36 China Town (2006)

From the opening in Goa, this seems to be a film about the relentlessly meaningless problems of the entitled, the rich, the decadent, and the pointless. That is, the fat-cat parasites who live in lavish settings in the resort city of Goa, India. Gambling seems to be one of the main tools for separating fools from their money. As the film progresses one sees other means of separating the money: exotic dancers, gigolos, corruption in the film industry, and so on. Playboy/gigolo Rocky seems to be at the center of everything; we'll see how long that lasts. He seems to enjoy staying with Sonia Chang at 36 China Town, the address/name of her mansion.Meanwhile, in Mumbai, Raj made a music video which a director likes. However, he blew his savings making it, and no longer has the 1 million he needs to bribe the director to get a lead role. Priya thought she had a boyfriend interested in marrying her. Instead, he wants from her father a couple of million to start a business; if the business goes well, perhaps another million will lead to a marriage.Priya and Raj (after a rocky start) 'adopt' a missing child in order to collect a 2.5 million reward. They just have to travel to Goa to collect it from the child's putative mother, Mrs. Sonia Chang. Unfortunately for them, the ultra-wealthy Sonia gets murdered 60 minutes into the film.An alternate thread follows two hopeless gamblers through their ups and downs. Major losses, good-sized wins, bad blows to family fortunes are detailed. Sounds like possible homicide motives.Priya and Raj find 36 China Town. The lights are dim and the doors unlocked. Bad signs? They go in anyway. They discover the body. They call in the murder anonymously, but Raj gets apprehended by Inspector Karan when he goes back to the scene. He manages for a bit to keep Priya and the baby out of it.Meanwhile, one of the gamblers finds body parts in one of his suitcases. Great stuff. Priya gets noticed, then arrested. The gambler and his wife get arrested when the body parts are discovered. Karan sorts things out. He finds the other gambler and asks to talk to his wife as well. Ah, the construction of lies is such a convoluted thing! Kana arrests the second gambler as well.Kana lets his seven suspects go, and tells them not to leave Chinatown's Silver Jubilee.Lovely ending. Three stars goes to four.------Scores-------Cinematography: 8/10 Pleasant to the eye for the most part. The reverse video passages seem both needless and repellent.Sound: 4/10 Yikes, major problems here. First, the subtitles are absent in passages. Second, where they are present, they tend to be sixty or so frames lagging behind the video. Third, conversations tend to have the hollow sound associated with badly miked actors.Acting: 7/10 Reasonable. Liked the performance of Akshaye Khanna, as I did in Aap Ki Khatir.Screenplay: 7/10 Needs compression. The story does move along, but has too much filler.Musical Numbers: 7/10 Mixed bag. The single biggest reason I watch Bollywood films is the presence of good musical numbers. The dancing, the vibrant singing, the frequent humor, and the good-hearted silliness are a treat. In this film, though, there is way too much use of audio filters that cancel out the quality of full frequency singing. The filtering delivers castrated mush; the usual richness is defeated. It's like dropping back to 1960s audio quality. Some of the later ones were better.

I think the film itself was gr8 as i watched it at home wondering it would be a thriller. It wasn't exactly a thriller but still a great film to watch as it contains good songs, good characters, a lot of comedy for entertainment etc. Go and watch this film if you haven't already seen it. You'll definitely be pleased....and why do you have to write minimum of 10 lines, for freaks sake, come on. i don't know what else to writeand now I'm just getting bored because IMDb isn't letting me to submit my commenthow gay is thatflippin hell

Never had any expectations from this movie. Abbas-Mustan are the directors who have taken full responsibility to remake all the Hollywood movies in to Bollywood. Originality is alien to them. Remember Aitraz (Disclosure), Daraar (sleeping with the enemy), Baadshah (Nick of time)etc.. ?? I gave in to the force of my friends to watch this flick. As expected it's not a brilliant movie. Surprisingly, it succeeded in evoking few good laughs here and there. It is stylish and performance are up to the mark. Johnny Lever and Paresh Rawal are superb!!. Just watch the movie for them (Vote 7/10 is just for them). Finally, I was not able to figure out, from which Hollywood flick, was this inspired..any guesses??

36 China Town is Shahid's first movie with Abbas-Mustan.Expectations from Shahid's fans are high: -How is Shahid's performance?After all this is his first movie since December. -How is Shahid and Kareena's chemistry?They both have stated it's better than FidaWell let's answer those questions:Performance is great while the chemistry is getting better.Story: Shahid wants to become an actor.He tells his parents,they get mad,he runs away,meets Kareena and they fall in love.They find a child and they take the child back to their house, 36 China Town.When they get there the head of the house is dead.They weren't the only ones in the house.Johnny Lever and his wife were there.Paresh Rawal was there.Shahid and Kareena were there.and Upen Patel was there.Akshaye Khanna is the detective trying to figure everything out.Positives: -Shahid's performance -Akshaye's performance -Music -Story and screenplay -Direction -Shahid's Dancing -Shahid and Kareena's chemistry is much better than Fida -The scenes with Paresh and JohnnyNegatives: -Upen PatelPerformances: Upen is OK.Nothing to boast about. Paresh was as usual. Johnny and his wife were loud but funny. Tanushree looked nice. Priyanka Chopra did OK. Kareena was great in her part Akshaye did very well which surprised me.Much better than his last release Shaadi Se Pehle Shahid did his role with such ease.This is easily one of his best performances.Direction: This is one of Abbas-Mustan's finest work to date.They handled every frame beautifully.Music: Himesh's music fit with the narrative.All in all a wonderful film.The movie starts like a normal Bollywood flick then you're at the edge of your seat at intermission,and you're shocked at the climax.But i won't give the ending away.9.5/10