Good and evil are two sides of the same coin.There is good and evil in each one of us and both of them are in constant conflict with each other. It’s upto us how we deal with the two and who we let dominate our lives.
Manu Varma (Amitabh Bachchan) is a honest and efficient cop in-charge of VIP security. His family consists of his wife Supriya(Nandita Das) and a daughter. Raghavan (Manoj Bajpai with a spine-tingling laugh) is the psychopath killer who firmly believes in Bhagvad Gita’s preaching’s that noone dies and noone kills anyone.He believes he is just the means and after killing his victim he talks to dead bodies telling them the Gita preaching’s and that they should not feel bad that he killed them! He is a master of disguises and is helped by his mentally challenged brother(K.K.Raina) who is a expert in making masks. Neeta (oo la la Raveena Tandon) is the sexy moll and Raghavan’s lover.After despatching the defence minister, Raghavan’s next target is the prime minister. Manu Varma is constantly behind Raghavan but somehow the expert psychopath stays a few steps ahead of the cops. A few dead bodies later Manu finally arrests Raghavan and the courts decide to hang him. Raghavan firmly believes that evil never dies but it merely changes faces. He also argues that good needs evil to prove it’s goodness and without evil there would be no good.He tells Manu that there is a evil in each of us and if there would be no laws all the good guys would like to be Raghavan. In a skirmish, Manu shoots Raghavan and everyone thinks that the evil is dead.
There are some changes in Manu.He now has the same evil spine tingling laugh of Raghavan. Raghavan is inside Manu and uses his body to settle scores with all his enemies.Evil Raghavan makes life miserable for good Manu. Manu fights a losing battle against evil and turns to his wife for help after Raghavan uses Manu’s body to rape her.
Good always triumphs over evil. Will Manu manage to defeat the evil in him? See the movie to find out.
Aks is a psychological thriller and there are some rules while making a thriller which the director (Rakesh Mehra) and of course the other directors need to know:-
1.A thriller has to be fast paced. The editing has to be crisp and taut. You cannot make the camera linger on a scene for too long.
2.A thriller cannot have songs. Song’s, no matter how good slow down the pace of a movie and as pointed out in the above para, a thriller has to fast paced.Of course, there have been fast paced thrillers in the past , most notable of them being Gupt but then not everyone is Rajiv Rai(Director of Gupt).
- You cannot make a good thriller if you are going to have a running time of almost 2 hours and 45 minutes, Mr. Rakesh Mehra.
The problem with Aks is that it is too slow. It just doesn’t have that edge of the seat thrills that makes a good thriller. I wish the movie was more fast and had crisper editing. Though the songs don’t intrude much into the story, they do slow down the pace of the movie. I believe Aks has been edited to make it shorter but shorter in this case is not good enough. It’s still too long.
The most positive point of this movie is the cast. Amitabh Bachchan as Manu Varma excels and comes up with a absolute smashing performance. His performance in the climax, when he tries to defeat the evil lurking inside his body is mind blowing.The way he switches from being the good Manu to the evil Raghavan is also done nicely by him though the poisonous laugh does’nt suit Amitabh as much as it does Manoj. Manoj Bajpai as the psycho Raghavan comes up with a wonderful performance. His laugh has the tinge of evil in it and he manages to send chills down your spine with it. Nandita Das as Supriya has not much to do and the little bit of performance required from her comes in the last 20 minutes but she does’nt disappoint. Ravishing Raveena Tondon has nothing much to do except dance to the songs, show a bit of skin, look glamourous and sexy.Of course, it’s not difficult for Raveena to look beautiful and sexy and as Neeta she oozes of sensuality. The other cast members also perform efficiently with K.K.Raina excelling as Raghavan’s mentally challenged brother.
The technical finesse of the film is first rate and it could rank right up there with some hollywood films. The cinematography by Kiran Deodhar (hope I got the name right) is brilliant. The opening sequence shot in hungary is really good but how I wish the rest of the movie was as good as the opening sequence.
Aks is a must see for the simple reason that the director has attempted something different. It’s not a conventional movie and audiences in the interior of the country will have a tough time understanding it. Though it’s too slow and too long for a thriller the concept of good and evil is really good.
Expectedly, the film is’nt doing to well and I found out the reason for it’s dismal performance when I over heard two guys talking about the movie after it was over. The conversation went something like this:
Man1: what was the movie about? I could’nt understand it.Did u understand it?
Man2: ya I did manage to understand a little bit.
Man1: Good for you but I guess you have to see it 3 more times to fully understand it.
Don’t go by the above conversation because the film is genuinely different and for this reason it’s a must see.