Often times the movies coming out of Bollywood are just as violent
and unoriginal as their Hollywood counterparts. But when
Bollywood produces a good nonviolent movie, they often get it right
on the money. Nanban is an example of one of the latter kinds of
movie. In this movie, various Indian families are scraping what
little savings they have together to send their sons to engineering
school so that they can make good money and have a cushy job later
on. The first year students are typically subjected to a
hazing ritual where they are made to take off their pants and lay
face down in the dirt, with only their underwear covering their
exposed bottoms. One freshman student refuses to follow the hazing
ritual and locks himself in his apartment instead. Then the fun
begins. Part of the movie revolves around a bet that one of the
students made to two of his buddies that on Sept 5 10 years from now
they would meet again on the same roof for a drink and whomever was
the most successful by that time would win the bet. I'm giving this
movie five stars because not only is it funny throughout the entire
3 hours, but the climax is somewhat original and maintains the
suspense at a classical Hollywood shoot-em-up level without blowing
everything up or endangering too many lives. The engineering
students' plan comes together just like the A-Team TV series endings
but with no violence (unless you count giving birth without pain
medication as "violence") and without blowing stuff up or knocking
over bad guys --- Hurray Bollywood! Indeed, the only thing missing
from the almost perfect ending was a cut to a scene of Hannibal
Smith kicking back, smoking a cigar and saying: "I love it when a
plan comes together" --- in the name of nonviolence! Five
stars.
The movie ranks as nonviolent because it has only 19 scenes of mild
violence in 3 hours (which works out to less than 10 violent scenes
per 90 minutes). These scenes included: A man fakes a heart
attack, 3 men get into a brief threatening altercation, a man gets
electrocuted by peeing on a hot wire, "life begins with murder",
says the headmaster, there is a story of a man's father dieing,
there is a make-believe scene where students' heads explode, a man
hangs himself for real, there is a story about the high suicide
rate, there is a fake speech about rape, there is a fake story about
a man accused of having a bomb, a man attacks another man on stage,
a man threatens people with a gun, a man attempts suicide by jumping
out a window, a man gets tied up in the back of a car, a man hits
another man with an umbrella, there is a another story of a suicide,
a man gets electrocuted while pissing on a broken light bulb, a
woman slaps a man and 2 men "beat up on" a third man kind of
playfully.
There were no previews except for a somewhat violent commercial from
Variety children's charity, making the ridiculous claim that the
Jedi Knights are champions of Peace and Justice. Hah!
Champions of war and slaughter is more like it.
The only downside is that it cost double the usual ticket price ($12
instead of $6.50) to see the movie. But considering that you
are getting the same number of minutes of movie per dollar as a
typical 90 minute movie, it was worth it.
To discover additional reviews, fan ratings and trailers for Nanban,
go to Fandango by clicking here,or enter the movie title in the Google search
box below.
Note that Peacemovies.com reviews movies only for their violence
content. For a more detailed analysis of other issues in
movies (especially for gauging age-appropriateness for kids) please
visit http://www.commonsensemedia.org
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