CINETALK Stylish action, but loses the plot

Film: Acid Factory

Cast: Irrfan Khan, Manoj Bajpai, Fardeen Khan, Dino Morea, Aftab Shivdasani, Danny Denzongpa, Dia Mirza

Director: Suparn Varma

By the time the chemicallyzonked characters trapped in a padlocked factory realise who they are and what they are up to, we couldn’t care less about the outcome of their violently vivacious life. Our disdainful indifference for the characters of Acid Factory comes from the enforced cool quotient. Everyone behaves he was born in a posh retreat and has spent the majority of their lives driving in swanky Porsches.

But the actors lack the charisma to carry off the posh characters with elan.

These, however, aren’t the only reasons why we give up on these lost souls. Mainly, the game is up because the film turns out to be an almost frameby-frame copy of a Colombian film, Simon Brand’s Unknown.

Like many of the films produced by Sanjay Gupta, Acid Factory seeks direct inspiration from a foreign source and adds a sheen of extra-ruggedness to the original proceedings. After a point, it doesn’t matter what the original reference point is. These are people who’ve lost their bearings.

But director Suparn Varma remains pretty much in control, specially when the chase sequences take over. That’s when the narrative really lets its hair down. The skidding wheels, exploding cars and crashing dreams of characters, who are as amoral as they are adventurous, signify the complete takeover of the film’s universe by forces that rule the realm of video games. comicality.

Long before they became fashionable, Sanjay Gupta has been making video games on celluloid. The background music by Amar Mohile totally supports the vibrant rugged and macho visuals.

Women are objects of classy but lustful adoration in Gupta’s scheme of things. Dia Mirza makes her athletic entry midway through the film when the characters locked up in an acid factory have just begun to figure out their raison d’etre. By then we’ve begun to lose our bearing vis-a-vis the askew plot.

To their credit the actors seem to exude an energy beyond that provided by the adrenaline-motivated visuals. Each character comes across as an individual. Manoj Bajpayee is wacky, Aftab Shivdasani is restrained. Dino Morea is wry and Fardeen tries hard to come to terms with his amnesiac character.

Danny Denzongpa and Irrfan Khan remain peripheral, never quite entering the domain of the damned, remaining above the pyrotechnics even while indulging in them.

Technical qualities of Acid Factory deserve a special mention. Sahil Kapoor’s camera captures the bends of Cape Town effectively.

Acid Factory is overall a stylish action film.

As for the actors, they’re largely over-thetop, hammy and embarrassing. Govinda, who seemed to have rediscovered his funny bones in Life Partner, is hysterical rather than amusing in Do Knot Disturb

Ranvir Shorey

Director: David Dhawan

When this parody is mid-way through, two questions strike us - what is the otherwiseclassy Sushmita Sen doing in this atrocious homage to the spirit of revelry, most of it situated in the lobbies and corridors of a super-luxury hotel in Abu Dhabi?

And then the second question strikes us almost immediately - what are we doing watching all these wonderful actors making fools of themselves in a plot that seems to have been written with the express purpose

Whoever thought infidelity is an adequate formula for farce should see what a hash and trash David Dhawan has made of the actors as they parade across the screen in the posh ambience and clothes. Alas, their morals match those of alley cats. Worse still these people are abhorrent in their failure to connect their physicality with any worthwhile emotions.

The scrambled comedy includes a couple of bumbling spies played by those two wonderful comic actors - Manoj Pawa and Ranveer Shorey, one of whom has to play a corpse after half the film.

The plot matches Ranveer’s cadaverous

The plot has room for an army of characters including an ailing mother (Himani Shivpuri) and her coquettish nurse (Rituparna Sengupta), both of whom watch Riteish do Amitabh Bachchan’s scenes from Deewaar

Govinda seems to have lost the plot. Lara makes so many faces you fear for her favourite makeup artiste. Riteish is in far better shape. He’s quite funny in parts. But the funniest actor in a minuscule role is Sohail Khan as Lara’s jealous and overemotional lover who after a crash-course in anger-management, desists from hitting any of the characters.

Skip it.

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