Superman returns in style…and in the role of Clark Kent is our Bollywood ‘star’ Bobby Deol. Join the man, as he flies through the air, accomplishes superhuman feats and dodges bullets like paper clips.
After watching the movie, one can formulate the perfect Recipe for a Bad Movie : take two honest police officers..one orthodox and the other unorthodox and put them in the center of Mumbai Underworld..and of course, put Amisha Patel in the middle and you are ensured a box-office disaster.
Well, ‘Kranti’ is just another one of those stupid movies, god knows whats the significance of the title, I’m still not able to figure it out. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to use ‘Shaktimaan’. Join Mumbai police commissioner ‘Ranapratap Singh’( Vinod Khanna ) and his son ACP ‘Abhay Pratap Singh’ ( Bobby Deol ) in the role of the highly celebrated and ‘imaandaar’ police officers. While big Daddy is all law-abiding and strictly follows the book, sunny boy has only one policy :
‘ No FIR, No Arrest, No Talk…Faisla On The Spot’…..believe it or not, that was actually supposed to be the catch phrase of the movie. Well, all seems to be well in paradise with Bobby running around trees with lady-love Amisha until bad man Kabir Bedi enters. To make matters worse, Kabir Bedi is also given a catch phrase which to the woe of the audience he narrates at least 20 times…it goes ‘ Jaha Se Doosre Socchna Band Kar De Te Hai, Woha Se Mein Sochna Shuru Kar Ta Hu’. And what’s even more irritating is the fact that whenever this dude and Bobby meet, they always narrate their respective catch-phrases. And, as expected, Kabir Bedi brings trouble in paradise as Big Daddy and Sonny fight and Bobby is forced to resign. And, everything somehow miraculously becomes allright in the end as daddy and son together shoot Kabir Bedi in a public meeting! Well, that’s the story if you can call it that. And, now to explain why I’ve called Bobby superman; but before that, unfortunately, our Bollywood didn’t stop at that, they’ve included some stuff that would have even stunned superman. Here is a list of some of them.
1) Amisha Patel comes from US to India to do her Phd research on ‘Honest Mumbai Police Officers’! I would very much like to know Phd on what academic course. And, to do that, she commits crimes and purposely gets caught and tries to bribe the officers!!!! How stupid can you get ? Not to mention the fact that she is greatly outshadowed by Bobby’s sister in the movie. Who ever she is, she looks much much better than Amisha.
2) The Incredible Police Chase :- Bobby’s chasing a criminal who’s running and simultaneously taking orders on the mobile phone from boss Bedi. And, as Bobby is about to shoot at the legs, Bedi gives instructions to the man to crouch such that the bullet instead of hitting the legs hits him on the chest and he is instantly killed !
3) I’ve saved the best for last. Mines have been kept under a helicopter such that once it takes of it blasts. As the VIP climbs into the copter and its about to take off, Bobby comes running from nowhere, flies through the air, catches the VIP and flies out of the copter landing about a 100 feet away as the copter blasts and all that without even a scratch on himself or the VIP ! Now, Superman would have been proud of that stunt.
On a serious note, I have to wonder what sort of moron would make such a movie. Music is astonishingly bad. The only bright spots are the quite impressive return of Vinod Khanna in a role suiting his age. I must admit that he has indeed done justice to his role but has been let down by a poor script. And, Kabir Bedi as the villain is exceptional. He stands tall amidst the rest of the cast and has excellent screen presence and magnetism. But even his performance fails to lift the film. Overall, it’s definitely a box-office disaster. I pity the soul who has to sit through this movie { God knows I suffered through it }.