Director – Anurag Kashyap
Music Composer – Vishal Bharadwaj
Our Rating – 2.5 /5
With just four tracks, No Smoking looks like a typical Anurag Kashyap film with an abstract title and limited but good sound songs.
With Vishal Bharadwaj composing the music and Gulzar penning the lyrics, you can be excused for expecting a score that’s a notch above the average. No Smoking does not disappoint, but only in parts.
The opening track of the film’Jab Bhi Ciggaret’ – the trance version, sounds super cool. Sunidhi Chouhan’s voice gives the song a remarkable facet. In the Jazz version, Adnan Sami delivers an apposite performance. Looks like his decreased weight is affecting his vocal as well, but all for the good!
Of the two versions, the trance version is a little crazier with its beats and fast pace, leaving behind the high, shady tunes of the jazz version. The song has a poignant feel to it which sets it apart from the present day trance tracks.
Up next is’Phook De’ in its original and a Club-mix. After’Namak Ishq ka’, Rekha makes a terrific return with the addictive club mix sung in a very techno-styled manner. It does have that X factor to make it the crowd favourite although the beats are very similar to’Chappa Chappa’ from Gulzar’s film Maachis, which too boasted Vishal Bharadwaj’s compositions. Sukhwinder Singh comes up with the original version later in the line-up which is very desi with a gloomy feel. The voiceover by a female, talking about the ill effects of smoking, somewhere in the middle of the song, sets the mood of the song.
‘Ash Tray’ by debutant Deva Sen Gupta, has a great background score, but loaded with lyrics by Gulzarsaab that are more poetry than an expected Bollywood score. Some elements of this song look forced as a result, because of which the song wouldn’t appeal to the kind of audience it should be appealing to.
The last track is’Kash Laga’ sung by Daler Mehndi, Sukhwinder Singh and Vishal Bharadwaj himself. With sufi influences but a little low on the lyrical side, this song does sound good but not all that great. With a combination of such brilliant singers, one expects more from this track than the others, but alas!
Nevertheless, the background score is worth listening to. And when it comes to chartbusters, this movie doesn’t have any songs that would be instant chartbusters, but can be commercially successful thanks to their videos.
