Test of endurance

Thematically obnoxious, artistically dreary. A poor franchise to start with. Why would someone go about reiterating a hate love story with Himesh Reshammiya in the first place! While the idea is to tell a tale of love gone bitter internationally, the narration gets caught in the drug mafia shoot and kill saga and you have blood all over the place.

Even that is alright. Actually the filmmaker steps up his antennae and goes about making a profound statement that the rule of law is an inadequate method to deal with crime and therefore justifies the police to take law into their own hands and justify shoot-outs and planned murders – all in the name of restoring law in society.

The apparent contradiction misses many an advocate of unbridled power in the hands of the police. A small time juvenile turns delinquent when he is paid to kill a drug lord. Actually though he has a change of mind in the last moment on the strategy to kill his benefactor, crude sexist comments from the latter result in the lad losing his cool.

The juvenile turns delinquent and lands up in a home. Fast forward and we have in the protagonist Raghu (Himesh Reshammiya) a hired shooter. A one night stand he confesses to leads to his fiancée Tara (Farah Karimaee) showing him the door and going off to Dublin for a music show in a huff.

Tara gets implicated in a drug smuggling case and you would believe that the police in Ireland has bid adieu to Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. With Tara in jail, now his job in Dublin is to extricate her of the false charges and ensure that her unsullied reputation is restored. The guy who false implicated her is the elusive Anirudh Brahmin.

The international police as, the local head in India Afzal Khan (Kabir Bedi) are in hot pursuit. In Dublin, Raghu gets support from the local Embassy chief Shekar Kapur, the local lawyer (Monica Dogra) and a crisp and an international jail bird Robin (Naseeruddin Shah – who obviously said yes to the film notwithstanding its script).

Raghu has changed priorities. He has to get gal in jail out before he can hunt for the villain. He has all of 20 minutes and the great escape in the midst of a near war shoot like situation leaves you with no doubt as to where the script is leading. The filmmaker is obviously indulging in a sleep walk exercise and trying to sell a product that is safer in the shelf.

If the script (confusingly meandering even for just 106 minutes) is dated, the narration is jerky and ensures that no one is interested in what is happening. Add to this the needless interlude of the Himesh kind of songs and you just wonder why in the first place you committed the offence of getting yourself a ticket. The cast is terrible.

Shekar looks over the hill, Kabir is shot invariably in the dark and Naseeruddin Shah is so ordinary. Making her premature debut is Farah Karimaee who reminds you of Kim Sharma and this is no compliment to an actor who wants to make a career in cinema. Himesh – well he broods all through the script and consistently looks at the camera with a scowl for having a tale of the kind that would ruin his already non-existent acting career. This bullet-filled love story is begging to be left alone.