Bichhoo - What Happened to the Scorpion? (Bichhoo (DVD))

Member Name: anonymili

Product:	Bichhoo (DVD)
Date:	22/09/09 (66 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Not bad if you don't compare it to Leon

Disadvantages: Too many songs!

Bichoo in a Hindi language film and stars Bobby Deol and Rani Mukherji in the lead roles and is essentially a Bollywood adaptation of the famous Luc Besson film Leon which starred Jean Reno and Natalie Portman. The story is loosely based on Leon and if you've not seen that famous film, here's a brief synopsis of the plot.


Jeeva's (Deol) family were framed by the police and basically he's the only survivor. The woman he loves is the daughter of one of the gang who framed his family and she commits suicide when she finds out what her father did. Jeeva becomes a ruthless assassin cutting himself off from human contact in general with only his pet scorpion (the "bichchoo" of the film's title) as his companion in his flat. In the same building lives Kiran (just coincidentally having the same first name as Jeeva's dead lover). Kiran (Mukherji) is a rebellious teenager with her morally challenged father (drug-dealer), nasty step-mother and step-aunt. The only light in her life is her younger brother. Kiran's dad foolishly double-crosses a big dealer (who happens to be the head of the narcotics department) and her family is murdered in front of her including her beloved brother. Obviously the gang needs to wipe out the only eye-witness so of course our girl turns to her assassin next door neighbour for help.


Firstly I have to say that the title of the film made no sense to me. If there was supposed to be a link between the bichhoo (scorpion) and some deep meaning to the film, it was totally lost on me. Aside from the fact that the producers wanted a clever and somewhat confusing name for the film, I can't imagine why they picked. As a lot of the plot was lifted from Leon, I don't know why they didn't stick with that theme and just call the film "Jeeva"!

I know I've said that the story is based on Leon, but hang on, I did say loosely didn't I? There was no romance between the 2 leads in Leon nor was there an attempt to have one, considering the female lead was supposed to be 12 years old. So they made the female lead an older teenager, albeit a somewhat childish, chain-smoking, tattooed, leather-mini-skirt clad one. Also in Bichhoo, we get an insight into why our hero has chosen the life he has chosen. Also let me tell you now that the ending is rather different!

I've never been very keen on Bobby Deol as an actor, I find him quite wooden in any role I've seen him in, but his woodenness seemed to work in his favour for this role of strong and silent and supposedly ruthless killer. Mind you, he's not too ruthless though, he is the star of the film after all and we're really not supposed to find the lead of the film too despicable. He carried off his role well enough (for a change) but I can say without a doubt that Deol's not a patch on Jean Reno when it comes to acting and seeing as Deol was not much older than 30 when he played this role, his rather baby-faced looks didn't help me take him very seriously in the role. Although I said Deol carried off his role well enough, I did feel this role would have been more suited to someone like Abhishek Bachchan who does dark and brooding really well and would have suited this role to a tee.

I am usually a fan of the beautiful and talented Rani Mukherji but found myself not being too impressed with her portrayal of the lead female role. Mukherji is playing an older teenager here so there's an opportunity for the producers to play with the story a bit and try to weave in a bit of romance (I said "try" so I'm not telling you whether they're successful or not). Mukherji looked cute in the role of Kiran but I think they made her a bit too belligerent in an attempt to make her credible as a teenager. One would assume you might become quite reserved and timid after seeing your whole family executed but not our girl. She seems to forget why she went to Jeeva in the first place with her attempts at romancing him not long after asking him for help.

Bichhoo has some good points where action and cinematography was concerned BUT suffice to say, this is one of those films where Bollywood song/dance routines were really completely out of place. NB: Bollywood, what were you thinking? This is supposed to be an action thriller, stop making a mockery out of every serious film you try to copy from Hollywood by adding song and dance routines to them PLEASE! Not one of the songs were memorable to me, mostly because I did NOT want to see musical numbers in what I thought was supposed to be a tense action thriller.

The villain of the film Ashish Vidyarthi is a credible bad guy. I've seen him in quite a few films and he was adept enough in his role. I can't imagine anyone in Bollywood doing the role more justice than he did at this time, except perhaps Gulshan Grover. A couple of decades back and it might have been someone like Shakti Kapoor who could have pulled it off better or even Kader Khan (one of Bollywood's best villains), although they're both somewhat past it now.

As a standalone action thriller with no comparison to Leon, I would be happy to give Bichhoo a generous 3 out of 5. As a summary of all I've said above they should have avoided the attempted romance and the unnecessary songs in the film.


'''TECHNICAL'''

Release date: July 2000
Starring: Bobby Deol, Rani Mukherji, Ashish Vidyarthi
Supporting cast: Farida Jalal, Mohan Joshi, Malaika Arora
Director: Guddu Dhanoa
Producer: Guddu Dhanoa
Cinematography: Sripad Natu
Stunt co-ordinator: Tinnu Verma
Certification: 18
Duration: 160 minutes


NB: this is a film only review

Summary: Bobby Deol's bland facial expressions work for once!