New York. Really?

NEW YORK
(*ing: Neil Nitin Mukesh, John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, Irrfan Khan and a bunch of smirking, scowling firang extras)
DISCLAIMER: If you haven’t seen the movie and determined to watch it, then please don’t go any further because I don’t want to deprive the film industry of your hard earned money. Also, I may give away whatever little twist this movie has to offer.
I am desperately trying to like the movie. It’s been more than two and a half months since a half-decent movie got released (well, there was one delightful ‘99’). But my best efforts to get involved in the movie, to feel for the protagonists are in vain. In summary, I find ‘New York’ to be a superficial, shallow movie.
At the outset, the story has been set in post-9/11 New York but as I settled down in my rattling seat (in a post-apocalypse single screen in Surat), I realized that I had seen this story elsewhere. At a superficial level the movie is indeed about the way Muslims have been treated in the USA post 9/11 but at a more basic level the movie is just about a mole being planted in a criminal organization. Now, where have we seen that? Vikram Bhatt’s Footpath, Hansal Mehta’s Chhal and numerous other equally forgettable movies. Kabir Khan believes that by merely setting the story in the post-9/11 scenario, he would be able to make a profound statement on the society.
New York does not engage me emotionally. And the three lead non-actors are NOT the only reasons. For a topical movie to work, dialogues have to be top grade. Here, the dialogues are cringe-worthy. There are justifications abound for everyone’s non-American accent in the movie. I could have overlooked it but in one scene it’s almost like the director is apologizing for Irrfan Khan’s hinterland-desi accent (Irrfan, incidentally turns an indifferent, bored performance). Movie also suffers from a jarring background score. The composer seems to be giving the score for a MTV music video. Script also does not answer many obvious questions any sane mind would raise. Abbas Mastan’s Race seems to be more logical in comparison. Katrina Kaif goes around cheerfully, knowing fully well that her husband is planning a terror attack…and HOPING that he will give up his wrong ways. FBI, fully aware about the plot being hatched, waits for ‘something’. Nobody knows what they were waiting for. Well, on my part I was waiting for the end credits.
Kabir Khan disappoints big time. His last outing, Kabul Express, was at least a road movie, if nothing else. That movie also failed to make any profound statement on Afghanistan, yet it entertained. And it was original. This time around Kabir chooses to lift two sequences from two brilliant movies. John’s introduction scene is lifted frame by frame from Chariots of Fire (the race in the college building) and later he lifts the tense cop-fondling-the-black-lady scene from Crash. The latter scene has no bearing on the main story but it looked like Kabir Khan was impressed by the possibilities that one scene offered and chose to shoot it. It must have been retained because this is probably the only poignant scene even if it is a straight lift. It kills me to see that even these new-age directors are not above cheap plagiarism.
In nutshell, I guess Kabir Khan has taken his nascent reputation of ‘issue-based’ filmmaker too seriously (he seems to be going the Madhur Bhandarkar way) and trying too hard to live up to this image. It will do him good if he takes it easy next time and spare any such serious issue. For YRF, all I can say is that it is embarrassing to admit that our most prestigious production house is behind a movie which turns the whole issue into an unintentional joke.
Skip it.