Three Lions on My Cap

I’ve talked before about the Indian awesomeness that is Singham. But Singham is only one of three remakes of the original Tamil film, Singam, which was released in 2010. So for today’s post, I’m going to talk a bit about the original film and its two remakes. For the sake of clarity I’ll be referring to Singham as the Hindi remake, because of the name similarity with the original.

India has a lot of separate film industries based on geographic region. Bollywood, which most of the general population is familiar with, makes Hindi language films.  For example, Kollywood refers to the Tamil film industry. Tollywood, the Telugu film industry (which, output wise makes a lot more than Bollywood) and so on. Some actors are exclusive to only one film industry; others start making movies in one region and move on to Bollywood or to other regions.

Singam, the original, was so highly successful it was remade three times (and redubbed in other languages, which kinda raises the point of why would anyone remake a film you could just redub). Singham is the most popular version, and something that you all probably know through this post. In Kannada, it was remade into Kempe Gowda, and in West Bengal it was remade into Shotru. The Hindi remake seems to be the most different of the four films storywise; Kempe Gowda and Shotru are far more closer to the original, with some scenes almost a shot for shot remake of the original (which again raises that redub vs remake point.)

I thought it would be neat if I talked about the three films and their similarities, and see if any of the remakes shapes up to the original. Spoilers follow if you haven’t watched Singam, but I’ll try to make it as vague as possible.

Two of the films have an opening sequence before anything starts off; Singam starts with these lions made of bullets that crash into each other and be generally awesome. Kempe Gowda begins with a rather run of the mill title sequence. Shotru takes us into the middle of the action.

Singam: Lions made of bullets. India you crazy country you

Kempe Gowda: Meh title sequence. I think they even used Impact as the English font.

The Hindi remake opens with the main plot of Rakesh Kadam, the poor cop that was driven to suicide after being oppressed by Jaikant Shikre, an evil gangster/real estate developer. Singam and the other two remakes do not follow this plot, and begin with the main baddie being brought to the hospital in an ambulance. His minions flock to see if he’s still alive, but the whole thing is just a ploy to flush out a traitor in the ranks.

Our three villains are a variety of nastiness. Mayil Vaaganam, the antagonist of Singam, is played by Prakash Raj, who was the villain in the Hindi remake. Here he wears a mustache of evil, and while he’s affably evil in Singham, he’s far more cutthroat in the original, which I attribute to the mustache.

"Jai ho!"

In Kempe Gowda he’s called Armugam, and he looks a bit more goony. His introduction sequence also involves this sped up shot of people standing in a half constructed building. Because… I have no idea.

"Honey Boo Boo 4-evaaaaaar!"

In Shotru, his name is Arjun Sarkar, and he’s a bit more of the affably evil type. He has this awesome beard that probably contributes to his badassness. His blades are shorter, but look like giant combat knives.

"Fuck you, my beard is awesome!"

In any case, the reason he’s so hard to catch is that he’s got the police under his command, much like in Singham. Also, he does most of his nasty work within the confines of the law.

We now go to the introductory scene for our main character. In Singam and Kempe Gowda, a bunch of rowdies (some in drag) steal valuables from a temple. In Shotru, it’s just a bunch of assholes in animal masks robbing a bank.

If the masks didn't come off, it would be a whole movie in itself.

In Singam and Shotru, the convoy of thievery is blocked by a bunch of statues in a row (Singam has more statues, Shotru has just four, but two of them are made of gold.) Also for some reason, the statues move. Holy shit.

this statue moves. I shit you not.

Kempe Gowda instead has a BIKE OF DOOM blocking the way.

Just making sure you know that this is a POLICE bike. Instead of a non-police bike.

After a short scene, we see our eponymous policeman kicking ass. Suriya portrays him in Singam, and he’s the coolest of the three. He’s also the best dancer, as you will see shortly.

I love the battle aura effects they do in this film.

In Kempe Gowda, he’s portrayed by Sudeep. Overall he’s pretty unremarkable, but does an OK job.

In Shotru, he’s portrayed by Jeet. Of the three he has this nice guy look that I can’t place.

also, different mustache.

The next scene introduces something that was kinda downplayed by the Hindi remake: the comic foil. In Singam his name is Erimalai and he is IMO the funniest of the three:

he even has his own theme song. kinda.

Kempe Gowda has this guy, whose introductory scene defies all belief. (Seriously, it’s like one of the stupidest jokes ever)

One of the few facepalm worthy scenes of the franchise.

Shotru instead uses a scene also seen in the Hindi remake to introduce the comic foil:

if you think he's the guy on the left, you're an idiot.

All three films then use a football match (soccer for all those non American folk) to segue us into our first dance scene. Singam’s dance scene is really awesome, and is one of my favorite songs of all four films. It helps that Suriya is a good dancer. They also integrate Erimalai into the dance, which is pretty neat.

the guy on the right (Sanjay "stick out tongue" Raj - haha I made that up) is living the life.

Kempe Gowda has a nice song too, and they have this split screen thingy going for them…

...It's like watching three musical numbers at once!!

…and in Shotru, the main guy gives his trophy to the opposing team. Also, he’s so white compared to the rest of them. All three songs are an inspirational song singing about how awesome it is to be a nice guy and praising several gods.

seriously, he's like the whitest guy in the picture.

Singam and Shotru introduce our main female character. In Singam, she’s portrayed by Anushka Shetty, and her opening scene is her and her sister potentially committing a crime at the airport (!?) to showcase her carefree attitude:

I... can't think of a caption without being an asshole.

In Shotru, Nusrat Jahan plays her, and it takes place in a train station, but somehow makes less sense. I kind of like the Shotru version. It helps that she is pretty as well.

"I love One... Direction"

Kempe Gowda seems to eschew all this and move into the “girl scaring the villagers” scene to introduce her character. If you remember in Singham, Kavya dresses up in a ghost costume and scares the villagers (leading Singham to bitchslap her with prejudice -  to his credit he didn’t know it was a girl behind the costume). In Singam and the two remakes, the female lead wears a tiger costume instead. Given how fake the costume looks, (and given how IT’S WALKING ON TWO LEGS IN ALL THREE VERSIONS) it’s rather quite silly.

The Singam version has it all in blurs...

In Kempe Gowda, it's dark and people don't see all that well in the dark...

In Shotru, FUCK LOGIC

Regardless of the silliness, this is how all great romances begin. The romance proceeds much like Singham – but the circumstances behind our policeman and our girl getting hitched is a bit more complicated (and I personally found it hard to understand too.)

Between Shotru and Kempe Gowda, Shotru keeps in many of the jokes in the original while Kempe Gowda takes a bit more serious approach. There’s one skit with a goat that’s particularly funny.

(Singam) ... it's so ridiculous it's funny.

(Shotru) ...even in the remake.

There’s also one scene in the original that isn’t in the Hindi remake: the villain extorts money from a guy trying to make a house/school/building, blackmailing him by threatening to reveal he undervalued the property in exchange for a nominal fee. If he doesn’t comply, he’ll be falsely accused of rape AND may be imprisoned for what he did (Singam also adds 2 dead bodies in the mix.) 

 (Kempe Gowda) "I want these cookies FOR FREE!"

 (Singam) "I want two cookies!"

(Shotru) "FUCK COOKIES, LOOK AT MY AWESOME BEARD!"

This of course drives the poor guy to suicide. He types in a computer while he does this, addressing a different guy (his son in Singam and Kempe Gowda, a minister in Shotru). It also leads to poor capitalization.

(Shotru) MS WORD: the go to program for Indian movies

Looking at the films’ structure, Kempe Gowda rearranges a lot of the scenes from Singam and feels similar but different at the same time, if that makes any sense. A lot of the scenes from the Hindi remake and the original are in all versions. For example, there’s the scarf stealing thing at the movie theater. The Kempe Gowda version has particularly brutal car destroying, sign smashing action:

(that’s right, he threw a guy into a van SO HARD that the van TUMBLED. Henry Cavill, move over bitch)

SHORYUKEN!

the female protagonist filing fake police reports to catch the attention of the main guy, the confrontation between main guy and villain…

(Shotru ups the ante of this confrontation… with POLKA DOTS.)

…also the main guy moving into bad guy territory and getting harrassed. There’s a pier scene in the Hindi remake, Shotru and Kempe Gowda but in different contexts; Singam does it in a beach.

"I want a dance scene here, NOW!"

There’s also this cargo container scene in Singam, Shotru and Kempe Gowda: while in the first two the bad guys are hoisted up by a crane:

in Kempe Gowda a cargo container comes in to crush them:

Eventually our hero manages to tie the kidnapping activities to the villain after he tries to kidnap the female lead’s sister: something that’s seen in all four films.

 This is the Shotru version.

The bandages in the original version are weirdly placed.

There’s also a restaurant action scene that’s seen only in the original.

You know this isn't going to end well for some poor fucker.

The villain tries to ambush our hero in all three films by sending in one of his people to file a false report:

Shotru has the nicest office of all four films...

(Singam) You'll like the lady cop. She puts the smack down on this lady

Funnily enough, in Kempe Gowda, they “search” terms by typing them into Microsoft Word. Okay, maybe he was using it as some kind of notepad, which is pretty clever.

He was typing really fast so the typos are understandable. :p

In the original, the villain takes it personally and targets the love interest directly. In the original and in Shotru, they trap her inside a garage. Kempe Gowda traps her in a garage too, but only after a wild run through rooftops:

This lady runs FAST. Must be the cardio she does daily.

She manages to get away by lighting the petrol the baddies are pouring into the garage. I dunno how it worked but it did.

 (Kempe Gowda) SH-BANG!

(Shotru) smaller garage door, same explosion.

The villain then proceeds to shoot the love interest as she gets away. This understandably makes our hero really really pissed off. Shotru is the most unremarkable…

Shooting a gun just got more awesome with this fucking excellent beard-ah

Singam has the most bloody wound…

Indian Dracula has to be having a fit right now.

Kempe Gowda had this cool slow mo CGI bullet effect.

WHOA WHAT IS THAT MANJI DOING OVER THERE

Then, the final confrontation. There’s this big police operation and our villain is on the run. Singam has our hero drop kick his way to victory, but only after giving his enemy many chances to reform.

He also takes a hostage in all three versions. This one’s the Kempe Gowda version:

The end credits scenes are also different. In Singam and Kempe Gowda, our hero is given another assignment, setting up the possibility of a sequel (and Singam 2 did come out recently, - it has Nigerians and weapon smuggling and a dance scene on a boat – it’s an OK film.) In Shotru, our hero and female lead are just in the car talking together. No extra assignments are given.

So what did I think of the original and the remakes? Singham, the Hindi remake, is really good and stands on its own. Between Singam and the two other remakes, nothing really beats the original. It’s a fun masala film where you can see why people bothered to remake it so many times. Should I recommend seeing them all? Do you really want to see the same 2.5 hour movie three times? I’d recommend seeing Singam and the Hindi remake; leave the rest alone unless you want to see the story with your favorite actors of the region.

Ilo Ilo

I'm no stranger to having two mothers, and I think it is a noble thing for people to go out and take care of the children of strangers, often at the expense of their own selves. In another way, it's tragic: in a world where parents have no time to take care of their children, they have someone do it for them.

Ilo Ilo, Anthony Chen's debut full length feature film, is set in Singapore during the Asian Financial Crisis of the late nineties. Taken from Chen's own childhood experiences (he and his two brothers were in the care of a Filipina domestic helper from Iloilo before she left for health related reasons) Ilo Ilo tells the tale of Jiale and his family. Jiale is a brat: he gets into trouble at school and is pretty much a problem to parents and teachers alike. His father works in sales but gets into work related troubles, and his mother works at a firm who lays off employees at an alarmingly regular rate - she is the one who types the letters of termination. Due to the increasing difficulty of raising a young boy such as Jiale, the mother (Malaysian actress Yeo Yann Yann) decides to hire a maid/nanny, Terry (Angeli Bayani), to take care of the boy. Although they do not get along well at first, Jiale and Terry bond and form a genuine relationship.

Ilo Ilo thrives on small emotional moments. It does not need to spell out every single event in this family's life - it works by implying rather than showing. And these emotions resonate in the viewer, whether it be isolation from family and friends in a faraway place, or the stress of keeping a family afloat in the midst of financial difficulties.

Ilo Ilo goes with simplicity, and it manages to hit the mark. With such an effective storytelling style, the film just works on an emotional level. By the end of the film, you'll be rooting for Jiale (when you would have been annoyed earlier on) and somehow feel the emotional wringer he is going through. But as the closing moments of the film seems to tell us, life goes on regardless. These memories of longing and separation, as painful as they may have been, are what make us into what we are.

As a postscript, thanks to a local radio station Anthony Chen and his brother managed to find the real life Auntie Terry.You can see that despite all those years of separation, this simple woman managed to affect the Chens' life in one way or another.

RED Quickie: Girls for Keeps

As Japan moves to the 21st century and beyond, traditional gender roles expressed in the statement Good Wife, Wise Mother are beginning to shift. More and more women in Japan are choosing careers over marriage, in part due to the shaky economy.

Girls for Keeps (the Japanese title is simply "Girl") is told through four interconnected stories about women in their thirties dealing with their role in society and what it means to be a girl. Kosaka (Michiko Kichise) is a single woman working at a stationery factory who is attracted to a guy 12 years her junior. Yukiko (Karina) works in a department store and faces a "thirtysomething" crisis as she mulls giving up her 'girly' tendencies and settle down with her boyfriend. Seiko (Kumiko Aso) is married but childless. At work, she deals with the difficulties of doing work in a male-dominated workplace. Takako (Yuka Itaya) is a single mom who tries to raise her young son by herself, taking the role of both mother and father.

Of course, a lot of this is told through gloss and pop songs and a few sappy dramatic moments. But the message of the movie is clear: be who you want to be, don't let anyone dictate who you should be, have a little fun sometimes. GIRL POWER!

It's a nice film that's worth a watch. Personally my little surprise came in the form of Rosa Kato, who plays a supporting character.

This is her first role since about 2011. Seriously I had a major crush on this lady before she left the industry because she got married and had a baby. (Now two.) Oh well.

Cinema One Originals: Kabisera

Kabisera begins with a dream sequence of a man and his family happily partaking in a meal together. Kabisera then ends with a real sequence of that same man and his family partaking in a meal together, but under heavily different circumstances. How we got from point A to point B is what Kabisera is all about.

Joel Torre plays Andres, a fisherman who discovers a bunch of drugs in a box. With the help of his friend (Art Acuna), they engage in the drug business. Shit inevitably hits the fan, and our protagonists find out that the drug trade isn't so easy.

There have been comparisons made between this film and another television show that deals with the business of selling drugs. The similarities, however, are superficial at best.

Kabisera (Tagalog for Capital), in this case, refers to the front and center place of the father on the dining room table. Andres only wants to keep his family together, despite all the horrible things that happen as a consequence of his actions. The concept of the "Kabisera" in the film's context could also be Andres wanting to make his home the capital or center of his life, both in terms of his family and his illegal business - and there he sits at the head of the table of his dining room, of his house, like a brazen dictator, firmly in control.

Bing Pimentel plays Dindin, Andres' wife. In contrast to the damsel in distress/voice of reason types that we see in these 'wife roles' we see a woman firmly beside her man, actively helping him advance his trade by giving advice.

Any semblance of this trade being a noble one is thrown out the window when we see the impact of this fledgling drug trade on the small town Andres lives in. Then again, perhaps none of the characters involved (much less, the audience) had any illusions about the true nature of selling drugs. The story spirals out of control as the PDEA (the drug enforcement agency) steps in and makes it harder for Andres and his partners to stay in the shadows, forcing our fisherman to make a choice that is in many respects a point of no return.


Kabisera utilizes a lot of darkly illuminated shots in some scenes and shots saturated by natural light in others. There are a lot of wide shots of the small town Andres lives in, a backdrop to his rise to power. In between those scenes, Andres has a house built for his daughter Ana (Meryll Soriano) against her wishes - a lear parallel to the drug empire he is slowly building.

By the film's end you see this family eating together, and thanks to your partaking in this journey with Andres, your reaction will be markedly different from same scene at the beginning of the film. I won't spoil it for you, as I recommend you watch it. It's a fine film, buoyed by some great performances.

Cinema One Originals: Angustia

Angustia (Anguish) is a period film that tackles sin and redemption set in the early days of the Colonial Philippines. Alex Medina plays a young priest living in a small town deep in the province. He encounters an Agta (Michelle Smith) in the jungle who has been watching him and, thanks to a fortuitous sequence of events, has her live in his parish as a convert.

Angustia swims in symbolism from beginning to end; juxtaposing symbols of Christian faith with pagan rituals and symbolism. Although faith seems to abound in the picture, a divine presence at first seems absent in the face of the sins committed by some of the characters. The members of the clergy are supposed to be representative of the church, but here they are portrayed as only human, vulnerable and susceptible to the follies that all people face. The characters of Angustia seem to seek catharsis through divine intervention, but either do not find the salvation they seek, or attain it by their own efforts and experiences.

The film takes advantage of very lush visuals (although in some scenes there is a noticeable drop in video quality that I attribute to an equipment issue than anything else) and a sparse soundtrack.

Anguish itself manifests in the weaker second half, where the story shifts Medina's character to another place. The focus of the story is lost, and personally it would have been better if Medina had stayed where he was instead of moving somewhere else. (That would have created a small plothole character-wise but it could have been remedied). Sin catches up with the priest and redemption - either paid through death or sacrifice - is attained. Whether this is a personal kind of redemption or one that is connected with the divine is up to the viewer.

All in all Angustia is an uneven film that would have worked better had it focused more on its effective first act rather than a vaguely psychological horror-like second act.

Cinema One Originals: Alamat ni China Doll

Alamat ni China Doll, a collaboration between filmmakers Lav Diaz and Adolfo Alix, is like unraveling a story by hearing second hand accounts: you have a general impression of the story, then people start filling you in the details one by one until you get a hazy picture which may or may not be complete.

China Doll (Angelica Panganiban) is a woman who is hiding under the witness protection program along with her elderly grandmother (Anita Linda) for reasons that are initially not that clear. We then get snippets of her past with her NBI handler (Philip Salvador) and interviews with disgraced investigative journalist Perry Nanali (Cesar Montano). There are also scenes with a mysterious individual (Carlo Aquino) who may be connected with China Doll's past.

If you consider the film to be a puzzle that has you putting together the pieces to tell the story, it's not going to be rewarding if your aim is to get the complete picture; the pieces are incomplete and by the end, you are left wanting more. But whether intentionally ironic or not, knowing the truth is part of one of the issues the movie brings up - how important is unearthing the truth? Does it have to come at the cost of lives?

I was reminded of certain news reports of grisly crimes where news reporters focus, almost voyeur-like, into the suffering of either victims or the bereaved. I remember this uncontrolled zeal rearing its ugly head during the hostage situation at the Quirino Grandstand.

While the search for the truth is there, the actual truth is muddled in between lies and vague memories. We barely learn anything about China Doll herself; we see her caring for her mother but we see little else. We see nothing of the violent acts she is supposed to have been a part of, only the aftermath. We see nothing concrete about what happened to her with Salvador or Montano's characters - only hearsay. In the end, it leaves the viewer a bit disjointed.

Comparing this film to Alix's earlier effort, Porno, the latter film feels a bit more concrete. In theory this film has more of a sense of closure than Porno, since its storyline  (when rearranged in the right way) does not fade away unresolved like some of the three stories of Porno. But it sure seems that way, thanks to the way the story is restructured. The tale at the end is quite appropriate, however, and in a way it's a fitting end to the film. Again, your experience may vary.