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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Comedy > Telefilm > Second Generation (Telefilm)

Second Generation

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: B     Telefilm: B+

 

 

Films like Bend it Like Beckham and Monsoon Wedding have recently brought a lot of attention to the Indian cinema scene.  Although not true “Bollywood” set pieces, these movies meld traditional Indian themes of duty to family and pursuit of personal destiny into pleasing packages easily gobbled up by English-speaking audiences.  Featuring the talented and lovely Parminder Nagra (Beckham and television’s ER), Second Generation (2003) is a recent telefilm that continues this trend, delivering a bevy of powerful performances around a well-shot, punchy script that manages to cover all of its melodramatic bases.

 

A visually stunning film that treats viewers to shadowy snatches of exotic India while immersing them in Anglo-Indian culture of London’s Southall neighborhood, Second Generation features the solid camera work of Sean Bobbitt, who teams with director Jon Sen to create a fast-moving drama that evokes the classic tropes of Shakespeare’s King Lear.  The 1.78 X 1 widescreen, letterboxed transfer of this disc is solid, if unspectacular, allowing the viewer a fuller glimpse of Southall’s urban landscapes.

 

One of the real treats of this film and this DVD package is composer Nitin Sawhney’s hard-driving soundtrack.  His music combines traditional Indian rhythms with the hard-hitting hip-hop sounds of Southall’s Indian ghetto.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo offers Pro Logic surrounds on this disc and proves adequate to the task of doing justice to Sawhney’s driving beats, but seems uneven during flashback and dream sequences.

 

Although suffering from sometimes-deficient dialogue, the film delivers numerous satisfying performances from a cast of mainly Indian actors, including Bollywood veteran Om Puri (East is East) as Sharma, his family’s patriarch.  Upon recently awakening from a coma, Sharma must wrestle with the treachery of his two elder daughters, the perceived disloyalty of Heere (Nagra), and his own guilt over the loss of their mother.  At its heart the film is a romance, and features some incendiary love scenes between Nagra and male co-leads Jay Simpson and Danny Dyer. Second Generation offers an intriguing look into the lives of members of London’s upwardly mobile ethnic Indian community, while also delivering solid dramatic performances and the exciting sounds of Indian hip-hop.

 

 

-   Scott Pyle


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