Kabir Singh

Machismo, Roughness, Rugged!

Brooding looks, poker face, bearded while flaunting dark shades and a sturdy bike. Where is the relatability meter to calibrate the Bollywood’s bad boy scale? Ain’t it a 10 pointer already?

Projecting girls drooling over the hard core bad boys (not villains per se) has, for the longest time, been an enduring trend in our Hindi Film Industry and honestly, as much as I would say it seems to look enchanting and bewitching on the celluloid, it rather is beguiling and needs a reality check.

The movie, as it entitles, is the story of Kabir Singh, a genius in his own enterprise with the correct portion of passion and profession, a rank holder in the field of medicine, yet with one shortcoming, a completely impulsive being, with angst and anger rooted deep within and an unpredictable personality while christening himself as ‘a rebel with a cause’. Oozing out confidence, charm and a captivating aura! But, what was the fuel to the fire and who sparked the untouched nerve that could turn his life topsy-turvy with a 180 degree twist from a man of complete honour and intelligence to a point of self destruction?

Revolving around the premise of an incomplete college romance with an insatiable passion yet inevitable external resistance, the flick’s first half is quite an entertainer with the college romance of Kabir Singh and his lady love Preeti Sikka, incorporating some witty dialogues, and unforgettably, some slight pinch of abuses that were supposedly intended to increase the humour quotient.

While the first half would shoot your expectations as did the trailer, the second half is equally dejecting and dismaying with the content. The first half shows the deep sown love in the hearts of Kabir and Preeti, showing the intensity and madness they had for one another so much so that your heart goes out to them to see how indispensable they are for one another.

BUT! There is a big BUT here!

The second half is nothing, but audience watching Kabir Singh drink-smoke on repeat. You would literally have the character pull out a cigarette at every other scene to a point where at a certain extent of intolerance, I wondered what the scenes were ultimately trying to show, for it seems as if all the sequences were centred around his alcoholism and smoking, thereby dismissing the basic logical factor of a solid content that the audience in the current day and age demands.

The movie depicts Kiara Advani’s character as enduring and blindlfoldedly passionate in love without the sanity to discern the unacceptable when the male protagonist mistreats due to his ill behaviour. Amidst the watching experience, you’d sometimes cringe at scenes when the director, intentionally or unintentionally, exemplifies misogyny with an utterly obnoxious demeanour while Kabir slapping Preeti for not talking to her father about their marriage or in yet another scene when he threatens a woman to undress while pointing a knife at her. The audience is witness to scenes which are gratuitous and extremely misleading for the youth to be exposed to.

With movies such as this and a few months old Manmarziyaan, the kind of content is such that it can prove to be detrimental to a youngster’s mind for the lack of knowledge and repercussions with directors and producers, who in the face of showcasing the supposed reality or the so called ‘liking’ of the audience, deceive the audience into delusions of what they are projecting.

While bearing the responsibility of millions of viewers, our directors, producers and content writers ought to acknowledge the fact that movies last a lifetime in the mindsets of people while influencing their psyche and line of thought and those oblivious to this obvious fact ought to contemplate and know the difference between black and white, right and wrong.  

While the flick’s basic idea of projecting a maddening love that breaks the shackles of the society is more than evident and appreciated and for that matter, enriches the power of love in the world, digression from this to projecting a maniacal state with alcoholism and misbehaviour at the cost of showcasing the loss of love is too risky and quite disappointing.

A mere disclaimer of the events being fictional wouldn’t succour enough reasons in the minds of some youngsters who otherwise can get influenced by the bad more that the good.

IMPORTANT! A seminal point that just can’t go without being appreciated about is the stupendous acting of Shahid Kapoor in the movie. It’s so good and surprising to an extent that I was left in awe of this amazing actor our industry and us, as viewers, are fortunate to have and watch at celluloid give such extraordinarily terrific performances. Not only does his performance look honest and real, he completely steals the show when on screen. An unequivocally contrasting personality of reel and real Shahid Kapoor gives an even greater assurance of his skill.  

A movie that hooks you on with incredible music, an incredibly talented cast, yet eventually evolving into an unendurable course makes this movie a mix of both good and bad. While some may have liked the flick, I enjoyed up till the half of it and ultimately the end, with the sequences in the midst that I couldn’t and wouldn’t support.  

So, I review Kabir Singh with 2.5 out of 5 stars!