Attention revenge-seekers! There is a new trend washing over the revenge world these days. If you are someone tormented by the need to take revenge on someone, on your friend for eating that ice-cream you snatched away from a junior at school all those years ago, on your maths (or science, or english) teacher for being so damn sexy as to distract you from learning anything, on Shah Rukh Khan for making you bear his ’multi-faceted’ acting all these years, on your ex-girlfriend (or the present one) who wanted you to be like John Abraham, on John Abraham for making you want to be like him, on anyone or anything that has scarred you for life, you have come to the right place. In fact, you have come to the wrong place. You should go watch Zinda instead. Oh crap, wait. Don’t go just yet. Read this review fully and THEN go.
Now before we start, let us be very clear of what type of avenger you are not going to become. Picture this: You are a boy of five, a son of a rich industrialist. Your father gives your uncle and his children (a son and a daughter) a place to live and a job at his factory. One rainy night, your uncle stabs your father from behind while laughing like a bollywood villain (which is what he is) and your mother screaming like a bollywood mother (which, again, is what she is). Just when your uncle turns towards you to murder you, your mother flings herself at her with another, louder, scream. You take the chance to escape into the night and sleep at a temple where the priest finds you and takes you home. Twenty years later, you come back to find that your uncle’s son has grown into a comedian while his daughter into a heroine. So you march along the movie, playing pranks on the comedian, singing a few songs with the heroine, and generally having a good time. And then, at the end, you fight with your uncle, kill him, and save your mother who has been kept as a servant for all these years.
If that is the kind of avenger you are hoping to be, really, there is no hope for you. As I said before, the world of revenge has changed a little in the last few years. These days, before you even start to take revenge on someone, it is important to have a huge business empire. Why? So that you can set up a software engineering company in Bangkok and invite your ’avengee’ there on an irresistible offer, stupid. Why would you want to do that? Don’t ask me, that is what Rohit Chopra (John Abraham) does to Bala (Sanjay Dutt). Of course, revenge is sweet when your victim has someone to mourn over his loss so it is always advisable to make sure that your victim is married and has one or two friends. Not more, mind you, because friends can also get snoopy; just one or two. Just like Bala in the movie. A wife Nisha (Celina Jaitley) and a friend Joy Fernandez (Mahesh Manjrekar), who obviously wants to sleep with Nisha (but again, who wouldn’t?).
Now once you have him working in Bangkok as a software engineer, you can get to the small matter of actually having your way with him. You can always kill him but what would that do to your reputation as an avenger? If you want to even dream of a place in the Hall of Fame, you should do something no one has ever done before. How about locking him up for 10 years with a computer and web cam in the room? Well Rohit locks Bala up for 14 years with a TV and a video camera in the room. Jeez, they just took my idea and used a modified version of it. How pathetic can bollywood get? Oh yes, I almost forgot. You have to feed him the same food every single time he eats. Now the movie uses fried wantons for this purpose. Fried fish will do equally well. Oblige the victim by airing some self-help programmes like ’How to be a samurai in 14 years’, ’How to claw teeth out with a sledgehammer’, ’A prisoner’s guide to fracturing bones and amputating hands’ and the like. You know, it helps to pass the time.
You must be wondering why you would want to help your victim get so good at being bad while all you want really is for him to rot in his prison. Well, unbeknownst to you, in addition to being a big business magnate, you are also a psycho. You keep the man alive for 14 years, and then set him free with a cell-phone and some cash. Yes, you heard me right. You set him free! Because you know that your victim will track you down. How? Why do you think you have been feeding him only fried wantons all this time, silly? To make sure he remembers the taste so well that he will try every fried wanton shop in Bangkok until he finds the right one. Of course, if your victim is not particularly bright (which Bala is not) you can always tell him where you are on the phone you left him, which is what Rohit does eventually anyway. Ingenious, is it not?
In a revenge story such as this, there is another avenger apart from you. Who? Gosh, you business magnates are just a dumb lot. You locked up a guy for 14 years, fed him only fried wantons for every one of his meals, murdered his wife, and then what do you think he would want after you have left him free? More fried wantons? No. Revenge? Yes. Which is all well and good because all it means is that the wanna-be avenger gets some more tips and tricks of the trade. One of the most important things is your choice of weapon. You might think guns are powerful but you have no idea how easy and fast it is to pull out a guy’s teeth with a sledge-hammer, or how easy it is to swipe off a man’s arm with a sword. Bala exhibits his skill in both these fields for our benefit. You might want to re-think on airing those self-help programmes on the TV. Another interesting piece of information is that after spending 14 years in solitude, you will have become so weird that you will look irresistible to sexy girls who also happen to be taxi-drivers. The movie has a typical example in the form of Jenny (Lara Dutta) whom Bala promptly makes love to.
Once Bala and Rohit meet, the movie runs out of material that can be used to educate our budding avengers. The movie then concentrates on why Rohit went to such great lengths to torture Bala and because there are some people who would find those boring details interesting, I will not reveal them here. What I would like to mention is how good the direction was (Sanjay Gupta). Though it has shades of Quentin Tarantino, we all have to admit that cutting off limbs, plucking out teeth etc are fairly mundane things that even normal people like doctors and dentists do, so it is no big deal that people like Bala do it as well, albeit using some unconventional methods. Besides, it is all a form of expression. Never mind that almost all of female audiences will close their eyes at some of the scenes, what is important is that we give the director license to exhibit his art-piece in whatever way he deems it fit.
Cinematography, music and all the rest of the pieces fit in well enough to keep you from noticing them. John Abraham does well in the scenes where he is serene and calm and absolutely sucks where he has to show a bit of passion. Sanjay Dutt surprises us in a well-polished performance. Lara Dutta, Celina Jaitley and Mahesh Manjrekar are adequate in their roles. A reasonable watch overall.