After watching the slick promos of the movie, i was convinced that this would be one helluva movie...after watching this movie first day last show, I am almost proved wrong! Simply put, what do you get if you are inspired by unbreakable, the sixth sense, face/off and couple of other movies?....the outcome: AKS (reflection) . Coming straight to the point, let me analyze the movie!
Amitabh Bachchan
The Good
Manu Verma, a tough cop, is on security for the defense minister’s trip to hungary. His insticts are superb, and averts the Defense Minister’s killing. The real cause though of the trip of the minister is to retrieve a floppy containing a hit list of the assisations going to take place (inspired by Mission Impossible!).The minister hands over the trust to the cop.
Manoj Bajpee
The Bad
Raghavan is a psycho, straight inspired from a hitchcock novel. He laughs like a hyena, and for no apparent reason, likes to sway his head from here to there. He also has a equally mad brother. He plans the killing first, though fails. Eventually he foils the plan and gets away with the floppy before Manu Verma gets to it.
AKS begins
After a hot pursuit of nearly a hour, Manu Verma successfully catches Raghavan. Of course interleaved with it are some hot moments with Raveena
Tandon who is a bar girl, and Nandita Das who happens to be Manu’s wife. Raghavan is a tough nut to crack, and Manu Verma makes one last attempt to retrieve the location of floppy from Raghavan, by offering him life for floppy deal, but fails again. Raghavan too makes a last ditch attempt to escape and in the shoot out that ensues, Manu and Raghavan shoot each other. Manu survies, but the Raghavan dies, but not his soul. The ’’soul’’ enters Manu and begins to control him...this is where the supernatural part starts. Having taken control of him, Raghavan gets all kinds of things done by Manu. The only way Manu can get rid of the ghost is to force him out on a eclipse. What happens next...what happened to the floppy, what happened to the assasinations...what happenes to raghavan ultimately..for all these...well guys watch it!
The Story
Its damn slow and is the biggest draw back of the movie really. The pace lags in both sessions of the movie and one tends to get bored. Add to the slow pace, is the length. The movie goes on for good three and half hours, leaving you exhausted. The pace only picks up in the last 15 minutes or so, and yeah, the climax is deadly to say the least!
Technicalities
Technically, this is one the brilliant movies to have come. Each detail right from sounds to the look of the movie has been taken care of. Art direction is simply astounding, and goes with the feel of the movie. The special effects are best to a hindi movie as yet. The background score, though inspired by Face/off, Unbreakable, MI-2 is simply superb and leaves a impression. The visuals are just wow!
Performance
ohmygod! Amitabh is just tooo tooo goood! This movie without him would be absolute crap! he is the only saving grace in the acting department. Manoj Bajpee goes over the board trying to look pyschotic...but is very effective in a couple of scenes..and very nearly scares you. The rest of the cast, well nothing really in the movie for them. The music with exceptions to some songs are superb, and have the feel of the movie. The direction is also good in parts, but fails to hold interest beyond a point.
Finally...
Aks is a great movie gone haywire. Had the director maintained the pace and made the movie shorter, then it would really have been a superrrrb movie! and yeah, he could have also cut down on the monotonous lines which repeat every 5 minutes in the movie:
’’ na koi marta hain, na koi maarta hain
yeh mein nahi kehta, tumaharee Geeta kehti hain...’’
Happy viewing!