Distributor:
AV Channel Certificate: PG | 86 minutes Available to buy Director: Rajkumar Santoshi Reviewer: Alan R Extras: Yes
ANYONE
IN IT WE KNOW?
Amitabh
Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgan, Aishwarya Rai
WHAT’S
IT ABOUT THEN?
DCP
Shrivastav (Amitabh Bachchan), a
senior policeman nearing the end
of his career, is given the task
of transporting a terrorist
across the country to his
trial. He selects a team
of four men and they begin the
long road-trip only to have
their journey persistently
dogged by a man called called
Angre (Ajay Devgan) who is
trying to kill their prisoner Dr
Ansari (Atul Kulkarni) and the
police team escorting him.
It
transpires that the doctor is not a terrorist at all but came into
possession of important papers implicating a high-ranking
politician. And that politician wants Ansari eliminated before he
can stand trial and he has Shrivastav's police boss in his pocket to
help him do this. But they reckoned without the resilience and
resourcefulness of Shrivastav and his men who overcome all of Angre's
attempts to kill them. Shrivastav's team includes Shekhar Verma (Akshay
Kumar) who plays the romantic lead to a beautiful girl (Aishwarya Rai)
whom Shrivastav lets accompany them.
SO IS
IT ANY GOOD?
It has a
good set of characters, a suitably menacing villain, a few good set
pieces and a couple of unexpected twists. It's a Bollywood film
and as such the first I've seen. I had thought it was a sly joke
that all Bollywood films included musical numbers but may be it's not.
Because amid all the police chase action and intrigue they find time for
three totally contrived reasons to have musical singing and dancing
sequences.
There's
also some quick twinkly music as the romantic lead looks down and then
up quickly while talking to the girl (is this another Bollywood thing or
a signature piece for that actor?). What I found strange also is
that all the characters spoke the occasional line of their dialogue in
English for no apparent reason. But those are not reasons to
dislike it I'm just commenting on a few strangeness' on my first
encounter with this "genre" which, other than these
"oddities", is a regular sort of thriller-type film.
It's a
long film at almost 3 hours but it actually didn't seem to drag and I
ended up quite surprised at how quickly it had gone.
