Review: Kai poche! (Brothers…For Life) (2013)
Cast: Amit Sadh, Sushant Singh Rajput, Raj Kumar
Director: Abhishek Kapoor
Country: India
Genre: Drama
Official Trailer: Here
Editor’s Notes: Kai poche! opens in select cinemas Friday February 22nd.
Kai poche!, the third feature from co-writer/director Abhishek Kapoor tries to tell a very simple story. Three friends, Ishaan ‘Ish’ (Sushant Singh Raiput), Omi (AmitSadh) and Govind ‘Govi’ (Rai Kumar Yaday) are set on establishing a training center for local cricket players in an attempt to foster the next generation of Indian cricket players. This plot alone is not enough to sustain the 135 minute runtime, so there are multitudinous subplots. One is a burgeoning love story between the shy math teacher Govi and Ishaan’s sister Vidya, another is the burgeoning political career of Omi at the side of his politician uncle who fronts them the money for their first training center and one in which Ish is attempting to get a ‘natural’ cricket playing child to realize his potential and convince the kid’s family that this training is worthwhile.
The subplots really help undermine this film, instead of bolstering it. The basic plot and the interaction between the friends would have been enough to sustain a 90-100 minute, tightly centered film, but the addition of all these subplots takes away from the central story and end up making most of the film irrelevant. The love story is cute but drawn out and unnecessary. That one basically serves to get Vidya in the story as the primary voice of reason when the friends fight. I think that subplot is the one that could have served the story better if it had been better developed, but unfortunately the film takes up subplots then forgets about them, then picks them up, then drops them again like they were there for filler.
…plot alone is not enough to sustain the 135 minute runtime, so there are multitudinous subplots.
Omi’s subplot is the worst of all because it ends up hijacking the film and claiming the last third of the story. There is an incident wherein many people from the trio’s hometown are out of town on a pilgrimage organized by Omi’s uncle for political purposes and these pilgrims are killed in a fire. One political party blames another and goes on a lust for blood. I should also note that the cricket ‘natural’ Ali’s father is a member/leader (it is never clearly stated) of the oppositional political party from Omi’s uncle, setting the sides against each other. I have learned that despite referring to each other as political parties, they are actually Hindus and Muslims and it was the Hindis that massacred the Muslims in the final onslaught.
Ish’s subplot, convincing Ali’s father of the child’s talent and the coaching and fostering of that talent, is the only one that has direct and important inference to the main plot. This one is actually good and important; the trouble is the way it is smashed in with Omi’s and the violence of the ending after the hijacking of the film by his plot.
With all that going on, there is also an inherent structural problem with the film. There are numerous throw-away scenes that could have been left out that end up dragging the story down. Everything ends up being a vignette instead of coherent scenes blending together to make one film. There are so many disparate elements going on and not enough time spent on any of them, which is a true detriment given the film’s length. Just when one plot has been sustained for a while and you get into that and think the film has settled on that story to tell, it changes gears and you get something else that you have to work on to get invested in. The editing forces you to hit the emotional reset button too many times during the film due to not blending the stories together better. In the hands of a better editor, this film could have been much better. I am not saying it would have been a great film that would have set the world on fire, but better. There was another editing error made in this film. There seemed to be more montages than Eisenstein and Pudvokin combined. So much of what could have been character building scenes were montaged away. Most things that happen to the characters in the first two-thirds of the film are solved by a montage.
Just when one plot has been sustained for a while and you get into that and think the film has settled on that story to tell, it changes gears and you get something else that you have to work on to get invested in.
The script has a lot to do with that structural problem. It’s based on a novel and was tackled by no less than four writers, including the director. There is always pressure on screenwriters when they are adapting a well-regarded novel. I do not know if this novel is well regarded in India or not, but it was popular enough to make it to the screen, so Kapoor probably wanted to include as many elements of the book as possible. The result is that no decisions were made and if there were, they were bad ones. The trouble is that the writers did not trust their characters to carry the film. It feels that they added complications and tragedies in order to complicate the lives of these characters because they did not feel the characters were strong enough to be the focal point they should have been. They relied on plot over character and in a film of this nature, which was the wrong decision. They decided to make their characters one-dimensional, possibly two, and ignore development of these characters with some exceptions but not many. Govi comes out of his shell a little, but remains the quiet math nerd, Omi moves from not wanting anything to do with politics to a senior member of the party and turns kind of Michael Corleone in his move into the inner circle of the party. Ish is the irresponsible lay-about who starts to care about Ali more than himself. These developments happen, but they are all cookie-cutter developments. If the writers had allowed their characters to develop and show the business they start grow instead of diverting our attention all over the place and let these subplots grow naturally out of the character developments instead of having these plots thrust upon them and they are forced to adapt to them.
There was potential for this film. The finished product is like a diamond just hewn from the mine before the surrounding coal has been taken off of it long before the master jewel cutter has put hammer and chisel to it to form it into something beautiful. Again, with the basic plot, this was never going to be much more than a coming of age film, but sometimes those can be fantastic when the characters are allowed to grow.
Throughout the film, I was reminded of Spike Lee’s early films. Not in edginess but in the attempt to throw in as much as what was on his mind as possible whether it works or not just because he was not sure if he would get the opportunity to make another film. I admit that I am not well versed in Indian politics, so the political aspect may play better to Indian audiences who are, but to an international audience, this seems like a statement that does not resonate outside the community it was intended for like the drug/brother subplot in Lee’s Jungle Fever (1991). That derailed an otherwise strong film and felt like it was there simply because Lee wanted to make a statement on drugs and their effect on the African-American community. Using this plot to underscore the Hindi murder of Muslims seems like one or the other is tacked on to put a human face on both sides of the tragedy. I feel it would have been simpler to just tell the story of the violence and making good characters on both sides would have made the story compelling and would not have been so disjointed.
The acting is functional, and in places very good, but nothing stood out.
Kapoor functions better as a director than as a writer. He stages his scenes well and makes judicious use of the moving camera. He does not direct with any particular flair, but he does a sturdy job and helps his actors get what they can out of the material they were provided with. The acting is functional, and in places very good, but nothing stood out. Kapoor was able to film and talk about cricket, which I understand absolutely nothing about, interesting and exciting despite my not having any clue how it is played and what any of the match talk meant.
In the end, Kai poche! was a letdown. The trailer was promising, but due to the structural issues, superfluous plot meanderings and an excess of total footage, the film is undermined from within. With a better script, surer editor and a director that was not afraid to cut some scenes he liked but didn’t help the film, this could have been good. If Kapoor had focused on either the three friends or the religious/political turmoil it would have been more centered, and he could have gotten two films instead of one overlong one. Kapoor may be a filmmaker to watch as he moves forward, but I think this one will be known as an ambitious failure.
Related Posts
Review: 42 (2013)
DVD Review: A Man Escaped (1956)
Review: To the Wonder (2012)
Review: Upstream Color (2013)
Review: The Company You Keep (2013)
