Your worst nightmare.

Grade: F

Chase

Indian Release Date: 29/04/10
CBFC Classification:  U/A
Running Length: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Cast: Anuuj Saxena, Udita Goswami, Rajesh Khattar, Samir Kochhar, Gulshan Grover, Tarina Patel, Aditya Raj Kapoor   
Director: Jagmohan Mundhra
Screenplay: Tanveer Khan
Cinematography: Uday Tiwari
Music: Vijay Verma & Udbhav Ojha

For some strange reason during the movie, the director throughout the movie repeatedly chooses to turn the camera to a hoarding showing ‘Police Head Quarter’. Maybe it’s a subtle message telling the audience that the only way anyone can make it through this movie is after downing a few “quarters” themselves.

Popular television actor Anuuj Saxena yearning for greener pastures chose to not just to act but also produce his Hindi cinema debut. I’ve never seen any of his work on the small screen but if the movie is something to judge it by then his popularity baffles me to no end, actually on second thought strike that, many a talentless hacks have made it big on the small & big screen for no apparent reason.

Sohail Ansari (Anuuj Saxena) is freelance photographer who witnesses the murder of a politician at the hands of a conniving cop Ranveer Tyagi (Rajesh Khattar) & some industrialist Mr.Khanna (Aditya Raj Kapoor) who keeps on blabbering about “India Shining”. Tyagi unleashes his man-Friday Siddharth (Samir Kochhar) to retrieve the tape & after an extended chase sequence Sohail ends up in a vegetative state but not before he dumps the tape on the run. The nurse, Nupur (Udita Goswami), who’s in charge of taking care of him is convinced that Sohail’s only bluffing. To draw him out she uses the oldest trick in the ‘Jag Mundhra Revival Book’, seduction! She bends over, loosens the buttons of her top, wears a corset & does a seductive dance, all to draw him out of his coma. Sohail being the hero of the piece can’t spend the entirety of the movie lying down on the bed wearing a blank expression so he wakes up finally & spends the rest of the movie waking around with that same blank expression. Throw in a reporter girlfriend (Tarina Patel), a suspicious looking Gulshan Grover who could be a well-wisher & twists & turns galore; you the perfect recipe for concoction that is sure to make you never want to watch another movie.

This is Jagmohan Mundhra’s second dud in two weeks but by comparison the terrible 'Apartment' looks like a cohesively plotted & made flick. While a decent amount of the movie’s plot is pilfered from the Will Smith starrer ‘Enemy of the State’ (1998), the treatment is miles apart. For a movie based on the action-thriller template it does not even come close to doing justice to either genre. The over-use of slow-mo shots interspaced with sped-up shots during the chase sequences makes the movie oscillate from a ‘Charlie Chaplin’ comedy to an exercise in inducing nausea. The movie also advocates the importance of wearing a helmet during a sequence in which Sohail is flung from his bike from a bridge onto a few metal pipes below but gets up with nary a scratch, all because he was wearing a helmet I guess. Only a few frames later he’s barely grazed by a really slow moving car but immediately gets thrown into the air & performs a cartwheel before smashing into another car’s windscreen. Immediately he goes into a coma, all because of not wearing a ruddy helmet! In another comical sequence Sohail & Nupur give Siddharth the slip by swinging across a stream using the good old ‘Tarzan Vine Trick’, that is one sequence that has to be seen to be believed.

The limited production budget shows on screen & there is not one sequence of polish or that comes even within a hair’s length of generating any excitement; though funnily the song during the credits looks better than the entire movie. Even the plot which tries to keep things moving by throwing up a dozen twists barely makes sense & with the ominous background score accompanying each reveal will make you wonder if you have been transported back to the 80’s Hindi cinema. A priceless line by Siddharth to Nupur goes like “Mujhe yeh kaam nahi Kamasutra lag raha hai” Yikes, someone call the moral police!

The acting ranges between laborious & non-existent & the songs are imminently forgettable. Special mention has to go to the ladies who even in the most dangerous of situations & places never forget their make-up & body-hugging & revealing wardrobe.

The tagline of the movie reads ‘Think Fast, Run Faster’; I suggest you do the same incase you happen to encounter this movie anywhere.

Final Verdict: I think I’m going to have nightmares for a few days now.

Grade: F        

 

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