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The Ultimate Paisa Vasool movies series: International Khiladi
As soon as we finished watching this film at the Cauvery theater
outside IISc in Bangalore, we wanted to go up to the projectionist and
pay him a baksheesh for
having had the guts to have screened this mahaflop of a movie. But it took us
too long to finish laughing, and our sides hurt so bad that we just had
to go back to the institute.
International
Khiladi is without a doubt an unintentionally bad serious movie
- the kind that the makers intend to be very very serious but because
of various factors like lack of plot, bad (over- or ham) acting, cheesy
dialogues, cliched characters and over-ambitious special effects, it
turns out to be a disaster that can only be laughed at. But, given a
choice between watching a movie like International Khiladi
and excuses for cliched sentimental tearjerkers like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam
(which Bhavtosh called a "Mangalsutra
comedy") or irritating musicals like Taal or Bombay, or even
"family-oriented" movies that might feature families settled abroad
just to make money in the overseas market - DDLJ and HAHK, for
example, I would gladly watch Akki make an ass of himself in International Khiladi.
I genuinely happen to LIKE Akshay Kumar, because he is one of the few
actors who are soooo cool. Actors like him and Sunil Shetty look
totally KHOOL until they open their mouth and say something in their
awesomely bad voice. They are the Bollywood versions of Arnie, who I
believe is one of the (unintentionally) funniest action stars ever.
Khiladi as
definitely a good film, not only because of the music, but also because
Anant Mahadevan (an ex-Khalsaite like me!) turns out to be the killer
(oops, did I ruin it for anyone?!)... Then things started to get boring
with the Khiladi series.
(not boring enough to make me want to change the channel if they played
any of those movies, though!) But International Khiladi is
in a class of its own. It was the rebirth of slick, the second coming
of the funk. Hahahaha. There are certain ingredients that make the
perfect bad serious movie, and it had every such angle covered:
(a) Ham actors - a very important ingredient, and this movie definitely
goes the extra mile - you never know when you will need more ham acting
in the movie, so make sure you pack it extra dense with them!
Ham-acting leviathan Mukesh Khanna joins lesser-known giants like Vivek
Shauque (you might remember him from Jaspal Bhatti's Flop Show, where
he did a pretty good job with comedy) and Rajat Bedi. The latter two
complemented each other very well, I thought. VS was overplaying his
role, with his high intonation and pseudo-Punju accent while RB was the
resident block of plywood, registering the entire range of emotions
right from apathy to... well, apathy, on his face. These were the major
contributors towards the ham element, there were other mahaan cameos by STILL lesser-known
giants, like Subbi Raaj (from the 80s teleserial, Paying Guest)
(b) Johnny Lever. I hate him.
(c) Lack of plot disguised by semi-lavishness of sets and disguises -
another essential ingredient in the making of a bad serious movie is
the Trojan Plot Horse - it has the outward semblance of a smart plot
but on slight inspection turns out to an army consisting of tons of
bullshit. You let the Trojan Plot Horse into your city, thinking it to
be geniuine, but when you least expect it (or after the first song,
whichever happens sooner) it opens up and suddenly that isn't
yesterday's dal-chawal you
are smelling. This movie revolves around orphan-turned-gangster, Devraj
(Akshay Kumar) who has been brought up by Mukesh Khanna's character,
who fills the role of the Mandatory Muslim Element, even with a
stereotypical name like Rahim Chacha. The movie begins with an
international crime syndicate (consisting of random people picked from
the streets of Bombay, supposedly people from all around the world -
London, Italy and Africa, to be precise) trying to choose their next
leader. Akki is the favourite, but Gulshan Grover plays his mandatory
role as fellow bad guy who doesn't have a good heart, unlike Akki. His
villain's role has the stereotypical oft-repeated phrase, too. In this
movie, that happens to be "Dil garden
garden ho gaya" (oh yeah, I
forgot to mention that his quirk in this movie is to translate some
words from Hindi to English) Akki gets elected as leader of the crime
syndicate, which pisses off Gulshan Grover, who therefore decides to
get rid of Akki in the worst way possible - pit him against three of
the most manly, fiercest blonde female wrestlers ever known to mankind,
obviously imported, but for some unexplained reason possessing the
names Kanta, Shanta and Chameli. Gulshan Grover's character also sleeps
with their legs wrapped around him... yuckk. In the meantime, Akki gets
distracted by the most inane of love stories - Vivek Shauque's sister
(played by the irritating Twinkle Khanna), a journalist. Rajat Bedi
plays an inspector who is Shauque's friend and is secretly in love with
the sister. Now that we have completed the stereotypical love triangle,
let's proceed to the next obvious step.
Something goes wrong, and there's a misunderstanding. There's some
doubt surrounding the mysterious (and ULTIMATELY histrionic) death of
Vivek Shauque, which also occurs at the same inopportune time as Akki's
arrest by the cops and Mukesh Khanna's unfortunate but side-splitting
pre-death monologue and death scene - leading to a trial which can, to
say the least, be described as unnecessary and retarded. There are at
least three versions of the story, one each being told by Akki, Rajat
Bedi and Twinkle. (all versions are consistent about one thing - both
Rajat Bedi and Vivek Shauque are awesomely bad ham actors) Twinkle's
version is the best and the funniest, although it may not be true. It
implicates Akki in her rape and her brother's murder, which Akki
carries out in the most hilarious and coolest of ways. In Twinkle's
flashback (oh yeah, there are loads and loads of flashbacks within
flashbacks in this film, which make it seem like there's a complicated
plot, which just disguises the fact that there's NO plot to begin
with), Akki brings both brother and sister to his squash court, brother
in his baniyaan, bleeding from a few bitch-slaps delivered by Akki's
henchmen, and Akki repeatedly hits him with the squash ball with a few
precise but damaging serves, and when that fails, he rapes Twinkle and
according to her, also gives her cigarette burns when he's done.
Hahahahaha. All this to get access to some stupid floppy disk, it
probably can implicate Akki, I don't remember, it's not important!
Things spin out of control when Subbi Raaj, the DIG or something like
that, lets Akki escape to "clear his name" while Rajat Bedi acting as
an inspector takes Twinkle to Canada (they show them at a store buying
Hindi music, it was something ridiculous, I forget what it was). Will
Akki be able to clear his name? Who really killed Vivek Shauque? Who
wins the Oscar for worst ham actor, VS or RB? Or is it the Pitamaha of ham acting himself,
Mukesh Khanna? Jaanne ke liye,
Bhaiyyon aur Behnon, dekhiye International
Khiladi!
A couple more things that stand out in this film: the song "Lutiya Gaya" has this really bad
coordinate dance step, involving enormous amounts of clapping while
chanting "Jhing lak lak jhing jhing
lak lak", which I took to the United States and made famous
among some Americans. We now repeat that step at every dance party we
go to. People wonder what the hell we are doing.
One of the funniest coolest lines in the film is delivered in Akki's
hoarse voice towards the end of the film. He is being chased by Kanta,
Shanta and Chameli and manages to shake two of them, but the third one
is ready to charge at him like a bull. He's cornered by a pier
supposedly in Canada, but he manages to say, in accented English "There
is no chance" She charges, he sidesteps and she lands in the water.
Akki turns around (and probably tips his sunglasses) and says, "I told
you baby, there is no chance". The title song is sung irreverently by
Anu Malik right from the beginning of the film: "Killadi, killadi, international killadi!"
Trivia: this movie, and quite a few other Khiladi movies
were directed by this person who calls himself Keshu. Who is this, you
ask? Friends, since the 70s, one family has been delivering our yearly
dose of bad cheesy horror flicks. That family is the Ramsay brothers.
Keshu is none other than Keshu Ramsay, the black sheep of this family!
Hahaha, he was probably either embarassed by his family making those
horror flicks, or was embarrassed of being associated with cheesy Khiladi movies
and decided to drop his last name in order to save the family some
ridicule!!
I give this movie an 8.0/10. It is totally worth the money we spent,
and I would definitely watch it again (but not alone!!!)
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