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.