 So I was at the store. Yeah. And me and Moira, before walking down the aisle and I saw this Indian guy walking towards us. Sick man. Durban and everything. And that's how I knew he was sick. But I saw him catch my eyes and his eyes lit up. And I was like, oh, looks like he knows me from OSR. No, he stopped me and said, can I take a picture of your shirt? This one? Nice. He was just not used to a white boy wearing a shawarque shirt, but he didn't know who you were from Adam. And he was like, do you guys like Indian film? And I said, yeah, we've seen a few. Hey, welcome back to our stupid direction. It's up for me. I'm Rick. He calls it Instagram. Ah, you know the Rick and the Roll. Blow it out your whizwam. Patreon, follow us on Twitter account. And subscribe if you haven't hit the like button, please. Yeah, so I could see it would be a little jarring if you don't know who I am from Adam and you just see a white boy wearing a shawarque shirt. It doesn't happen a lot. No, it's kind of like the looks I get when people see my tattoo. You're like, you're not Indian. What is that? Up in the timeline. Explain my guy? Explain that one. Today we're doing a movie review. Boys and Chidgens. We got a review of the 2012 film, Shahid. Is that the correct pronunciation? I believe it should have been Shahid. No, it should be Shahid. Like Shahid before. Okay, okay. The account of a human rights lawyer, Shahid Azmi, an ordinary citizen with extraordinary commitment to justice. Thank you, Logline, for not giving too much away. Console Meta is whom obviously we've seen quite a bit of his work in Almirta, Alira, and something else, I forget what it was. He's also the director of SCAM, which we haven't seen yet. Obviously we know about him. And starring Raj Kumar Rao. And interesting, they didn't put in the, it's not a big deal, it says biography in there anyway, but they didn't say a true story. The account of a real lawyer. But yeah, we've heard about this film a lot, a lot, a lot in one of not only Hansel's better films, but also Raj Kumar's as well. And I do wanna say, if you do end up watching this film, there's a couple ways you can do it, but the ones that I started out on, I rented it, it was on Apple or- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Or YouTube, I can't remember. You had this issue and told me. But when you rent it, apparently the version, and I confirmed it with Hansel, the version that they put out is a censored version. So anytime somebody cusses, audio goes completely blank and they don't even translate anything. Why? Makes no sense to me. But it was 10 minutes and they'd done it three or four times. And I'm like, ah, this needs to stop. So I went on the, I forget what the site's called, but we've used it a couple times for, like if we can't find it anywhere else, I go to the site and they had it without that. So that is good. That is good. It'd be 100 cents more if you came out in 2012. If you haven't watched it, go watch it. Rick, your initial thoughts, please. Yeah. Well, I'm in. Right off the bat, I'll tell you, I'm not a surprise. The choices that Raj Kamau Rao makes are consistently in alignment with not just the kinds of movies that I know you and I like to watch, but the kinds of movies we would like to work in. Oh yeah, 100%. The kinds of stories, the kind of people. Many times, and this is going to be a very high compliment, if you know who this person is, but I'm about to refer to, but this movie felt a lot like an Asghar Farhadi film. If you don't know who he is, he's the Iranian director who directed a separation and a hero. Is he the one that stole the? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who, yeah. He stole the controversy right now. Big controversy, but he also has a lot of controversy simply because of some of the things he does. Yeah, for sure. But one of the things you notice about his directing is everything feels so real. It's just you are astonished at how good everybody is, which is, again, not a surprise that Mukesh Chabra cast this. Because there's not a project in Hindi cinema that he doesn't cast, I'm pretty sure. Well, at least I can't think of one that was cast by him that didn't have superlative acting throughout. Cause I just, we'll talk about story, we'll talk about everything else, but on the whole, I thought this was a great movie. I thought it was a fantastic film. A very on par with Hansel's other film on Geer, I always forget. Oligar, Oligar. Very similar in terms of the style of film and how he chose to film, shoot it, but it's also an important film, a important subject matter, a hard hitting subject matter with great performance. I'm guessing this is the minimum third time he's worked with Rajkumar. At least. Cause he did Omurta, Oligar, and this one, minimum. They work well together. So are they like the Leo and Martin Scorsese? I know, right? Yeah. They work together a lot. But anyways, yeah, we'll get into it. Once again, it's gonna be a hundred and four of you. So if you haven't watched it, please go watch it, come back. I think it's less than two hours, I think. Yeah, it is, like 157, I think. So we're an Indian film, a really short film, but a really powerful and very well done film. And interestingly, it's very interesting the timing of this movie, the serendipitous nature of it arriving at a time of my life right now, not equating myself in any way with this man who was at the pinnacle of representing people who were at the heart of things like the 2611. But I actually recently got a death threat and was told that I should never review another Indian film. Well, here I am reviewing another Indian film. RIP, Rick. There you go. It was nice knowing you. Yeah, nice knowing you too. So, yeah, shout out to Selman Kahn fans. I found, there's what else can we say about Raj Kumar? He's just, he's as good an actor as you're gonna find on Planet Earth right now. Bottom line. Yeah, and he's so versatile. And he chooses, I mean, from the, it seems like the very beginning from obviously, I don't know what his first first was, but like Kaipoche, brilliant performance, this brilliant performance. And then the lead you get, the more different, cause obviously he gets to be more choosy, obviously with his roles, obviously the more popular, more well established you get, you get like stuff like Ludo that's so unique and interesting, obviously gangs towards the beginning of his career. And then, but I do that we just, and the amount of different things that he chooses to do, but he always does it from such a genuine place. He reminds me, this quality of him, reminds me of a quality of another actor, an American actor. Not because he reminds me of the actor, but there's a quality about Raj Kamar that comes through in all of his roles. And I think it's part of his selection process that reminds me of what I see in the selections that Tom Hanks makes, in that there's a particular piece of the actor's personality that I think comes through in every single one. Give you an example. One of the things that works great for Raj Kamar is the roles that he plays, he's consistently in a position of a guy who at his core is a good guy most of the time. At his core is a good guy and is completely misunderstood and treated wrongfully. He's kind of the, whatever you want to call him, the underdog or the guy who's coming at something with a sense of naivete and doesn't understand why he's being mistreated. And there's an innocence about him that Hanks also has always carried in all of his roles. That is an endearing quality to him that he brings to every single role. Yeah, he does have that innocence. Yeah, there's just, it adds so much to every role. Which is why I always call him young Pankaj. Yeah, Pankaj has the same thing. It's a great comparison. But he also, when he turns it on, can flip a switch. He can be like the most intimidating person I've ever seen in my life. And to show you just how good the writing and the acting and directing are, I don't know about you, it's also produced by our host on Yorkshire, by the way. Oh, I didn't notice that. I got really irritated not with the filmmaking and not with the acting with the actual courtroom stuff. I was so invested and engaged and was so irritated at what was being done to him by either the judge or other attorneys that I found myself was like this, that's how good this was. And we've run into that before with courtroom dramas because obviously laws, what's allowed in a courtroom in America and what's obviously allowed in here. That's very different. It's very jarring. Like, because some added another level. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't do that. Yeah, it's like, because some stuff that they do is like, that would never be a permissible court. Yeah, either the way it was presented or just what they were doing would never be permitted in a courtroom. Yeah, exactly. This guy says this thing, why are we believing it? Why are we talking about that? And why are you talking over each other in my courtroom? Obviously, I get it that it's different. It's different cultural and I accept it. It's just that adds to the anger of us when we watch this because obviously the wrongs, because it's a universal story. It's not just an Indian thing where somebody gets accused of something just because they're there and they're a certain religion or race. Obviously, America has dealt with that for its existence. All the time. Every day, still going on. A black person's just there on the street and he gets accused of something he did not do because he's a black man. So it's a universal thing that everybody can kind of relate to. You're white, rich people go away with who knows what. Exactly. And so that's just a human kind of thing because sometimes in certain films in India, people are like, I don't know if you get it. It's cultural. We not ran into that a lot, very rarely. Cause if usually you tell a human story, it doesn't matter the culture. I can watch a Korean film. It's a different culture. I understand it because it's a human story. I'm a human. We can all relate to that. And it's one of my least favorite rebuttals. Rebuttals and a negation for our opinion about something because too often I will hear, well, you just don't get it cause you're not from here. And that is most of the time incorrect because I've watched a lot of movies, not nearly as many as Indian, but I've watched a lot of movies from other countries and it's just, it's not a fair critique. But yeah, I do agree the courtrooms, I was heavily invested in. Obviously, because one, Hansel's directing and we'll get to that in a second. His directing in this is so good, just like it was in Al Ghira as well. That's why I think they're very similar and just in terms of how powerful they are. And again, they also had great performances from their leads of Rajkumar. And I didn't mention her before. Obviously Rajkumar was amazing, but his love interest to him was, but I wanted to give her a shout out. What was her name? This, right? Yes, that was it. That's her. Forgive me if I mispronounce your name, probably in Sundu. I think that's correct. I thought she did a phenomenal job. I thought she was, everybody in this was fantastic. Like the scene once again, Spoilers, when she was trying to leave. And they were having a big argument. It was a long scene, but it was really well-crafted because you saw the whole progression of like him. You're not leaving, blah, blah, blah. And then he was like, she's leaving and he tries to stop her from actually leaving. But obviously she was in it the whole time and in his face and obviously looking out for herself and her kid. And you understood where she was coming from. That scene in particular felt like Asghar Farhadi, if you've seen any of his films. Everything from the saucer that was, they went in the kitchen, she set a saucer down or she moved a saucer and it started to rotate and it kept going and it kept going and it kept going and then it just stopped. And they just let it go because that was happening. That's what's happening in the room. And I really love and feel like that's exactly the, and that's us. That's just our bread and butter man. That's the kind of actors that we love that's kind of acting we love to do. It's the kind of directing we love where you just let things go, let life happen in a very live theater way and just capture of the magic that can happen in any moment like that. And Raj Kumar, it was really great. But I don't know if he did it for the sound. He probably did. When you're that good of an actor, you can blend the technicality you need to do like hitting your mark with also motivating yourself as to why I went there. So that moment, I remember, he held for a moment and paused to say something and the saucer stopped and then he said it. And I thought, he dirty dog. That wasn't just a pause. That was ready for the sound to clear. You're so good. Yeah, so good. Yeah, he's one of the most talented actors. And he really rarely has a false moment. I can't even think of a time I've seen him have a false moment ever. I know we've probably seen as much of him as we probably have Amir Khan because I think Amir Khan's about at 12 or 13 films. Probably, yeah. I can't imagine Rajkumar's around that. I haven't counted it out, but we've seen a lot because he's supporting him a lot. He's smaller parts a lot. And so I can't, honestly, I can't ever remember a time. There may be different actors, but there's no one better. Maybe his accent in A White Tiger. No, maybe, maybe. But it wasn't really his performance. No, no, no. Benedict Cumberbatch struggles with accents. Yeah, maybe. So, and then everybody else, I thought we saw several faces that we know really well. His attorney boss that he left, the other attorney that he's fighting with for the very first time, the defense attorney, his little actress who played his mom, the family that he was in, and then the nice, beautiful little appearance by K.K. Menon was just fantastic. That's actually what set me off when I turned it off. The first time I got about 10 minutes and K.K. Menon walked in and they cut out his line. Oh my goodness. And I was like, I am not doing this right now. No, no. You will not cut out K.K. Menon's lines for me. Exactly. I will punch you in the face. So I was scrambled and tried to find an actual version that wasn't gonna cut it off, but obviously K.K. Menon did a phenomenal job because he's one of the best actors out there. He is. But it was a wonderful, nice surprise, even though I was hoping he was gonna come back in towards the back half of the film. Yeah. I like seeing it. I did too. I was hoping for a little bit more of him, but it was kind of cool. He was kind of like that. Well, he wasn't as big a role, but it reminded me a little bit of Atul Khakarni and Hiram. It was a well-crafted story. Very well put together. It's, once again, it's under two hours, and they didn't over-dramaticize this. Not at all. Hansel didn't over-dramaticize any of the events. Not at all. And he didn't judge his character. He kind of just told his story. Yep. Which is wonderful. And obviously, I'm sure this didn't do well because of the subject matter and its style of film, I think. Which is a shame. Yeah. Well, not in terms of, it won, I think, the In-National Award. I'm not saying that in terms of box office. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. I know it got a claim, because it should, because it's a really well-crafted film. But the way he did it, he didn't judge this character, any character, and he let it breathe, and he let it, like the courtroom scenes, courtroom dramas, they're not always the most entertaining films, because obviously court is pretty boring a lot of time. Yep. But the scene where she was accusing him of being a terrorist and in a shouting match. Oh, man. And they just kind of let them go and work. I got angry with him. Yeah. Like, what is she doing right now to this good man? Yeah. What are you doing? But then, obviously, he didn't judge any of the characters. Like, when Rajkumar made her wear the burqa, and you're like, really, you didn't think to talk to her about this? Yeah. But he kind of just let the character be, and he's not, obviously, in a lot of Indian cinema, the hero is just this real person that he was... But the real dynamic. Displaying on film. And obviously, I don't know this story at all. Right. We can't measure the accuracy on the events in the person. At all. But I have no reason to believe it's not. But obviously, if there is stuff, you can obviously let us know. But I thought Hansel did a phenomenal job. And he also had these nice surprises, because obviously it would be this nice thing. And then something would just come out of the blue. Like, he got attacked. And I don't know if it was charcoal or what was it? Or a mix of that and feces or I don't know. He smeared on his face and won, it's so horrible, but obviously we've heard many stories of stuff like that happening to people of a different political opinion. And worse. Or whatever. Acid in the face of women. Or just because you're part of a film. And the stuff that people did to, Sanjay Lila Bansali, their film. So it was like, stuff that was believable, because I'm sure it actually happened, but I thought it was done well in terms of, because sometimes, especially with stuff like this that I'm sure didn't have a crazy big budget, it can look like, that didn't look like that actually happened. Yeah, the whole flow of the film is pretty much spot on across the board with every single thing, because a big part in this is the way that Hansel worked with the editing of A Purva Asrani. And that is critical in the flow and the pace, even the drama that you feel. But the seamlessness of the courtroom stuff, where you're just fully engaged and it makes you feel like you're watching a play, is so specific. I was, I had dinner, and Johnny and I had dinner about a week ago with a friend of mine who has directed for many, many years. He has claimed a fame in direction as he spent like 25 years directing a soap opera here. And he was talking to me about a project he was just recently working on and how he was a producer on it. And one of the things that was a problem was watching a scene that was shot one day that was beautiful in the room. People were in tears watching it in the room. But when he saw the final edit, it was missed, completely missed. And he talked to the director about it, who's a brand new director. And the director made a selection on shot choice because an actress in the scene didn't get enough screen time. I groaned, my friend groaned, and he was allowed, because he's a producer, to go in himself and re-edit the scene and recapture what was going on in the room. All that to say, it takes great directing and great editing to capture the great performances because they can be lost if they're not captured right. And I felt like every moment of this that went well and Rajkumar could attest to that. And it is probably why he would like to work with him and it's why DiCaprio works with the Scorsese and why people work with Quentin Tarantino all the time. It's because they know he's not gonna leave my best work on the floor. It's gonna translate and probably be even better on screen than we did in the room. Yeah, yeah. Obviously actors are so important in film, but they're also at the mercy of the director, the cameraman, the editor. They're at the mercy of almost everyone. At the mercy of the fricking guy holding the microphone on the boom. If it comes into screen and they miss that, your scene's upstaged by the fact that the boom operator didn't get the mic out. Yeah, obviously then once again, film is a collaborative art and that's why it's so difficult to make such a great film. But this, because I was like, what's my favorite one? It'd probably be between this and Al Ghira. As far as Hansol's films? I was also gonna ask you, we've seen quite a few courtroom drama ones. Where does this stand for you in the courtroom drama world? Well, there's court and obviously the very first one we ever saw was pink. I consider badla to be a courtroom one even though it's because of the dialogue between Big B and Topsy is very courtroom drama-y. Well, technically there was some court in that new Tamil film we just watched, The Last Farmer. Yeah, that's true. But I don't know. That's true, but it's not technically a courtroom drama. I don't know, they've all been really good, actually. They have been. They've done some really good courtroom dramas. I don't think we've seen one that's been bad. Yeah, what would work, I mean, we had some courtroom stuff take place. I would love a scripted courtroom, like Law and Order we have here. We could do that with some kind of a series that would take place where you have good scripted courtroom drama. I think Rajkumar is doing a series next. Oh, good. In OTG series. Great. Which I don't think he's done. Guns, yeah, guns, because I've seen him post about it. It's with- Guns and Gulabs? Raj and DK, the family man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They do family man. Great, that's right. I remember hearing about that. Are they just taking all the stars, the family man director, and being like, because they're doing one with Shahid too? They're just- That's awesome. That's awesome. But he really is just, that's just a really good movie. And it qualifies for me, like I use the word elevated a lot. That's a word I've used for a lot of years to describe. It came from- Elevative, actually. Yeah, it came from the days of articulating the fine art conservatory and what are the fine arts and what's that differentiated from fine artistry and artistic expression. And for me, it's pretty simple criteria for something to hit the level where I consider it to be elevated of artistry. We're like, everybody should watch this because this is what it's all about. And I consider this film to be along those lines. The first one is, is it entertaining and or engaging? I was engaged the whole time. Doesn't always have to be engaging. You just have a grip war in good time, right? So is it entertaining and engaging? Is it educational? Did you learn something new? Is it enlightening? Does it actually take a deeper level for you and share something about the human experience? So you got those three E's and then last of all, is it important? And I feel like this is clearly an important story and it talks obviously about many things including justice in the legal system is not sadly about right and wrong. It's about who wins. And one of my favorite things that I'm hoping is truthful to the character that Raj Kumar plays is that the reason Shahid did what he did and why he went and started his own law firm was because what mattered to him was truth and protecting people who had been wrong because there is a right and there is a wrong. And sadly in the legal world and law enforcement world that's not the top criteria for many. It was so frustrating how that man was in jail for years and they had no evidence. Unbelievable, no bail. Like and no evidence. And he was like, you can't just keep somebody because you think he's the one without any evidence. Yeah, like- Like just because you can't just put an innocent man in jail, just so like you've- We've got time to build a case. Here in the United States, you if the person, if you don't have enough surrounding evidence that makes it very clear this could be the person and they don't pose a flight risk, there's no way you could keep somebody contained like that. You would have so many organizations like the ACLU demanding and winning in higher courts to say that judge is corrupt, they cannot do that. Not trust me, our legal system has corruption in it. I'm just saying that was one of the shocking things. And they said at the end that he was able to get some acquittals in a system that's notorious for taking a long time and people losing years of their life who never committed a crime. Yeah, and it was one last thing. It was super, I thought well done, how he blended his personal life with his work life, Hansel, and kind of how he juggled that as opposed like not focusing on one- Showing Shahid. Showing how they kind of affected each other. I agree. Because obviously sometimes you can get loose focus of a certain aspect in a film, but I thought he did a good job at juggling his whole life. I agreed and did that the way good directors do, which is show don't tell. There was no exposition. The way you got that, he comes home for dinner, she's done eating, she's clearly irritated and he says, sorry, sorry. That one scene was enough to let you know he started to prioritize work over his family and she's upset. Yeah, yeah, overall a fantastic, fantastic film. Yeah. I'm glad we finally got to it. Me too, me too. For a while it wasn't even available for rent and so I'm glad that we actually enjoyed it. Every second of it. Hopefully they get rid of the editing version. Really? That's stupid. So sad, because it's such an enjoyable film. There should be no hindrances to seeing good cinema. There should be no censor board. Anyway, but let us know what you thought about the film. Let us know what the next Rush Kamar film and the next Hansel film, well, or series I guess, I know the next series of his is scam. We're meaning to get to that for a long, long time. But it's very exciting to actually, because we know him as a director and so I know the quality of that is going to be and there's no surprise that everybody loved it so much because of its Hansel. But anyways, let us know what his next film should be down below.