{"id":5639,"date":"2016-04-24T15:26:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-24T09:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5639"},"modified":"2016-04-24T15:26:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-24T09:56:14","slug":"drive-review-sushant-singh-rajput-karan-johar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=5639","title":{"rendered":"Drive Review: This Netflix Heist-Action Drama is a Pile-up of Fiascos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

T<\/span>arun Manshukani\u2019s Drive <\/span><\/i>was first announced in 2017. Back then, <\/span>Karan Johar<\/span><\/a> took to Twitter to share a still from the heist-action drama, starring Jacqueline Fernandez and Sushant Singh Rajput, with the accompanying threat that it would have a sequel.<\/span> The film was initially supposed to be released the year after, but <\/span>Dharma Productions<\/span><\/a> kept postponing it, eventually removing it from its roster of releases altogether. Johar\u2019s hesitation to release <\/span>Drive<\/span><\/i> in theatres was an open secret all through 2018; he even ordered Manshukani to reshoot major chunks of the film, a move that confirmed rumours of his unhappiness with the final product. But by then, Dharma Productions was already in way over their heads with the film to allow it to be shelved. So this year, exactly two years after it was first announced, <\/span>Drive <\/span><\/i>was reborn as a Netflix original film. It is now exclusively on your laptop screens, and not on the big screen \u2014 perhaps the only silver lining of <\/span>Drive\u2019s<\/span><\/i> existence.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drive <\/span><\/i>is both a cautionary tale about the classic arrogance of Bollywood studios, which have made a habit of greenlighting ill-conceived films, as well as the industry\u2019s laziness, which involves treating <\/span>Netflix<\/span><\/a> as a dumping ground of sorts. It\u2019s telling that even when global filmmakers embrace a digital release to broaden the scope of their ambition and deliver movies capable of becoming a cultural phenomenon, Hindi film producers view it as nothing but a loss-recovery machine. Even worse than the unabashed assault that is the two-hour-long <\/span>Drive<\/span><\/i>, is how it managed to get away despite its infuriatingly hollow filmmaking.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Dharma Productions, arguably the biggest production house in the country, is unable to mount an action drama that doesn\u2019t feel like an assault on the senses is baffling. It doesn\u2019t help matters that <\/span>Drive <\/span><\/i>seems to be either completely unaware of its sub-standardness or weirdly boastful about it. The movie\u2019s very first scene \u2014 a nightmarish love child between the <\/span>Dhoom<\/span><\/i><\/a> series and the <\/span>Fast and Furious<\/span><\/i><\/a> franchise \u2014 involves a drag race that unfolds at India Gate with the kind of tackiness that would have been shocking even if the film was a parody. I\u2019m not sure what is more unbelievable about this scene: the fact that this breathless race is won by Tara (Jacqueline Fernandez), or that she drives a car while wearing an outfit comprising stilettos, a bodycon skirt with a thigh slit, and a satin bodysuit that looks impossible to breathe in.\u00a0<\/span>

It doesn\u2019t help matters that Drive<\/em> seems to be either completely unaware of its sub-standardness or weirdly boastful about it.<\/blockquote>
I\u2019m also not particularly convinced that <\/span>Drive<\/span><\/i> has a plot. The last time Mansukhani made a film was a decade ago, when <\/span>Priyanka Chopra Jonas<\/span><\/a> was still a desi girl and John Abraham was into yellow trunks and not aggressively chanting \u201cSatyamev Jayate\u201d. So it\u2019s entirely possible that the director, also credited as the writer, may have simply forgotten about including one. But what <\/span>Drive <\/span><\/i>does have is a lot of unnecessary scheming. Everyone from corrupt ministers, cops, and the racer thieves in this film, glare at each other aplenty. Its heist tomfoolery, which involves stealing a large sum of money from Rashtrapati Bhavan, hinges on the deceit of mistaken identities that has as much logic as a two-year-old scribbling in his sleep.\u00a0<\/span>At one point, Tara is simultaneously a thief, the leader of a criminal gang, a street car racer, and the owner of a courier company. <\/span>Sushant Singh Rajput<\/span><\/a>, the movie\u2019s male lead, gets the honour of being both a thief and an F1 racer. In case you didn\u2019t eye-roll enough, consider a scene where this gang of thieves fool the security personnel at Rashtrapati Bhavan into thinking that the CCTV camera has frozen by standing still for five minutes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even as the 120 minute inches close, no scene or subplot in <\/span>Drive<\/span><\/i> has any reason to exist, but still, it continues to labour on. After a point, the film resembles an unbearable loop of the betrayer becoming the betrayed becoming the betrayer becoming the <\/span>betrayed<\/span><\/a> ad infinitum, while characters say painfully obvious things like, \u201cGreed is a sin,\u201d as if it\u2019s the epiphany of the millennum. None of it means anything. And if Netflix continues to be fed leftovers like <\/span>Drive<\/span><\/i>, chances are audiences will feel that nothing on the platform needs to mean anything.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drive seems to be either completely unaware of its sub-standardness or weirdly boastful about it. It\u2019s a nightmarish love child between the Dhoom series and the Fast and Furious franchise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":5640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3114],"tags":[9547,9548,5136,1341,2152,747],"class_list":["post-5639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bollywood","tag-drive","tag-drive-review","tag-jacqueline-fernandez","tag-netflix","tag-pankaj-tripathi","tag-sushant-singh-rajput"],"yoast_head":"\nDrive Review: This Netflix Heist-Action Drama is a Pile-up of Fiascos<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Drive seems to be either completely unaware of its sub-standardness or weirdly boastful about it. 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