Period drama/ love Story 

Starring  Sunny Deol, Amisha Patel, Amrish Puri

music by Uttam Singh 

Directed by Anil Sharma

ZeeTV's  big venture into Bollywood is certainly a winner simply because it re-establishes what a he-man Sunny Deol is, and also takes the pleasure for some Pakistan bashing! Might not be the morally right way to do it, but then no one is complaining in the business of cinema.

A story about lovers from two different backgrounds, and how love eventually overcomes all obstacles. Hmm...not a new storyline, but the backdrop and the environment does click somehow! Definetely much better than what I expected from the director of 'Maharaja' - Anil Sharma.

 THE STORY 

Tara Singh (Sunny Deol) , a truck driver saves a young lady Sakina (Amisha Patel) during the partition riots. However in the riots Sakina gets separated from her family and it is Tara who gives her shelter. Believing her family to be dead, she continues to live in Tara's house and eventually both of them fall in love and they marry each other amongst opposition. 

But still they move on to have a peaceful and happy married life, until one fine day Sakina finds information of her lost parents in some newspaper. She realises that they are still alive and her father (Amrish Puri) is a mayor of Lahore in Pakistan. 

She contacts her father  who is not at all pleased with her Jat husband Tara. So they plot a scheme to get her to Pakistan, and they try to marry her off to another Pakistani and start a fresh life. Sakina becomes the helpless gal who does nothing but sits and prays for her hubby Tara to come and rescue her.

And lo! Tara, does everything possible to get across the border, resuce his wife, and get back safely across.  

WHERE THINGS WENT RIGHT 

The biggest strength of all is the one man who carries the whole movie through - Sunny Deol. Had it been any other actor, it is a doubt if we can ever get such an impact. With this powerful performance, Sunny becomes the leading contender for the Best Actor award at all the prestigious Awards for the year 2001. 

Good support performances from Amish Patel in only her second film, Amrish Puri, Lilite Dubey, Vivek Shauq.

The action scenes, especially with Sunny Deol at the centre of all that, are some of the highlights of the movie.

Costumes, set and and cinematography are also key factors that have been impressive.

The opening few scenes are captivating and realistic, though it might not have the kind of terror we saw in HEY RAM. 

To add to it the hard hitting dialogues and applause-winning confrontation scenes. Full marks to the director Anil Sharma for handling it well.

The screenplay is quite tight indeed and even the emotional scenes are executed with the right sensitiveness. 

WHERE THINGS WENT WRONG 

That is easy! The music, of course! In a time when every other average movie has a top class soundtrack, here is a movie so solid in content, that has some really disappointing numbers. Even some of songs look so out of place in the movie.

Then ofcourse, we have all the anti-Pakistan sentiments thrust upon the movie, making it a very one-sided approach to the whole thing. Might be crowd-pleasing, but not certainly the way to handle a sensitive topic like this. 

And then it is a one-man show all the way. Sunny's character shows all the might of a desi "Rambo" and needs to only scream his lungs out, and half his enemies run away. And the other half that remains, his arms will take care of them. The Pakistan army throws everything they have at him, but Sunny baba is still he-man!

The promos look more like that of some B-grade movie. Definitely the promos did keep the classes away, but the thumping success and word-of-mouth publicity has finally done the trick and more and more people are going to check the movie out. But the poor promotion did its damage overseas where it lost out on some big success.

The special effects used in the climax could have been certainly bettered.

Sunny Deol and Amisha pairing is also not so great. But Sunny blows you away in such a way that the lack of chemistry is never made to be a problem.

Most of the going ons are kinda pretty formulaic and filmi.

And a very routine "Amisha on the hospital bed" ending. Could have been very much avoided.

F I N A L   V E R D I C T 

Despite all the flaws of this movie, Sunny Deol and the sheer power of his performance is enough to make this movie rise above the average flicks. And with all the anti-Pakistan mood, the movie is sure to win the fancy of the audiences. 

Afterall, it is doing such great business all over North India, with business that threatens to eclipse maybe even HUM AAPKE HAIN KAUN. But sadly, it has failed to create any magic overseas.

Still a movie worth watching!

MoviemagiK  redefining entertainment!

What do you think of this movie. we want YOUR opinion on our

  Moviemagik MESSAGE BOARD