Bangistan Review

What is it all about?

A ‘Bomb Do Pyaza’ of an idea gone ‘kachori’. Movie critic turned filmmaker Karan Anshuman’s first attempt to deliver cinema with substance keeps safe distance from making any cinematic or satirical sense.

Poking fun at all his most likely inspirations - a Bangladeshi cab driver in Poland Tamim Hussain (Chandan Roy Sanyal - decent) calls himself Citizen Hussain (The iconic Orson Welles Citizen Kane), a cop calls himself Wai Kar Wong (yes you guessed it right - Wong Kar Wai.. yes you did it again.. Wong Kar Wai ji’s ‘I Saw The Devil’ inspired Mohit Suri’s ‘Ek Villian’), the gig at Polanski, The unwanted and flat tribute to Robert De Niro’s ‘You Talking To Me’ scene from Taxi Driver is what Karan’s debut as a filmmaker is all about.

Undeniably Karan had an RDX of an idea in ‘Bangistan’ of a spoofy, goofy, satirical blast on terrorism and the religious state of mind on paper.

A fictional island called Bangistan - the north belonging to Muslims and the south belonging to Hindus. Kam Tamam a Muslim extremist organization and Maa Ka Dal a Hindu fanatic group deploy their die hard loyalists Hafeez Bin Ali (Riteish Deshmukh) and Chaturvedi (Pulkit Samrat), as suicide bombers to disrupt the world peace conference in Poland. Both Hafeez and Chaturvedi swap their identity from Hindu to Muslim and vice versa to complete their mission and meet in Poland.

A spark of brilliance is noticed when a Russian bomb dealers shows his collection videos calling them potatoes to Hafeez .. and a Chinese shows his range of explosives to Chaturvedi.. that’s all the giggle in this misfired satirical that travels from being goofy to parodish, repetitive, over the top, boring and ends as a banal cinema.

Alas Karan’s ‘pumpkin’ of an idea boosting two other writers apart from the helmer - Puneet Krishna and Sumit Purohit results in a ‘potato’ quality finish that lacks humour and goes melodramatic and preachy.

A spark of brilliance mentioned earlier and Kumud Mishra (seems to be inspired from Paresh Rawal in Bannerjee’s ‘Oye Lucky Oye’) are the only survivors in this ‘blast of boredom’ called Bangistan which shockingly fails to exploit the ‘Lai bhari’ talent of Riteish Deshmukh and Pulkhit’s loving ‘Fukrey’ appeal.

Production values are top notch but what they were at Excel and Junglee smoking while shooting this beard, weird ho hum

And yes I haven’t forgotten the lovely Jacqueline but the makers have.. she must be ‘kick’ing herself for appearing in 3 scenes that includes a song  which goes like Saturday Night.. Full tight!..

Ironically ‘Bangistan’ is such ‘mind blowing’ that any night a full tight Jack Sparrow, Devdas or Keshto Mukherjee might find their senses.. hic hic hiye.. hic hic hiye..