primary villains–amol gupte as bhope, the politician-thug; and tenzing nima (a newcomer) as tashi, a cool but ruthless druglord.
the subtitles are acceptable (i watched this via netflix’s instant streaming instant play and so couldn’t turn them off) though they tend to blunt some of the cruder bits of dialog for some reason. also, unfortunately, subtitles can’t preserve one of the most interesting things about the film: the way in which it presents multilinguality. though the large bulk of the film is in hindi, characters speak bengali and marathi as well. on the other hand, the subtitles make all of the dialog accessible to the english language viewer, whereas in india, where i assume the film was released without subtitles, the bengali and marathi dialog would have sailed over the heads of most hindi viewers. this multlinguality is interesting, not only because it is a more accurate representation of the heteroglossia of indian society, but also because the film is posing a critique of chauvinistic marathi identity-politics, in particular the anti-migrant “mumbai for marathis” politics represented by bhope. one of the best exchanges of dialog in the film comes late when one of the twins presents a metaphor of sugar sweetening milk to bhope only to have it cynically ripped apart by his chief henchman.
and speaking of cynicism, the film has been accused of plenty of it, and amorality too, in sections of the indian media. an academic has further taken it to task for exploiting and caricaturizing lower-class lives for the pleasure of the globalized classes. this means mike will love it.