Review: Ishrat Made In China
As entertainment returns to the silver screens in all its glory, Mohib Mirza and Sanam Saeed are all set to light up our screens and bring the audiences back to the cinema. Ishrat Made In China is written by Ahsan Raza Firdousi while Mohib Mirza is responsible for direction as well as screenplay. The star cast includes Mohib Mirza, Sanam Saeed, HSY, Sara Loren, Shamoon Abbasi, Ali Kazmi and Mani.
Shot in Pakistan and Thailand, Mohib Mirza’s directorial debut ‘Ishrat Made in China’ is all set to release in cinemas around the country from March 3.
The feel is as vibrant as you see it in the trailer but the execution is of no service to its rather unique premise. Ishrat’s uphill battle is first hauled, then rushed and eventually overlapped with a budding romance that only manages to tease the audience. His much-awaited transformation is also reduced to a rehashed Karate Kid routine under the mentorship of a Chinese master played by Shamoon Abbasi. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with a Karate-Kid-esque montage of sorts but it does bother the viewer when the entire film is centered around a transformation that barely gets any screentime.
For context, Ishrat Baji was a successful sitcom that ran in the mid-2000s on one of the local TV channels. Mirza played the quirky lead role in it. So, the guess was that the movie had something to do with the TV show. Talking to Dawn, Mohib Mirza summarily rejected the notion that Ishrat Made in China had anything to do with the sitcom. “It is a purely commercial film.” When asked to define the ‘commercial’ part of his answer, he replied, “Songs, action, comedy, romance… I promise you, you would not have seen such action sequences [in Pakistani films],” adding he is satisfied with the end result of his effort.
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