Before I read any of the reviews, I thought Abhay was one of these movies that broke molds on what a Hindi film is capable of. Kamal Hassan plays a dual role of Abhay/Vijay with such zest. Most memorable parts of the movie are Abhay & Vijay’s childhood flashbacks. The scenes where the kids portraying Abhay & Vijay were riveting. It’s like going inside a sociopath’s brain to understand how it works. Raveena Tandon’s talent was wasted on this movie, however. They should have developed her character more instead of just making her an ornament piece like in most Indian movies. (I’ve yet to see an Indian movie where both the male & female leads play STRONG, visible characters at the same time. Maybe in the future?).
There are several scenes in the movie that were misunderstood by the critics & fans alike. One of which is Abhay’s Mexican wrestling clown attire in the scene where he bludgeons Manisha to death due to extasy & cocaine intoxication mixed with a lapse of dementia. Why was it a cartoon? Well, I guess the scene was conveying that Abhay saw the murder as a child would ’’play act’’ a cartoon. In this case, Manisha reminded the troubled Abhay of his wicked stepmother. He just transposed the events, that’s all.
The fight scenes were a bit cheesy, I admit. I felt like I was watching a bad early 90’s Bruce Willis movie, at times. The soundtrack is just OK, nothing special. The rain sequence with Manisha was fun to watch. Overall, it was a COOL movie. It wasn’t the best but it certainly deserved more recognition than it got. Unless you’ve seen movies like ’Silence of the Lambs’, ’The Cell’ or even ’From Dusk Till Dawn’ then you will not really get a grip on the plot. I found it to be unique & campy. ’Abhay’ is in a league all it’s own.