Movie Review: Dum Maaro Dum – A tedious psychedelic trance

By Jyotsna Kumar

He picked up from Dev Anand left off ages back in Hare Rama Hare Krishna but was not able to render justice to it. Dum Maaro Dum is a psychedelic thriller that revolves around these three components DRUGS, SEX and LOVE. And each character is a victim of these. Dum Maaro Dum could have been a thriller-on-rocks only if it contained right doses of thriller.

The movie starts with the first victim called Lorry (Prateik Babbar) who is a teenage goalie, and is all set to hit the U.S University but only if he had a scholarship. And on the contrary his well-off girlfriend (Anaitha Nair) gets a scholarship and is all set to fly. So far so good, but was missing in this plot is detailing- no body knows which university and course the couple applied for? Anyway, moving on the dejected boyfriend is getting restless; his insecurity is showing up after all his girlfriend is going away for four years. He should make fast-money; or else he'll loose her forever, and so he's swindled by his evil friend Ricky who wants to use him as a carrier to smuggle some dope into the States. Things go wrong at the last minute at the Goa airport and Lorry ends up as a victim of Drug Mafia.

Enter victim number two- ACP Vishnu Kamath (Abhishek Bachchan) a corrupt cop who's changed man now after an accident. ACP Vishnu Kamath past is bit dodgy: A cop who crashes his car into a drug addict or was it the other way around is hard to tell. Anyway, the car accident kills his wife and child immediately and so he hates drugs. He's assigned a job by the Chief of Minister of Goa to flush the drug business out of Goa. In his first attempt only he gets a big lead- by undertaking the victim number one into his custody.

Now enters the third and fourth victim-Joki (Rana Daggubati) and Zoey (Bipasha Basu). Joki was an earnest musician who can woo any women with his music and has an eye for Zoey. Zoey is an ambitious air-hostess who can go to any length to make her dreams come true. She is raised by a hippy. Both are deeply in love with each other but Zoey ambition takes another flight. She's introduced to the Lorsa Biscuta a.k.a Biscuit(Aditya Pancholi) who controls the drug trade in Goa and accepts his offer to help her out with her career. As a result of which she pays a heavy price for it. Joki however, is also a dear friend of Lorry and when he's taken into custody by Kamath, Joki goes all out to prove his innocence. He's desperate to safeguard his friend Lorry from becoming another victim like Zoey.

Right from the first frame the movie delivers what one expects out of it- Ecstasy! But post interval the movie takes a nose dive as all the characters well etched out in the first half are scattered into different places. Rohan Sippy should be applauded for his visual sense- sexy segues, glitzy, glossy frames, hyperstylised reminiscence of each character's past, psychedelic colour shot in ultra-slow motion frames. But amidst of all he looses his focus on the screenplay. The pointless hallucination of Kamath's past and his family, the endless love saga amongst the couples should have been given mileage only to the extent of reasoning.

The mindless action sequences and the third degree torture by Abhishek Bachchan leads onto nothing. Instead makes you wonder that Idea 3G campaign works mysteriously for junior Bachchan as he can take on the entire mafia alone. While his assistants (one is named Mercy) are simply there to take orders. A piece of word for the writer Shridhar Raghvan and the director Rohan Sippy- when your movie has distinct characters and each has a different story to tell keep the dialogues simple and easy.  In an attempt to look edgy and sound stylish, half of the dialogues in the film were difficult to decipher.

Performances wise nothing spectacular barring Rana and Prateik as you can feel the tension on their faces right through the film. Abhishek looked and acted the same like he did in Dhoom, Game. The title track of the film Dum Maaro Dum pushes the level of ecstasy to its peak as Deepika looked smoked- red- hot in this track. All in all, Dum Maaro Dum squanders a tremendous plot up in a white smoke. It'll be long wait now for the movie buffs since the cricket fever, to catch an interesting piece of narration on the screen.

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