From Jannat to jahannam

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In the world of the Bhatts, everything outside the home — i.e., the warm, impregnable embrace of daddy, mommy, wife and child — is corrupting. Fame is corrupting. Money and success are corrupting. Sexy women are corrupting. Even certain aatmas are corrupting. In their part of the planet, the dark forces are forever hovering in search of the innocent, vulnerable one to target and make their own, by leading him (mostly him) to jurm and paap.
But since their protagonists start off as good guys, they are chased, chastised and eventually returned to the safety of home and family and all is well again. So, like Ram and Sita, the vanvaas is basically to behead the evil Ravan.
In the Bhatts’ 2008 Jannat, the outing was to the world of cricket and match-fixing. And I understand that Jannat 2 will be about illegal arms trade in Delhi. In the interim, we have Blood Money — it’s Jannat 1½, or, if you prefer, Jahannam. The corrupting venue here is the dazzling diamond empire of the Zaveri brothers in Cape Town, South Africa.
Since Blood Money is from the Bhatt stable, we safely presume the aforementioned things. Then there’s the film’s give away title — we figure there will be diamonds and some excursion to diamond-rich African countries. So a lot is already predictable. And yet, just in case we were still entertaining any hopes of this film going in a new direction, they are dashed by the protagonist’s voiceover right in the beginning — arriving in Cape Town, Kunal Kadam (Kunal Khemu) talks of a life of dreams that will turn into a nightmare. And soon after his wife, Arzoo (Amrita Puri), instead of playing footsie with her husband in their new mansion and distracting us from this dreary affair, narrates the entire story of Hansel and Gretel: Poor, hungry children lost in a scary forest find a house made of chocolate. They enter and start gobbling it all up. But the next morning they find themselves imprisoned by a cannibalistic chudail.
This bedtime story establishes several things: just like it was in H&G, Kunal will face life-threatening situations, while Arzoo will be busy mopping the floor. Two, they will both survive. And three, they are, like Hansel and Gretel, brother and sister. This is the most sexless couple I have ever encountered in anything by the Bhatts. And that’s why, when Kunal is taken by the hand by Rosa (slender, hot, exotic colleague with orange-red lips and matching bra), I don’t really grudge him his indiscretion. Man has needs, you know.
But I get ahead of myself. Kunal, a smart ass MBA from Mumbai, is madly in love with wife Arzoo. He gets his big break when he is hired by Trinity Diamonds. We’ve already met the man who owns Trinity Diamonds — a two-in-one baddie who, in polite company, goes by the name Dharmesh Zaveri, but is known with quaking fear in the underworld as Rajan Zakaria (Manish Choudhary). He lives by a simple rule: I will kill you if you mess with me. And he does, personally.
Kunal impresses Dharmesh Zaveri with his knowledge of astrology and salesmanship. Kunal is given significant introductions, big commissions, gourmet meals, a cabin, wine and women in the pool and the lure of the big league. He is enjoying it all while Arzoo is lonesome and miserable. But then he figures something is amiss, expresses concern and is told in no uncertain terms that the Zaveri brothers are smugglers, that they deal with all sorts of mafia gangs and that he must decide what he wants in life — mansion or footpath. He decides, mansion. But when Kunal witnesses a murder or two, he decides to tattle, but only after confessing to us that “jis zameen par Gandhiji ne aazadi ki ladai shuru ki thi, that’s exactly where I sold off my soul”.
Having invoked Gandhi, it figures that Kunal will eventually return to India, soul intact, Arzoo in tow, and make up for all his sins by putting himself in the non-profit service of mankind.

Diamonds, the film by debutant director Vishal Mahadkar suggests, will buy you everything — automatic guns, deadly ammunition, terrorists who will set off bombs in India, cold mansions, even crooked cops, but not a good script, or even half-decent dialogue (Kunal is tumbling across Cape Town, holding on to his bleeding innards, while his wife weeps on the phone, “Mujhe yahan se vidhwa bankar nahin jaana”).
Blood Money takes bits from The Firm, some crumbs from Blood Diamond and mixes them up with many Bhattisms. That’s not Blood Money’s main offence. It’s biggest folly is its dud lead pair who seem like terrified Lilliputians in the presence of the menacing Dharmesh Zaveri played by Manish Choudhary with his usual brilliance. Apart from him, there’s nothing worth your time or money here. Except, perhaps, the lady in the orange-red bra.