Remaking A Few Good Men was always going to be a tough task, simply because Jack Nicholson had way too much fun chewing up the scenery that you just couldn’t hope to match up to that. So Shaurya decides to attack the problem from a different angle — it makes the movie a lot more serious (or maybe we just understand the issues a lot better) and gives the Nicholson character an entirely different spin. It works, in a way — Kay Kay is hypotically watchable in the key courtroom sequence, and manages to create something that deserves to be taken on its own terms. That it is hamstrung by a terribly ordinary performance at the other end by Rahul Bose (in the Tom Cruise role) is a pity.
The other big difference is the accused (in this case just one man) — Capt. Javed Khan. The first time you see him, he speaks absolutely nothing. His lawyer (Bose) speaks to him, or rather at him, for a few minutes, but there seems to be absolutely no response from the man. He just sits there. It is unnerving, and undeniably effective.
Maybe it is because we (who have seen the original, or at least enough movies to know better) already know how it is going to end and therefore enter that scene feeling like there is little to know about this man. By the time the movie is over, we haven’t learnt anything we didn’t expect.
But for three minutes, an actor comes on screen and inhabits it with such mesmerizing stillness that you are hooked. You want to know why this guy is in that cell, despite the fact that, at some level, you know already. If that isn’t screen presence, I don’t know what is.
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