He’s gone darker before to good effect: he was startling as the villain in Lee Daniels’ nutty “The Paperboy.” Here, however, he’s closer to the wiseguy persona of his formative screen years, which simply distracts from what seems to be a straightforward thriller plot. The actor, who himself once seemed inseparable from teen roles, has been hit-and-miss in finding appropriate vehicles in recent years. Then there’s Cusack, inexplicably lurking about in black ninja pajamas (or as Vic puts it, “looking like a Metallica roadie”), as if that’s going to somehow blend in with the sylvan settings. For a while, “Blood Money” is like watching adenoidal tweens re-enact “Double Indemnity” it’s fun, but pretty silly. As written and played here, Lynn is a tantrum-prone juvenile princess not greatly assisted by two male besties who aren’t so mature either, and who apparently never glimpsed her femme fatale potential despite lifelong alliance. This sort of thing worked better when it was played by the likes of Lizbeth Scott or Gloria Grahame, who might’ve been young themselves at the time but were already palpably adults capable of embodying pulp-fiction Machiavellian deceit. As in noirs of yore, this hitherto ordinary all-American lass immediately develops blinding, mercenary dollar signs in her eyes upon glimpsing a potential major personal gain, and is soon willing to sacrifice anyone in her path. He lands in one place, they in another - on a riverbank, where Lynn happens to find them on her morning run after a night of drunken three-way arguments. By then, you are disengaged and debating dinner choices.Meanwhile, white-collar embezzler Miller (Cusack) is fleeing authorities via the small plane he abandons to crash in the forest as he parachutes down with four heavy duffel bags of loot. Zaveri Sir is also fond of pronouncements such as " Imaandari aadmi ko mahal mein nahin, footpath pe le jaati hai."īlood Money finds some traction in the climax but it's too little, too late. Zaveri Sir wears long coats, chomps on cigars and likes to say "superb" with a cruel curl of his lips, while his brother, played by Sandip Sikand, looks comically angry the whole time. In the climax, he sprints through Cape Town with a profusely bleeding stab wound and beats up some burly men for good measure.
Kunal Khemu works hard to make his character's dangerous dilemma real but the situations he is put in are ludicrous. The screenplay is bogged down by songs and the couple's love story, which of course takes a beating once Kunal starts to party with the boss. The world of blood diamonds, as created by debutant director Vishal S Mahadkar here, is largely comic-book. This standard issue plot worked far better in Jannat because the protagonist was edgier and the backdrop of match-fixing more intriguing. Of course, Kunal soon finds out that he has made a deal with the devil or, as he so originally puts it at interval point, "I sold my soul." After Kunal clinches a big deal, Zaveri Sir takes him under his wing, which means a life of pool parties, private planes and a tryst on the conference room table with a sexy co-worker. This is the first scene of the film, so I'm not spoiling any mystery here. 'Witch' is an understatement for Kunal's boss, 'Zaveri Sir,' played by Manish Chaudhari, who is involved in all sorts of nefarious activities and is introduced to us as he drills a hole into his executive's leg. Only his wife, Arzoo, played by Amrita Puri, wonders why the house reminds her of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, in which the nice old woman turns out to be a witch. Cut to: shopping, sightseeing and snazzy new car. The company boss and his brother don't have much time to chat with him, but the newbie is given a furnished mansion to live in and cash to spend. We are told that it's the first time he's been on an airplane. Kunal, played by Kunal Khemu, is a middle-class MBA student who gets a job at the Trinity Diamond Company in Cape Town.
It was my favourite of many unintentionally hilarious moments in the film.īlood Money, like a few other Vishesh films (the Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt banner) before it, notably the match-fixing saga Jannat, is a morality tale about the dangers of conspicuous consumption. A lion, a witch and a wardrobe Blood moneyĪt one point in Blood Money, the nasty boss of a diamond company gifts his protégé, Kunal, an expansive new office and a buxom secretary, with the instruction: Cabin aur Pauline, dono ka maza lo.
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