Review of Tashan (2008) by Adesh P — 23 Mar 2009

Tashan raises one general and one very important social question;.

1.) Did they not read the script before filming?

2.) Why none of the audience filed a PIL against it?

Its not only a complete waste of time, its an outright assault to senses. But even in this banal, structurally fractured, criminally boring, confused, insipid opera of foolishness and a grammatically wrong film you have to be a churl to not give credit to fabulous costumes, editing, sound and camerawork. Also, to a certain extent, its Kareena Kapoor and Akshay Kumar who manage to save the day. While music and production design like most other things are, most of the times, a sheer embarrassment.

But Dil dance mare, in particular is very well written, shot, choreographed and performed.

There is one more thing Iâ??d really like to talk about. There is one very important ploy that its narrative uses, of changing perspectives. The film starts with Saif, switches to Akhay and then finally to Kareena. It indeed does sound interesting. But then years ago, there was another film called Dazed and Confused made by Linklater and that also used the same ploy of constantly switching point of views. It was clearly an experiment at that time too and one can definitely argue whether it was successful at it or not but one cant deny that at least there was some method to it. But here in Tashan, it all seems very uneven and a mishmash. Also the idea of characters talking to camera to express their point of view is very old, boring and in this case, verbose too.

In all, I guess this film is just another case of a director forgetting that there will be more films heâ??ll get to make in future and all the ideas, especially when they donâ??t get along too well and are counter productive, shouldnâ??t be used in one single film.