Talaash (2003)
Cast: Rakhee Akshay Kumar Kareena Kapoor Pooja Batra.
Director: Suneil Darshan
Music Director: Sanjeev Darshan
Synopsis: dire, drivel of the worst kind - convoluted and contrived nonsense
Reviewed by: Faiz Khan

 

Freshly released from prison, Babu (Suresh Oberoi) returns home to discover that his family has been abandoned to crushing poverty despite the promises made by the gangsters he loyally protected by keeping silent. Deciding enough is enough, he prepares to inform the police.

Unfortunately for him, his former employers arrive before he gets the chance.

The four thugs—Chhote Pathan (Kabir Bedi), Rajoo Singh (Raj Babbar), Sharma (Dalip Tahil) and Shetty (Rami Reddy)—beat him to a pulp before deciding that death alone is not punishment enough. They murder Babu, abduct his young daughter and leave his wife so traumatised that she promptly loses her sanity. Elder son Arjun arrives home moments too late to save anyone.

Fast forward several years.

Arjun (Akshay Kumar), now sporting enough black leather to qualify as Bollywood's answer to Batman, spends his days roaring around on a motorcycle capturing criminals for reasons never entirely explained. Whether he is a bounty hunter, policeman or freelance superhero remains something of a mystery.

His only mission is to find the sister stolen from him as a child.

His investigation leads him to Tina (Kareena Kapoor), whom he believes to be the daughter of one of the gangsters responsible. His brilliant plan is to kidnap her for information. Tina, naturally, falls hopelessly in love with him within minutes, apparently unable to resist the combination of leather trousers and strategically flexed biceps.

Unfortunately, Arjun soon discovers she isn't the right daughter at all.

Not to worry.

Another gangster has another daughter, another woman instantly falls in love with our hero, everyone conveniently ends up in South Africa, and the plot proceeds to tie itself into increasingly elaborate knots until Chhote Pathan finally reappears for the inevitable showdown.

Will Arjun rescue his sister?

Will Chhote Pathan complete his villainous masterplan?

Will anyone watching actually care?

That, sadly, is the real mystery.

Suneel Darshan's film is an almost complete disaster, lurching from one absurd set-piece to another with scarcely a coherent narrative connecting them. Characters make baffling decisions purely because the screenplay demands they do, while logic is repeatedly thrown out of the nearest window.

The Batman comparison becomes increasingly unavoidable. Only this resembles a low-budget 1960s television episode stripped of all the charm, wit and comic-book style that made those adventures so enjoyable. What remains is a noisy, overlong action film that mistakes confusion for excitement.

To be fair, Suneel Darshan has occasionally demonstrated an ability to assemble a commercially entertaining masala film. Ek Rishtaa, whatever its faults, at least held together as a piece of storytelling. Compared with this, it almost looks like restrained filmmaking.

The one genuine asset here is Akshay Kumar.

Even when trapped inside such thoroughly uninspired material, he attacks the role with complete sincerity and possesses enough natural charisma to remain watchable. The film survives as long as it does largely because of him.

Kareena Kapoor, however, is saddled with one of the most irritating heroines imaginable. Tina is vapid, shrill and astonishingly gullible, while Kareena herself appears completely disengaged by the material. One wonders why an actress capable of much better work accepted a role this empty.

Pooja Batra never possessed great acting ability, but here she reaches fresh depths of awkwardness. Rakhee delivers yet another variation on the long-suffering, mentally shattered mother she had virtually patented by this stage of her career.

Then there is Kabir Bedi.

As master villain Chhote Pathan, he resembles less an underworld kingpin than an escaped genie from a particularly cheap Sinbad adventure. Menacing he most certainly is not.

The action scenes are competently staged but too infrequent to compensate for the endless stretches of tedium between them. The songs are forgettable, the choreography uninspired, and the screenplay collapses under the weight of its own absurdity.

A pointless exercise in filmmaking and a complete waste of Akshay Kumar's considerable screen presence.