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After fasting, a film feast...
Scene from 'Rishtey' showing at cinema hall across Delhi.
RISHTEY
(Odeon and other Delhi theatres)
AFTER A rather staid Ramzan when the Bollywood bigwigs shied away from the silver screen, the prayers of cinemagoers have been answered. With "Rishtey", "Karz", "Red Dragon" and "The Phantom Mummy" releasing, this is a week of choice for cinemagoers.
"Rishtey" is an Indra Kumar film with contrasting features. On the one hand there is a feast and on the other hand famine. While the hero lives in lower middle class surroundings with Dickensian characters, his wife is a well-bred woman moving around in long automobiles and attending parties where champagne is drunk like water. While the protagonist, Anil Kapoor - once again teaming up with the director after the hugely successful "Beta" - is shown living a life of extreme hardship, working gruellingly at a factory, his wife, ravishing Karisma Kapoor, lives ostentatiously in her father's mansion. Anil Kapoor in his earlier avatar is a professional fighter, the darling of girlfriend Karisma who eggs him on to beat the living daylights out of his opponents, howsoever brawny they might be. Not by a strange quirk of fate but by the diabolical plot of her scheming father, Amrish Puri - who sports a permanent grimace - Karisma is convinced that her hubby has committed sacrilege by sleeping with a coquettish woman in her absence. The clever father knows that his only daughter's Achilles heel is that her husband shouldn't ever be unfaithful.
Anil Kapoor plays the role of a sensitive father with aplomb, saving his newborn child from the chopping block of an assassin, who ironically has been hired by his father-in-law. Between the couple there is a child, Jibran Khan, who obviously adores his motivating father - who makes him overcome his physical disability by making him run with normal kids.
So the son is kidnapped by baddie Amrish Puri, who reluctantly drops the idea of bumping him off as Karisma - who thinks that Anil has two-timed her and hence she can never forgive him - is dying to get her son. This has given Karisma - who has metamorphosed from an ugly duckling newcomer to a gorgeous green-eyed beauty - an excellent opportunity of playing an aggrieved mother.
There is also svelte Shilpa Shetty, a fish seller infatuated by handsome Anil, but the latter cannot accept her as he hasn't forgotten his separated wife. Barring a raunchy number, she has been made to play second fiddle to chameleon Karisma. What is incomprehensible is that Anil - who can batter a rival twice his size, drive menacingly and break the gates of those who heap insults on him - silently keeps his sorrows and misgivings buried in his heart without disclosing the true story to Karisma. To get back his son from the custody of his wife, Anil once again gets into the ring to fight a bull of a man.
Songs by Udit Narayan are mellifluous and highly riveting, aptly communicating the power of love and the bond between a father and son.
KARZ
(Plaza and other theatres)
A FLICK starring Sunny Deol and Sunil Shetty - both synonymous with their bulging biceps rather than their histrionic abilities - has to be an enthralling action packed film. But Sunny, who plays the central character, in this Harry Baweja-movie gets to do most of the bashing and brawls that he is famous for. Behind a smiling, obedient son hides an anguished heart, who comes back to his house stewed to the gills, after fisticuffs with those who hurl abusive remarks about his mother. A mother played to perfection by the versatile Kiran Kher, who beyond Sunny's comprehension, completely ignores him to shower her love and affection on his younger brother. When stability walks in Sunny's door in the form of a vivacious, bubbling Shilpa Shetty - who has been dropped at his house as his adopted father is an old pal of her dad - Sunny gets momentary happiness but unable to stand listening to wagging tongues about his past, takes refuge in the bar with his drinking partner. Seeing him in an inebriated state, Shilpa, who has met him for the first time but knows everything about him through her father, wants to reform him and makes him kick the bottle.
Scene from 'Karz' showing at cinema hall across Delhi.
She develops a soft corner in her heart for her new found friend, who cannot profess his fondness for her as he for some strange reason he wants to keep this a closely guarded secret. Then enters a trimmed down but still in fine fettle, Sunil Shetty, a well-to-do son of a rich widower. Able to win his confidence, by addressing him as big brother, Shetty manages not only to stay in Sunny's five-star-hotel but also succeeds in snatching his lady love from him.
Heavens fall when Sunny learns that he had been ostracised by his mother because he was conceived as a consequence of a brutal rape. His blood boils and his ambition is to find out the identity of his father. In this hot pursuit, which is fraught with danger as now the rapist - Ashutosh Rana - is a big shot at whose feet politicos grovel, he is assisted by comrade-in-arms Shahbaaz Khan, who has done justice to the character of a cop who refuses to get browbeaten by a local gangster.
Sunil Shetty has once again tried dabbling in comedy but has been completely marginalised by Sunny. He doesn't react at all when Sunny pulverises him. All in all, an entertaining film but the story treads on predictable lines.
MADHUR TANKHA
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