Kabul Express: Not an express

Finally, a road movie that sticks to the road without getting into unnecessary romantic angles. A movie that ventures into a terrain hitherto unexplored by the hindi filmmakers. A movie that clearly wasn’t shot in studios and chose to capture the original scenery. And finally, a movie that has an ensemble cast comprising of two indians, an Afghan, a paki and a US national. All this and more, ultimately results in a movie, that can be best termed as a damp squid. Being a movie with so many things, apparently, going for it, Kabul Express sadly doesn’t make the grade.
In the name of storyline, Kabul Express doesn’t have much to offer but we are willing to keep that consideration aside for a moment. After all, the treatment/dialogues of a non-existant storyline made a Dil Chahta Hai a classic. So here we have 2 indian journos out in Afghanistan, on a mission to interview a Taliban. The movie is all about their travels and travails as they are led from one adventure to other by a lovable Afghan Khyber. They get captured, are held hostage by a Paki taliban, help a damsel in distress and tackle a donkey suicide bomber.
Kabir Khan, who happens to be the director of this venture, chooses to give it a light-hearted feel with brief moments of emotional turmoil his characters go through. A nice idea but poor execution results in a shallow movie about the situation in that country. The dialogues try hard to be witty and conversational but something is amiss. Arshad Warsi gets the best of the lot and John Abraham is left looking morose and clueless. Of all the actors of this enterprise, his seems to be the worst written role. The female reporter, however, is equally bad. The dialogues explaining the roles played by Pakistan and USA are half-cooked at best and sometimes tend to be very corny sort of stuff. Also, there are inconsitencies in script. When our journos capture the talib, they don’t interview him. They leave him tied and run away. Weren’t they there for an interview?
On the upside, the movie has breathtaking locales (reminds one of Ladakh) and cinematography is top-notch. Few sequences do give you the glimpse into what the movie could have been had it been a little more consistent. The Afghan actor (don’t remember his name) is very charming and it was a pleausre watching him share the screen with our stars. Arshad Warsi is getting repetitive but he is still lovable.
On the whole, its just a time-pass popcorn fare. Nothing great to write home about. For a movie with no story, the dialogues and the treatment of situations are the backbone. Kabul Express, sadly, has neither that would have raised it from being an ordinary movie to a good movie.

The colony

One thing I absolutely hate is comparing old days with today. I always think that when we do that we are being unfair towards today because more often than not, we remember old days with a fondness generally reserved for one’s most cherished treasures but when today becomes yesterday we treasure this memory equally well. I think we all love to live in past.
But this Deepawali, I had gone to my parents’ place after a gap of many years. And as I sit here, I can’t but help remembering those old days. Honestly, I miss them.
I have never been a great enthusiast for crackers and could never appreciate the pointless noise resulting from thousands of crackers in a race for my-cracker-noisier-than-thou. But what I did like was that few of us (4-5 guys) would go around in the colony and try to blast the dustbin away (it anyway did not do much service, people hardly used the poor thing) or put the mightiest of all bombs under the shelter provided at the bus-stop. After few attempts, the harmless thing would give way and I have to admit, it was all part of that guilty pleasure. The rockets were fired horizontally in the drainage and were a good show. There were some crackers called “Lehsun” (english: Garlic) which would burst when you hit them hard on the ground. Then there were Seiko bombs (those innocuous little red things with white thread) which used to be lit-and-throw type. Anaar was another one of those grand things which we used to save for last. And Charkhi used to lure us to dance around in its sparks and sometimes when it would blast prematurely, we would come away with a sheepish grin saying we-knew-it-would-happen. At the end of it all, there would be a confused cloud of smoke hung in the air.
Maa-Papa would visit some of their friends and we children use to wait up for them to come back. My sisters would still ask me to go with my friends and I used to, unfairly, lap up such an offer after some fake reluctance. Friends, sweets, mischief, noise and elaborately decorated blocks – these were synonymous with Deepawali.
That was then. This time, the colony wore a deserted look. More than half the houses were dark and quiet. One by one, all my friends have gone their own way (like I have been gone for more than a decade). People have left this place and those who have replaced them don’t seem to live Deepawali the way we used to. People hardly visit each other and one ends up watching the Deepawali special of Sa-re-ga-ma-pa Little Champs.
Where have all the kids gone with their small pistols? Where was the gang with big crude bombs to challenge the foundations of that old useless dustbin?
The shelter at the bus-stop smiles as it doesn’t feel threatened by those young rascals. It’s possibly the only thing that’s happy, I guess. Maybe the dustbin too.