Simran (2017)

It's a very poorly made low standard direction that just irritates you. Leave yourself in finding what good may happen, which will never happen.Storyline Rating: 2Acting Rating: 2 Kangana Ranaut: 2Direction Rating: 1Music Rating: 2Cinematography: 2Editing: 1

I am glad I watched this movie on Amazon, at least I had the fast forward option. The acting is cringe worthy, the scenes are abysmal, the story is, well, not a story.First, if talk about the genre, its not comedy, it's not romance, it's bad B-grade drama. The trailer and the actor made it seem like a feminist movie. That is correct if you consider a woman making bad life choices rejecting help from a nice man feminist.The story is about a woman with no sense of finance who loses all her money gambling. She loans a lot of money form the loan sharks and ends up losing that too.The story is about her awfully unrealistic struggle to pay them back.The script lacks depth, believe me not even a mm worth of depth. The movie tried to touch a lot of different topics, Indian woman divorcée, Indian bride having second thoughts, a Muslim friend who is against terrorism, typical Indian parents and their parenting measures, arranged marriages, Gujarati wedding song, some parts of the movie "Queen" where Kangana has fun on foreign land, promotion of contraception, gambling problems, loan sharks and their meanness, and so on and so forth. But the script didn't stick with any of the topics long enough to make actual impact.The scenes have no continuation whatsoever. The mood of the movie was ever changing, it literally gave me a headache to keep up with that. I am not even going to say that the best part of the movie is when it ended, because even the ending was a disaster. It left me so unsettled that I had to create the IMDb account and just write it away. Also, I might have to go on a cleanse movie binge watching Shoojit Sarkar.No wonder the woman had to do all those interviews, the marketing was the only thing that could bring some money back into the bad investment that was this movie.

While the movie sounded great in the plot, the script had little action and with no male hero, the plot centered around the heroine. Even if it is really based on a true story, it did not inspire me to go watch such movies in future. We watched it at night and the last show. Some good acting in pieces but overall I gave it a 5 out of 10 only because there was a bit of Vegas in it.

Simran, a film by Hansal Mehta, is inspired from the real-life sensational story of Indian-American Sandeep Kaur. She is known as "Bombshell Bandit" and "Gambling Queen" and currently serving a 66- month jail sentence in the United States of America for robbing banks. The film Simran is based on Sandeep's life, about an ordinary girl pulling off heist like bank robberies in an absolutely unassuming manner and that too without any weapon. Indeed an interesting premise and certainly Kangana is a great choice for the film. The film picks up very nicely in the beginning, Kangana's quirky, eccentric, carefree, comic timing makes it an interesting watch, but somewhere the film loses its sheen especially post intermission. The focus was completely on the central character of Kangana and in this process, rest of the characters were ignored or not justified. Conflict between Apurva Asrani and Kangana erupted over the writing credits of Simran. Apurva had penned the story, screenplay and the dialogues for Simran and he had no qualms in accepting the fact that Kangana did give her valuable inputs as far as some scenes or dialogues were concerned. But Kangana was credited for the 'Additional Dialogues and Story' which appeared before Apurva's name on the poster. This had to be corrected later when Apurva assertively responded. Apurva is an immensely talented writer who has given so much depth to the characters of Citylights, Shahid, Aligarh etc. In Simran, only Kangana is given importance, whereas rest of the characters are not sketched properly, and this definitely is not Apurva's style of writing. After watching the film, I just wished that the trio Hansal-Apurva-Kangana's synergy remained intact at least till the film was complete and ready for release. Praful Patel (Kangana) is working in the housekeeping department of a hotel since seven years. She belongs to a Gujarati family settled in Atlanta. Praful has accumulated money to buy her own house and she manages to locate a property at a very reasonable price under Minority Reservation quota. She has a love-hate relationship with her father Mohan (Hiten Kumar). He keeps blaming her for many aspects of her life: her divorced status, her not complying with the norms of the society, her not contributing to household expenses etc. Her mother Kumud (Kishori Shahane) does come forward to her rescue and keeps pacifying Mohan as well as Praful. Praful's life takes a risky turn when her cousin Ambar (Aneesha Joshi) invites and takes her to Las Vegas for her bachelorette party. Praful gets surprised when she finds that Ambar was there to spend time with her ex boy-friend before saying final good bye. Praful gives both of them space and heads to walk in the streets of Vegas so as to 'do sin in the sinful city'. She reaches Casino and comes to know regarding gambling. She tries her hand at Baccarat (a card game played at the casions). Initially she wins and that gives her confidence to pamper herself at beauty saloon and buys beautiful dress, lipstick etc. with the won money. Later, she ends up losing her money. She empties her savings and puts the money in the gambling, borrows money and loses that as well. Although Praful comes back home, she is haunted by the lenders. Meanwhile Sameer's (Sohum Shah) proposal comes for her. Praful reluctantly meets him, but she is not interested to fall in love with this nice guy. How Praful handles the lenders? How does she commit robberies? How does she manage to escape form the eyes of the police department? Does Praful's relationship with Sameer progress further? Why the title of the film Simran whereas the protagonist is Praful Patel? Does Praful mend her ways? What about her turbulent relationship with her father? What about her job at the hotel? Is she able to get over her addiction towards gambling and robbery? Watch the film to find out.The tone of the film is kept light and comical. The humour is very good at certain places viz. Praful's befriending the bartender, flirting with the 'hot' guy, bargaining for a cap at Vegas street etc. Robbery scenes could have been improvised. The robbery scenes seemed too comfortable as well as repetitive although the intention was to take advantage of the fear in the minds of people toward terrorism. It seemed so convenient for Praful's character to dodge the bank staffs and the police department. Simran has indeed an interesting premise and Kangana's quirky, eccentric, carefree, comic timing makes it an interesting watch in the beginning, but somewhere the film loses its sheen especially post intermission. Her presence in every frame and not so powerful character sketching of supporting cast makes a few links missing. After watching the film, I just wished that the trio Hansal-Apurva- Kangana's synergy remained intact at least till the film was complete and ready for release.