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Aatank (1996)

 Aatank (1996)

RELEASED July 10, 1996 RUNTIME 113 mins 

DIRECTOR Prem Lalwani 

WRITER Sachin Bhowmick (story) 

STARS Nafisa Ali, Dharmendra, Girish Karnad 

COUNTRY India LANGUAGE Hindi STUDIO Bemisal Films Pvt. Ltd. 

GENRES Horror, Thriller

Streaming on: YouTube




The plot: Childhood friends Jesu and Peter live in a coastal village in India where local gangsters ruin the damn ocean by fishing for black pearls. This angers a shark and he decides to partially eat a lot of people.

Random observations:

  • The opening credits will get you pumping and then suddenly you are not watching a shark movie for a good 30 minutes.
  • If you decide to watch this on YouTube, keep in mind the English captions may be turned off. You can turn them back on in "settings". These are actually transcripted captions, instead of that weird beta auto caption YouTube likes to befuddle people with.
  • I love how it feels like the cameraman is seeing everything for the first time. Hey, maybe he is.

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Self, I'm in the mood for a shark movie that has unrelated Bollywood musical numbers. Whatever shall I do?" Well, if so, I've got the movie for you.

Sadly there is more footage of gangsters being assholes than musical numbers or sharks, but when you get either, it's a welcome respite.




0.2/1 Directing
0.2/1 Cinematography
0.5/1 Visual design
0/1 Editing
1/1 Plot 
0.5/1 Dialogue
0.4/1 Acting
0.9/1 Soundtrack/Score/Sound
0.3/1 Originality
0.1/1 Rewatchability
Total: 4.1/10 Binge Bones



The verdict: There's too much bizarreness happening in this film to write it off completely. It's worth a watch if you find low-budget foreign remakes to be as hypnotically entrancing as I do. 

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Comments

  1. Alistair CoxswainOctober 3, 2020 at 9:48 PM

    1/1 plot?! I haven't seen it, but I must say I'm surprised. I love your description of the setup, and the appropriate mood to be in for this piece.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ravyn Jazper-HawkeOctober 3, 2020 at 11:16 PM

      The plot is so amazingly ridiculous, it gets full points for me. There really isn't anything like it in a lot of ways.

      Delete

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