Movie Reviews: Death In Love, 500 Days of Summer, Severed Ways

GO KAMBAKKHT ISHQ
The Bollywood-gone-Hollywood Kambakkht Ishq makes a convincing argument that the problem with comparably cheesy American romantic comedies is that while they’re equally predictable and manipulative, they don’t have enough fun. Los Angeles stuntman Viraj (Akshay Kumar) is a lady-killing stud who is about to encounter the one woman immune to his machismo: Simrita (Kareena Kapoor), a jaw-droppingly beautiful young surgeon who (get this) used to model professionally to earn enough money to pay for medical school. Director Sabir Khan treats Simrita’s ludicrous backstory with the same straight-faced delight that he approaches the rest of Kambakkht Ishq’s rampant foolishness, making for a sexy, dopey film that believes that all you need for an entertaining night out are copious amounts of dancing, singing, broad clowning, and gorgeous people. The upscale L.A. locations occasionally lend this romantic comedy the look and materialistic worldview of a rap video, and at nearly two and a half hours, Kambakkht Ishq struggles to maintain its ferociously ebullient tone. But neither extraneous subplots nor awkward (yet improbably crucial) cameos from Sylvester Stallone and Denise Richards can keep Kumar and Kapoor from charming the audience as thoroughly as they beguile each other. Be warned: You are going to hate yourself for falling for a film this shameless in its attempts to win you over. (Tim Grierson)

NEW YORK
The so-called Bollywood strike that has kept new Indian commercial movies off international screens for the past two months was more like a lockout. Exhibitors on the new urban “multiplex” circuit demanded a larger percentage of the gross, and the major production companies retaliated by withholding their masterpieces. It’s a wonder the home audience is still willing to put up with these tantrum-throwers, especially when the hiatus is broken by the likes of Kabir Khan’s New York, a predictable, brow-furrowing drama (sadly songless except for a couple of Sunday-in-the-park montage sequences) about the effects of 9/11 on some South Asian immigrants living in New York. At the outset, the movie promises something much more interesting, when Omar (Neil Nitin Mukesh), a Manhattan cab company owner, is framed on a weapons charge and blackmailed by the feds into cozying up to a suspected terrorist. The rub is that, a decade ago, the accused sleeper cell organizer, Samir (John Abraham), was Omar’s closest college chum, and is now happily married to Maya (Katrina Kaif), the paragon whose romantic choice broke Omar’s heart. When the couple invites Omar into their home, the atmosphere should be an emotional maze worthy of Hitchcock—or, at least, De Palma. Quite apart from the fact that none of these performers is capable of smoldering with conviction, there’s no terror or sensuality in director Khan’s images. He’s a specialist in redundant visual prose, in underlining the obvious. (David Chute)

GO SOUL POWER
Soul Power documents the three-day music festival that accompanied the iconic 1974 Muhammad Ali/George Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match in Zaire. Culled by director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte from over 125 hours of footage that was shot by Paul Goldsmith, Kevin Keating, Roderick Young, and Albert Maysles, and then relegated to the vaults after director Leon Gast didn’t use it in his Oscar-winning 1996 documentary When We Were Kings, Soul Power features performances by Celia Cruz, the Spinners, Fania All-Stars, Bill Withers, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba, and more. The concerts were meant to be a cultural exchange between African and African-American musicians (the late, great Cruz fiercely reps Cuba in a movie-stealing number), but were briefly imperiled after a Foreman eye injury forced a postponement of the fight. When finally mounted, the shows became the stuff of pop culture folklore. Given the ferocious power of many of the artists, and the dreary state of modern Black pop (the recent death of Michael Jackson, not to mention Vibe, only underscoring the situation), Soul Power itself might well be subtitled When We Were Kings. (Ernest Hardy)

THE STONING OF SORAYA M.
For those ambivalent about whether stoning women to death is an cruel punishment or not, here’s The Stoning of Soraya M., a dutifully plodding if watchable dramatization of a real, particularly appalling application of sharia law in small-town Iran. Soraya (Mozhan Marnò) refuses to divorce abusive husband Ali (Navid Negahban), because he won’t leave her enough money to feed her children, so he teams up with their village’s mullah to start a rumor that she’s committing adultery, punishable by death. Events take their inevitable course, with Soraya’s BFF (played by Shohreh Aghdashloo) narrating, and Soraya gets to live out the title in a bloody and prolonged sequence reminiscent of The Passion of the Christ—which is appropriate, since Jim Cavaziel pops up here, speaking creditable Farsi as the journalist who blows the whole thing up. Director Cyrus Nowrasteh gives the proceedings more flair than is usual for the explicitly didactic: If his ideas (the camera rocketing on the stones thrown at Soroya, as if they were Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’ arrows all over again) are bad, at least he’s trying. But this is basically self-congratulatory fare for people who feel more “politically conscious” when reminded that women in the Islamic world can have it rough. Right now, you’re better off just watching the news. (Vadim Rizov)