SHOOTOUT AT LOKHANDWALA, review by Mayank Shekhar in Mumbai Mirror

MIRROR RATING: *1/2

Everybody our age knows where they were on November 11 that year (1991)," this film's director says in an interview I read. The said incident was a cross-fire between a Bombay Police team and some of Dubai don Dawood Ibrahim's men at a residential building in Lokhandwala, Andheri (West), Mumbai. No one in the world but the neighbours in the area are likely to know where they were on the day. In fact, for the lack of widespread television news in 1993, most outside Mumbai are unlikely to remember where they were on March 12.

More bombs go off in an average action blockbuster than did in the Bombay bomb blasts. Yet, Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday worked for the scope of available research on the conspiracy.

This film starts off inspired by the aforementioned docu-drama (if I'm not mistaken, even Dawood's the same). It details the 80's Punjab militancy problem, and its influence on Bombay's crime scene; religiously trails incidences with a timeline and coordinates of moffusil locations. Since there aren't actually enough plots and dynamics to speak of thereafter, the history descends quickly into a derivatively degenerate, run-of-the-factory cop, bhai, item-number, beer-song pic any of Ram Gopal Varma's former protégés would be happy to re-film.

The allusion to Varma isn't for the subject alone. The patented jarring sound (Amar Mohile) is pretty much the same; so is the gruffly look of the movie, and its principal, shady characters, their manners, dialogues and delivery.

So, there is a villain with the puffed-up traits of a hero here, Maya Dolas (Vivek Oberoi). Each time he enters the screen, he wants to score the Filmfare black-lady; absolutely no subtlety to this steal, no pizzazz to his posture. Never will he shock you more than when he breaks an open jaw against a concrete slab. You won't be shocked still if you've already sampled the scene from Tony Kaye's American History X (1998).



There is then Maya's antagonist, or actually the hero with almost a non-existent trace of villainy, cop Khan (Dutt; mildly crackling). Never the twain shall meet but for a bit at a coffee shop if you've watched Michael Mann's Heat (1995); or at a restaurant, if you watch this.

Over a while, the fake, acquired atmospherics will lead you to the obvious query: Why would anybody repetitively make this film? It's the reason all blindly violent B-grade 'actioners' are made: a few dance-bar songs, thumping fisticuff, quick chases, accelerated shoot-outs; the one at Lokhandwala, styled as if real, is as much an excuse for a plot, as every protagonist and their back-stories, terrible excuses for a character.

In journalism, stories, if confirmed, are true; if not, they stay rumours. This movie-fantasy, according to its poster, belongs to a vague genre called "true rumours". Whatever that means to films, the case of bad journalism is evident in the conclusion.

Friendly to the source, the film, having glorified the Mafia thus far, verbally argues for encounters as a way to deal with deadly criminals. You know the juvenile world-view then. And by now, you know the rumour part was actually the hype around this flick.