Iranian director/actor in Pakistan-Iran co-production Jane Bond 008 Operation Karachi (1971)

Synopsis -

There is much in common between Jane Bond 008 Operation Karachi and the James Bond movies made in Western countries. Like its prototypes, this movie also starts in Scotland Yard. The central character is a woman instead of man. She (Rakshanda Khattak) is sent to Pakistan on a mission, because she is Anglo-Pakistani and knows much about the country.

She is sent to contact one Mr. Macdonald, who is a member of the Scotland Yard, his number is 002. Before she could reach Karachi, he is killed by a gang of villains (headed by Saqi). A taxi-driver (Reza Fazeli), who runs a private taxi and is attached to a posh hotel, goes to pick up Jane Bond. During his speech, he unwittingly utters the code word, and she thinks he is one of the agents employed by the Scotland Yard. He is in fact a simpleton knowing nothing about spying. He jumps to the conclusion that she is in love with him.

The two of them are attacked by a gang of villains. Action and love starts from here and continues till the end.

Jane Bond 008 Operation Karachi was perhaps the second Pak-Iran co-production. According to the publicity stills, “This was for the first time in Pakistani films that a car in running condition was burnt. The hero has jumped twenty feet from helicopter to a moving boat. He has jumped from a car moving at the speed of forty to another running at the same speed”. However, because of poor-direction and other shortcomings the film flopped both in Iran and Pakistan.

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1971, Genre – Action, Country – Pakistan/Iran, Language – Urdu/Persian, Producer – F. Abbassi, Director – Reza Fazeli, Music Director – Lal Mohammed Iqbal, Cast – Reza Fazeli, Rakshanda Khattak, Tarana, Saqi, Kamal Irani, Sharafat Pasha, Shaheen, Zahoor Ansari, and Niggo

Slackistan (2010)

As home productions are quite rare, the Pakistani audience is always excited whenever there’s a new project coming out, whether it be a completely local production (like Slackistan) or an Indian production with a local star as the lead (Tere Bin Laden.) However, when one certain movie gets banned in Pakistan then the curiosity around it increases, and so do expectations.

Perhaps that’s what ruined Slackistan for me: the high expectations that surrounded the movie and, more importantly, its stunning cast

The movie revolves around a group of youngsters in their 20s who live in Islamabad. Not only do they live in Islamabad, but they are also from the more elite group of people there. Therefore their lifestyle is very different from most 20-somethings. Clearly these guys do not represent all of Islamabad’s youth. That’s probably where the controversy stems from because the movie shows the culture and lifestyle of individuals who probably make up less than one per cent of the Pakistani society. This ‘burger’ phenomenon is considered almost a bad thing because it means that these people converse mostly in English, are rich, and aren’t really aware of, or affected by, the rest of the country.

So Hasan, (Shahbaz Shigri) Sheheryar (Ali Rehman Khan) and Saad (Osman Khalid Butt) are three friends who waste their time going to shisha cafes during the day and parties at night. They have no clue what they’re doing with their lives and are simply living in the moment.

Hasan, the lead character, wants to be a filmmaker one day, but is demotivated by the lack of inspiration that exists around him. He finds no cinemas in his city, and when he goes to find Robert De Niro’s Mean Streets he instead is told by the movie wala to watch Meet the Fockers instead.

Sheheryar, AKA Sherry, is your classic showda (show-off) guy. He likes expensive things, women and borrowing money from a rich loser to get him these things. The rich loser, Mani, gives him money in return for exclusive party invites, a step into the posh social scene, and a grand social status. Sherry is as fake as he can be.

Unfortunately, Saad, the comic relief, doesn’t really have too many dialogues or important scenes, which is a bummer because he’s quite adorable and fun to watch on screen.

The two female characters, Zara (Shahana Khan) and Aisha (Aisha Akhtar) are the best friends who tell each other everything which is where we discover what’s going on in their lives: Zara is suffering from ‘peer pressure’ as she tries hard to fit in, using excessive make up and a strange fashion sense to help her. She also seems a little boy-crazy, when she ends up having coffee with some random stranger who claims to be a Prince of some place. She is also busy running after a guy who doesn’t care about her.

Aisha is the quiet, sensitive one. She likes nature, is soft-spoken, and wants to go abroad for further studies. Her dilemma resides in her confusion when it comes to her best friend, Hasan. She’s not sure how she feels about him when another guy pops up in her life, Owais (Adnan Malik). While Hasan is clearly in love with her, Aisha is sort of seeing someone but hesitates in telling Hasan because she’s not sure how he will react. That’s it. That’s the story of Slackistan. Clearly the movie lacks a script.

What it also lacks is humour. Even though the writer has tried to incorporate a few jokes in here and there, the movie is otherwise pretty dry. The movie is only 90 minutes long, but it feels painfully stretched out.
Perhaps the real reason behind Slackistan’s success is the cinematography. The lighting, the editing, the tastefully shot scenes showing Islambad’s scenic beauty is what makes the film really watchable. It feels more like a documentary when Hasan is narrating in the background, because the screen is showing visuals of market places and people in the streets, but that’s perhaps the purpose of this movie.

Slackistan isn’t really a Pakistani version of Dil Chahta Hai. It’s more of an introduction to a more serene side of Pakistan, away from all the violence and commotion that is repetitively shown on news channels all over the world. It tries to show the so called evil elite and their horrible ways, which include alcohol, late nights, being lazy and all these things that are labeled as ‘wrong’ which is why the movie was banned. What about local movies that show rape, terrorism and all the other things that are also wrong in our society? Why don’t those movies get banned?

As Slackistan has received international recognition, it’s good that the movie successfully shows Pakistan’s alter-ego without being disrespectful. However, it’s not an entertaining watch and unlike Dil Chahta Hai does not merit repeat viewing at all – Manal Faheem Khan

Rating – 2 out of 5

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2010, Genre – Drama, Country – Pakistan, Language – Urdu/English, Producer – Hammad Khan,Shandana Ayub, Director – Hammad Khan, Cast – Aisha Linnea Akthar, Rafey Alam, Osman Khalid Butt, Uzair Jaswal, Shahana Khan Khalil, Ali Rehman Khan, Adnan Malik, Adil Omar, Khalid Saeed, Shahbaz Shigri

Bol (2011)

Shoaib Mansoor’s Bol has been launched with much fanfare, with well-attended premieres in both Karachi and Lahore. Now, definitely showing at a cinema house near you, it is awaiting the verdict of the people. Box office results are so much like election time, but unfortunately in Pakistani cinema candidates are few and far between.

Will Bol repeat the smashing success of Khuda Kay Liye or will it falter? If it’s not a box office bonanza, it will become the first non-starter Shoaib Mansoor has seen in his career. The showman with the Midas touch hasn’t had any of those. Be it making plays like Fifty Fifty or Alpha Bravo Charlie, mentoring, producing and writing lyrics for the phenomenon that were the Vital Signs, the Supreme Ishq video starring Iman Ali as a rebellious Anarkali or his debut feature Khuda Kay Liye which was the first Pakistani film in decades to pack cinema houses around the country – anything he does is a gold mine.

The reaction after the Bol premieres has been mixed. There are people who love the film for the punch it packs. Hipsters are of the opinion that it’s a like a TV play and that they would rather see an entertainer. There are literary types who find Bol to be far more sophisticated and nuanced than Khuda Kay Liye which they thought was “too preachy”. Of course, the select audience that attends premieres is hardly a barometer for how the film will do. In the trial runs that Geo had done before Bol’s release, they found that around 80 per cent of the women in the audience had tears in their eyes by the end of the film. So they are hopeful about it being a success.

Strangely enough, there wasn’t such a mixed response for Khuda Kay Liye – one remembers the general consensus about that film was that there is no way that a film without typical songs, dances and hardly any comedy would run. However the box office had other ideas. Khuda Kay Liye made history. Now it’s Bol’s turn to prove its mettle.

If you are inclined towards stories well-told, Bol will get you. It will fill you with dread, parts of it will make you smile, and through it you will open your eyes to things that we accept with blinkers on. If you are planning on watching it, don’t be late – miss the first ten minutes even, and you will have a hard time realizing what is going on. Shoaib Mansoor is a superb storyteller, but he has never written a script quite so tight or as layered.

In it’s entirety, Bol is a narrative made by a girl named Zainab (Humaima Malick) at the gallows. Her last wish is to tell her story to the media and thus the world, which the President of Pakistan has okayed.

Zainab’s story begins with her birth in the conservative household of a hakeem, whose father had moved to Pakistan after Partition and instead of coming to Karachi like most Delhi walas he had remained in Lahore because it reminded him of the city he called home. By the time Zainab’s father the irate, ill-tempered, moralistic, fiery Maulvi Shafaatullah (Manzar Sehbai) takes over as hakeem, the age of the clinic has arrived and he is struggling to make ends meet. On the other hand, he has a wife and a quest for a son that leads to seven daughters being born, none of whom are allowed to work because of his firm belief that a woman’s place is in the home. As Zainab narrates in the film “Khandaan mein log barhtay gaye aur har maheenay paisay kam parhtay gaye. (As the family members kept increasing, our monthly income kept falling short).”

It’s a plight many will recognize. The wife who submits to the will of the husband and seven daughters who follow accordingly, except Zainab, the eldest, outspoken one. Then there is Ayesha (Mahira Khan Askari) who is childhood sweethearts with their Shia neighbour (Atif Aslam). And another five mouths to feed. Eventually, there is a son, but he is born a hermaphrodite. The women love Saifullah (Amr Kashmiri) or Saifee as they call him and they are all he knows – his father, very much a part of Pakistan’s ghairat (pride) brigade doesn’t let him out. It is his violent death that sends his father’s life spiraling out of control and leads him to teach children how to read the Quran in the infamous Heera Mandi. He is reduced to making money at a kotha run by Sakha Kanjar, who is brilliantly played by Shafqat Cheema. The prize possession there is the tawaif Meena (Iman Ali).

And so unfolds a superb, orginal story about double standards, the inherent evil in the hypocrisy that pervades our society. Things we hardly talk about and the better-off and well-heeled barely know about apart from articles written in magazines and newspapers bemoaning the state of the nation. Through a superb cast of characters, Shoaib Mansoor humanizes a wide range of issues. The inherent conservatism and sexism in Pakistan that keeps so many women at home and its futility in this day and age. The hypocrisy that drives a daughter to lie to her father to meet the man she loves through Atif and Mahira. There is the tension between Sunni and Shia shown through Maulvi Shafaatullah’s disdain for his easy going Shia neighbour Akhtar Husain (Irfan Khoosat). There’s a hair raising portrayal of the ugly norm of londaybaazi when Saifee runs into some uncouth truck drivers and its psychological aftermath. There’s the culture of pimps prostituting their women and the compromised lives they lead with a morality unique to their kind. All these issues collide head on forcing Zainab’s to speak out eventually.

Bol is without a doubt one of the most powerful films ever made in Pakistan. It is a step up from Khuda Kay Liye in every sense. It is perhaps even more controversial because rather than tackling fundamentalism which is such a global political issue, Bol is an incisive portrayal of different personal beliefs and the tensions that electrify our streets and neighbourhoods. Bol may not be a happy film, but it is one that grips you from start to finish. There is never a dull moment. It’s fast paced and strangely enough action packed – it’s just that all the action is emotional.

People expecting a huge performance by Atif Aslam may be disappointed. Atif’s Mustafa stays with you at the end for his naturalness, but Bol is very much about an ensemble cast without focus on any one person. It is Humaima’s film at the beginning and end, but umpteen stories are woven through it and there are crackling performances all around, especially from Manzar Sehbai who is fantastic as the repressed and oppressive Maulvi who is evil in his do-gooder self-righteousness. Amr Kashmiri is delightful as Saifee and Iman Ali’s performance as a nautch girl lights the screen. Mahirah is as natural as Atif and they bring light heartedness to the film with their spontaneously enacted love story. Humaima is dynamite as the lead character. However, the biggest star of the film remains Shoaib Mansoor’s masterful script that brings it all together.

In Pakistan, where dramas rule the entertainment sector, he is a master storyteller whose fan base spans generations. He writes his own scripts and while one often hears the new breed of directors saying that his technique is dated, that he is a television director and not a film director, the point is that he has filled the cinema once and chances are he will do it again. It’s not the direction that is the highlight of a Shoaib Mansoor film, it’s the content. He tells the people of Pakistan their own story. He gives them their issues. He forces them to open their eyes to their own malaise. If this is what pulled them in to Khuda Kay Liye, then Bol should do just as well. It’s a far better story.

It will be interesting to see the kind of business Bol does. After all, Khuda Kay Liye didn’t have commercial, escapist Bollywood cinema to contend with when it was released in 2007. That would come one year later and pack cinema houses again. Will Pakistani audiences go for a hard-hitting story about themselves in the face of the glitz and glamour from across the border? This is the acid test.

For lovers of cinema, Bol is a must watch – for it’s gutsy screenplay, brilliant performances and the fact that you will not have experienced any film quite like it before – Muniba Kamal

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2011, Genre – Social/Drama, Country – Pakistan, Language – Urdu, Producer – GEO Films, Director – Shoaib Mansoor, Music Director – Shoaib Mansoor, Atif Aslam, Sarmad Ghafoor, Cast – Humaima Malick, Iman Ali, Atif Aslam, Mahira Khan, Shafqat Cheema, Manzar Sehbai, Zaib Rehman, Amr Kashmiri

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Bol’s Official Trailer

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