Fanaa - Stay Away, Save Yourself

When finally, Amir Khan died in the closing reel, the immediate feeling was of tremendous relief, "Finally, the torture ended". Yes, torture it was, of an unspeakable nature.

The movie starts innocently enough - exotic snowy locales, Kajol doing a oooh-so-cute act of saluting the national flag in the wrong direction because of her blindness and the warm couple of Rishi Kapoor and Kirron Kher as her parents.

The girl lands up in Delhi, ostensibly to sing on Republic day parade but really to find her Shahzada. Shahzada, she does find, in a too long drawn, over the top quasi-romantic sequence lifted straight from ancient age musicals where the protagonists converse in couplets - only the depth of the meaning was missing. The director tries too hard to portray Amir as the happy go lucky, shayari-happy, flirtatious and charming tour guide. The effect was that Amir looked a better dressed, better groomed, better looking and considerably older version of boys of RMP Degree College who stand outside gutkha shops and sing the "sheeshi bhari gulab ki, sheesha chatak gaya" shayari to their female classmates who pass by.

The girl is swept off her feet, confesses her love and finally settles for one night of romp-in-the-hay when the charming tour guide confesses that he treats women as just another city - look around, have fun and look for another. The director gets an excuse to show close-up shots of Kajol in body hugging Kurtas with rain falling sensously on her.

Amir ostensibly dies by the end of the first half. After the movie, you wish that he should have indeed died after the first half. Also, Kajol gets back her eye sight in a sequence which is only a shade less miraculous than those 70's white-light-from-Sai-Baba's-idol-entering-Nirupa-Rai's-eyes episodes.

Amir, avatar-2, is a sophisticated, super-intelligent, ultra focussed terrorist, assassin on the prowl. He impersonates as a Captain of Indian Army, plays soccer with other officers, becomes pals and finally poisons them. Meanwhile, the Indian Intelligence team led by a caricature of a sleuth Sharad Saxena and a super smart power woman Tabu are on his heels.

Amir blasts, shoots, slashes, stabs countless Indian Army folks and lands up wounded on Kajol's door, who has a son from their one night of passion.

And then real torture begins. You are subjected to an unending saga of paternal love sprouting and growing and developing between a murderer and a kid who he fathered with an innocent girl while on one of his murder missions. You are expected to feel the warmth of tears, the sensitivity and emotions of a cold blooded killer and his son which he never intended to come back to. We are expected to feel his pain, as if the people he killed on the way were just ohh-by-the-way statistics and noe of them had cute, intelligent 7 year old sons.

His terrorist buddies are waiting for his signal to collect the nuclear missile trigger, Indian army is on his heels and our hero finds time to sing, not one but two songs - one for the kid and another with the mother (on second thoughts, well, he couldn't have sung with the old Rishi Kapoor and that left only two people in the household - only one song per person, why then am I cribbing ???)

Overly stretched climax, illogical sequences, mindless happenings later Kajol shoots Amir to save the country. Jai Hind.

Acting wise, Kajol excels. Amir tries hard but is not convincing, and yes, I am talking about the perfectionist, though I believe that more than Amir, its his characterization that is at fault. A very thinly created character with innumerable inconsistencies, anybody could not have played the character any better. The kid is cute, Rishi pulls off well, Sharad Saxena is made to look an idiot, Tabu is wasted.

All in all, one of the worst movies I ever saw. No entertainment value, no message value and no emotions value.

Wonder for how long will they keep peddling such retro stuff in this age of multiplexes and parallel cinema and aware audience.