AND HERE I AM, EATING MY WORDS…

Okay, alright, I was wrong. I take back ‘whatever’ I said plus jara. PRIYANKA CHOPRA CAN ACT! (Am I the only one who notices the ‘whatevers’ in English subtitles of Hindi films?) But yes, I admit it, Priyanka really can act. I take back all I said about the ‘vacant-ness’ in her acting in a previous post (scroll down to see my 'Bluffmaster' post). Sadly, being a very inept blogger, I don’t know how you do that cool thing when you link things without having the ugly ol’ link show.

Anyway, my volte-face is as a result of just seeing ‘Yakeen’, which stars Priyanka Chopra and Arjun Rampal. From the opening scene, Priyanka captured my attention. Her character, Simar, was nicely developed and fleshed out. Priyanka made her interesting. I was impressed, and now I happily admit that although she isn’t that good in some films, girlfriend can actually act.

‘Yakeen’ is about a man (named ‘Nikhil’, played by Rampal) who loses his memory after a terrible accident, and has to rebuild his life with the support of his wife (‘Simar’, played by P. Chopra). In the process, he falls in love (with wifey, that is), but later discovers that things are not quite what they seem. As a Bollywood thriller, ‘Yakeen’ is not bad, but it’s certainly not a masterpiece either.

I liked the waaay-over-the-top bit in this film where Nikhil shouts ‘Simar, I love you!’ in the mountains. I’m not sure if it’s a conscious tribute (probably is, though), but there’s a scene in ‘Aradhana’ (starring Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore) where Arun (played by Khanna) shouts in the mountains, ‘Vandana, I love you!’, and Vandana (played by Tagore) very shyly and sweetly does her own ‘Arun, I love you!’ shout. I know, it’s sickening (my sister can’t even bear to watch that scene in ‘Aradhana’), but hey, it’s Bollywood.

Rampal is quite good in some parts of this movie, and less competent (even a little boring to watch) in others. Overall, I would say he’s good. I like the fact that his pre-accident Nikhil and post-accident Nikhil are so distinct from each other, even in mannerisms. I’m glad to say the actress who plays Nikhil’s secretary in ‘Yakeen’ does a very competent job. See my comment on actors playing secretaries in my 'Okada ka Rishta' post (scroll down to read). The music in ‘Yakeen’ is pretty good, but a lot of it sounds like I’ve heard it before. But it’s good.

There’s a fair bit of fake-pretend (again, credit to Beth for the term) piano-playing by Priyanka in this film. Can they just stop doing this? Although Priyanka’s fake-pretend instrument-playing is bad, I’ve seen worse in Bollywood. The worst I’ve seen so far was SRK in ‘Mohabbatein’. His fake-pretend violin playing was simply awful, and it seemed like he did it for at least 92% of the movie. The filmmakers must’ve thought he was doing it well. Er, noo. I was so excited to see Dilip Kumar in ‘Ram aur Shyam’ (very good – but old - movie) playing an instrument correctly. That was cool.

The makers of this film obviously have some sort of shower fixation – there were 2 shower scenes. And not to forget, the obligatory rain scene… (see my post on rain scenes in my 'Teri Meheribaniyan' review).

Come on now, nobody but nobody looks this good standing in the rain...

Props to Priyanka, her performance in this film is really quite good, and I shall now proceed to be silent on the subject of her acting skills. For now.