8x10 Tasveer

Director : Nagesh Kukunoor
Music : Salim Merchant and
Lyrics : Sulaiman Merchant,
Starring : Bohemia and Neeraj Shridhar
Irfan Siddiqui, Sameer and Bohemia
Akshay Kumar, Ayesha Takia, Sharmila Tagore, Benjamin Gilani, Anant Mahadevan and Javed Jaffery.

Nagesh Kukunoor gives this flick a super Hollywood feel and manages to pull off a slick thriller. But I have a problem with the end, which escalates, or should I say degenerates to a climax of a typical Bollywood masala film. But this is not to deny the finesse with which this film has been captured on camera and the climax when the murderer is revealed. But you pretty much guess the involvement of one of the characters in the film.

Akshay Kumar is shattered by an incident, which takes place when he is perhaps eight years old. Deeply traumatized he absorbs the power of venturing into a photograph to understand what could have transpired, thus helping many who come to him for help when the police have failed. He now has the unenviable task of venturing into a photograph, clicked just moments before his father could die, to find out whether it was murder or natural death. His journey to unravel the mystery keeps you on the edge of your seat.

What the incident was that moved him to these powers is vaguely shown, and you realize towards the end that it was not a convincing shot because his parents were not at all shattered by that huge loss. In fact, it looks like a picnic out when the tragedy was colossal. I will not divulge what the tragedy was, because that would mean giving the story away. But I have a question for Kukunoor. How could you show such a tragic incident so nonchalantly? I mean, we as an audience think it is the loss of a football, when the fact is little Jai (Akshay Kumar?s) world has come crashing down. And his parents, I mean they do not even acknowledge the loss, or were they not told of the scene you were canning? Even the hospital scene where Akshay is helped by a staff on duty for a blood transfusion in a storeroom is not happening.

Akshay Kumar as a forest officer in Canada is convincing and so is his performance. No tomfoolery here. There's not much for anyone else to do, with the exception of Jaaved Jaffery who impresses in his role as a cop. The action sequences are slickly shot and the camera moves delightfully capturing every thrill. The background score is fantastic. If only Kukunoor had been more open about the sequence in the flashback, the finale would have been well received. I mean, the audience is no dodo. Or perhaps he had no faith in his script that he had to indulge in a vague hotchpotch of a plot (read flashback) to come up with the climax.

What Kukunoor was looking for was the climax of Wolfgang Petersen's 1991 thriller, SHATTERED. That climax was out of this world.

Having said that, this movie does thrill and chill.



Source : http://www.glamsham.com