Bachchan Vs Devgan.Khakee is not to be missed.
Director : Rajkumar Santoshi
Cast : Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Akshay Kumar, Aishwarya Rai, Tusshar, Atul Kulkarni, Tanuja, Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Ashwani Kalsekar & Prakash Raj.
Rajkumar Santoshi is a genius of a director. Khakee is just another addition to his great filmography which has been a collection of most memorable movies of all time. Like most of Santoshi's earlier films, this one again is a social-issues surrounding 'hard-hitting' film. But make no mistake by challenging the entertainment this film provides, as it is a fast paced thriller which will surprise you every other moment with the vacillating situations and dynamic characters.
DCP.Anant Shrivastav (Amitabh Bachchan) is assigned a task of escorting terrorist Dr.Iqbal Ansari (Atul Kulkarni) from Chandangarh to Mumbai. Ansari is accused of having connections with a terrorist group and is charged for riots occured in Chandangarh. Shrivastav readily accepts the mission which would give him a taste of glory, appreciation and honor, he's been waiting for all his life. He along with his team members including Senior Inspector Shekhar Verma (Akshay Kumar), Sub Inspector Ashwin Gupte (Tusshar) and a couple of constables land up in Chandangarh realising that some force none other than Yashwant Angre (Ajay Devgan) is determined to make their mission impossible. Mahalakshmi (Aishwarya Rai) the only witness to have seen Angre joins the police team. The men in uniform now battle up against Angre when the latter attacks them at various points of the journey to ensure Ansari does not show up in Court. The enitre journey exposes the actual faces of those who do not want the police team to make it to Mumbai and the survival of Shrivastav and team against brutal killer Angre and those involved.
Khakee is full of surprises. Continuous twists and turns never allow you to loose attention on the film. Thanks to the writing team of Shridhar Raghavan & Rajkumar Santoshi. There are various layers of all most all the characters and to make the situation more intense these layers not surprisingly, are conflicting to each other. This feature allows Santoshi to add a great depth in the drama of the film through agile conversations between the characters. The dialogues, again by Raghavan and Santoshi brings the best of characters alive on the screen even in a variety of situations. Take for example the scene where Shrivastav reminds the meaning of 'duty' to a fellow officer, or a scene where he addresses an angry mob after the entire police team has been declared betrayers by the media or the scenes where Shekhar flirts with Mahalakshmi; providing the audience with some laughable moments.
Khakee undoubtedly has some real good actors, and Santoshi quite successfully extracts the best out of everyone. The entire cast deserves an applause. To begin with the two protagonists; Amitabh Bachchan and Ajay Devgan both give their best performances. Bachchan marks another legendary performance as DCP.Anant Shrivastav. On the contrary Devgan as Angre, the conniving hunter shines in a negative role. Bachchan Vs Devgan can easily be the caption of Khakee as the audiences witness multiple clashes between the two through out the film. Akshay Kumar as Shekhar continues his good run in comedy. Also the actor proves his metal in the serious and action scenes of the film. Tusshar has grown multiple folds as an actor from his initial films. Aishwarya Rai as Mahalakshmi is the surprise package of the lot. Atul Kulkarni proves again that he is a great talent. Of the supporting cast Ashwani Kalsekar and Sabyasachi Chakraborty are good. Lara Dutta sizzles in a cameo appearance in 'aisa jadoo' number.
Santoshi offers a great action packed thriller with some fantastic action sequences including the opener scene of a police team battling up against terrorists, the village fair sequence where Shrivastav is chasing Angre, the Shekhar-Angre fight at the post office and the pre-climax clash between Shrivastav and Angre. The action scenes are supported by equally good background score. The only thing which should have been avoided in this film are the irrelavant songs, which pop up with bad timing and helps the screenplay loosen a bit of grip. Infact Khakee without songs would have been a much tighter script and ofcors cropped in terms of its actual length of 172 minutes. Still the effort by Rajkumar Santoshi to ensemble such a huge cast and doing justice to all the actors makes it a must watch. For a great showdown by the cast and crew of Rajkumar Santoshi's Khakee, I would go for a 4/5 rating. Khakee is not to be missed!!!
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| Khakee - Official Poster |
