A slick actio filin with • engagin

What do you do when a country, a culture and thei r purveyors wrong you irreparably?You plant a bomb In a speeding train and hold the establishment to ransom

Taking a cue from Hollywood s most watched bomb-maro-bomb rush-hour excursions into plunder-land, Tezz springs forward a nicely-packaged expert ly-cut hedunnit. And that 's a very different genre from the whodunit.

Here we know Ajay Devgn is the closet terrorist. But since his fans won't like it, Devgn is, with due respect to M i ra Nair, a reluctant terrorist. how reluctant, we won't reveal fully.

Devgn has a back story with screen wife Kangna Ranaut, who in keeping with her character's British domicile, sports blonde hair. No, this is not a j oke. Luckily, Priyadarshan 's plot has a lot more going for itself than its leading lady's hairto-stay problems. The director creates a taut cat-and-mouse game between 'terrorist' Devgn and cop Anil Kapoor who in true Hollywood style, is on the verge of retirement from service when duty beckons.

There are enough men on duty on both sides of the law here to fill up one section ofTihar jail. The narration allows elbow-room for an army of actors laden with anxious motivations and tense expressions to match, all hurling like the speeding train towards an uncertain nemesis. Luckily, the plot finds itself a convincing finale And we can go home feeling all is not lost for the slick action genre in Bollywood. There is hope.

There are some jaw-dropping action sequences here. Some of them, like Devgn and Kapoor 's fist-to-fist in the grand finale and the search for Devgn in a hospital's car park, are so expertly executed they make you forget how far Bollywood lags behind in the action genre from its firangi counterpart. But then again some of the stunts like the one where passengers from the bomb-threatened train climb into a safe train, are done d umsi ly enough to bring us down with a thud.

Curiously, Zayed Khan and Sameera Reddy who play Devgn's accomplices in the terror crime are given one extended heartin-the-mouth chase sequence each. They show remarkable agility in their given space. Ditto the film's techn i cians. Thiru

S. Appan's camera looks at London with keen anticipation.

Aditya Dhar doesn't come up w ith one me morable dialogue except, Teri maa kl when Devgn wh i le negotiating his ransom money w ith train executive Boman Irani drops his cellphone.

"He s Indian, not Pakistani;' Boman confidently informs cop Ani l Kapoor with a straight face.

The absurdities don't swamp Tezz. True to its title, the tal e of a bomb and a Boman trying to diffuse the cr isis, wh izzes by at breakneck speed.

Priyadarshan tackles what's a new genre for him, with pleasure and aplomb. Ajay Devgn, Anil Kapoor, Boman Irani, Sameera Reddy and Zayed Khan furnish a flavour of slickness to a story that holds your attenti on till the end.

Not quite edge-of-the-seat, the thrills in Tezz are engaging enough to keep us watching. Sub hash K. Jha l=ILM: Tezz

STARRING: Anil Kapoor, Ajay Devgn, Zayed Khan , Sameera Reddy, Kangna Ranaut, Boman Irani

DIRECTED BY: Priyadarshan l= ILM: Jannat 2

STARR ING: Emraan Hashmi, Randeep Hooda, Esh a Gupta

DIRECTED BY: Kunal Deshmukh