Friday, March 20, 2009

"I Liked/Like" - P II

Kay Kay Menon

Kay Kay has been around for a while. First saw him in some gangster movie - where Kay Kay plays a police office who goes undercover and infiltrates a notorious gang, but in the course of time ends up conflicted about the situation (Chhal). That story is pretty much almost staple fare across the world for action-drama movie script purposes. So no biggie there.

But he's always been an integral part of the alternative/ multiplex Hindi movie genre. He played an impressionable Marxist in Sudhir Mishra's superlative Hazaroon Khwaishein Aisi, a business tycoon who ultimately goes up and down with the dirty game that business tycoons seem to be playing all the time in Madhur Bhandarkar's Corporate, an investigative officer trying to put together the pieces of the bomb blasts in Mumbai in March 1993 and the plot behind it in Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday, a senior manager at a Mumbai call-center not averse to cheating on his wife on the side in Life In A Metro, among other parts. Did I say he was very impressive in essaying those varied roles? Well - he was.

He's been acting in commercial potboilers off late as well. So far they've been a mixed bag. In Ram Gopal Varma's Sarkar - a remake of/tribute to Mario Puzo's The Godfather (of sorts) in an Indian political setting, he played the character most similar to Fredo Corleone. He was also easily the best thing in that movie, for me at least, despite the fact that Senior and Junior Bachchan were the central characters. Can't wait to catch him in Kashyap's latest release Gulaal.

To sum it up, easily one of the best around in the acting business. Fair to say that the parallel cinema/multiplex movement would have been/be far less effective/entertaining had he not been around.

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