After a long time I got to watch a decent movie that did not have the typical running around the trees or the tear jerkering hospital scenes so very typical of bollywood movies. It even had just one song in the movie and one as the credits roll at the end.
Plot summary - Rich father meets with an accident and dies. Everyone believes that it is death by accident, until a former cop who the father helped emigrate to Canada (where the whole story takes place) thinks otherwise. Son who has some sort of super-natural powers, where in he can look at a photogaph and visualise all that happened around individuals on the photograph, but only for a minute. The usual suspects for the son are the mother, his fathers brother, friend, who also happens to be the mother's lover (one sided though) and the fathers surrogate son. How the son uses his super-natural powers to find out the killer forms the rest of the story.
Akshay as the son has given a restrained performance, very "hatke" from his usual song, dance, fight routines. You do get to watch some stunts, but if you are looking for a hard core action movie of Akshay, this is not it. Javed Jaffrey, as the former cop who suffers from OCD impresses. I am actually beginning to like this guy as a supporting actor. Can anyone forget the cigar smoking aussie in Salaam Namaste. What?, Eeechatly!!!. Ayesha Takia.. hmm.. nothing much to say. The girl has to learn how to emote. Rushad Rana as Adit is just fine. Nothing much to give, nothing much given. The rest are all veterans who know how to act. Sharmila Tagore, Benjamin Gilani, Girish Karnad, Anant Mahadevan.
The twin Akshay's entrance was good. At times, it made me think that the movie was running in 2 dimensions actually. One in which Akshay the son wants to figure out the killer and the other in which Akshay the killer is on the loose. Nagesh sure knows how to keep one imagining what is next. Towards the end howver, the movie turns a little melodramatic, but thankfully does not linger for more than a minute or two though. Why the twin kills the oracle/tarot card reader still beats me. I felt it was totally unnecessary.
The movie opens with a young Akshay looking over a cliff at a ball that is on the edge of the cliff stuck in some rock. The parents run over, look over the cliff and then take the boy back home. The movie quickly moves to present day where Akshay is living in Canada with Ayeisha Takia in a live in with him. He is a forest ranger with the EPS (Environment Protection Society). He is estranged from his father since their ideals collide with his fathers Caniol polluting and Akshay against pollution.
We are given a feel of Akshay's ability to look at a photograph and visualise the happenings around what happened to people in the photograph in the minutes before the photograph was taken. Though it is harmful to his health, Akshay uses it to help people around.
Akshay's father meets with an accident and is critical. Akshay rushes to the spot and his fathers whispers something to him, which he is not able to understand. The father eventually dies. Akshay has visions of his father asking him to help him and is disturbed. It is at this point that "Happi", a former cop enters. He is confident that Jatin (Akshay's father) was killed. His theory is that since Jatin was an excellent swimmer, there was no way he could have drowned. His theory is that blood pressure tablets were mixed with alcohol and that Jatin was pushed into the water after he drank them, because of the BP tablets and the cold water, Jatin had a heart attack and he died. Akshay does not believe this at the beginning but then with his visions of his dad asking him to help him, goes in search of the photograph that his mother clicked right before the accident.
There are others in the boat where the accident takes place along with Jatin. His brother, friend, his wife and his surrogate son. Akshay uses his "powers" to look in to the happenings of each and everyone on the boat and starts putting things together.
In the end it turns out to be that there is a long lost twin to Akshay (Jeet) who wants to take his place. He uses Sheila (Ayeisha Takia) his lover to get into Akshay(Jai) life and learn his habits and style so that they can kill Jai and Jeet can step in to his shoes and inherit all the wealth. But the father has a different idea. Jatin wants to give away all his money to EPS, where Jai works and win over his son. So instead of killing Jai, Jeet enlists the help of Sunder (Anant Mahadevan) and Adit to help him kill Jatin. They succeed in doing that by cutting the railing in Jatin's fav spot in his boat and spiking his drink with BP tablets. But then Jai starts his search for the killer and reaches Sunder. So Jeet kills him and then Adit, since Jai finds out about him too. All the while, Jai is unaware of Jeet's existence. He and the family is under the impression that Jeet died when he fell off the cliff(first scene of the movie). The parents move away from India and relocate to Canada and remove all memories of Jeet from Jai's life since he is traumatised from the event and that is when he develops the ability to look in to photographas and envision.
Jeet attempts to murder the mother since she wants to make the fathers dream of giving away all the money to EPS true. But only succeeds in hurting her since Jai, under the impression that Adit is the killer rushes to his mothers house when he learns that she is going to leave everything to EPS. The mother whispers "attic" to Jai as she is rushed to the ambulance. Jai visits the attic and understand that there is a twin. He visits the photograph once again and now looks at the twins face in the boat. As he wakes up, he looks at the twin standing in front of him, thinking he is dead along with Shiela, his supposed lover. Both of them think that Jai is dead since Jeet has burned the photograph, which is very cinematic, however, Jai had taken the adrenalin shot required to wake him before the burning and hence is awake.
After a tussle during which Shiela kills Happi, and Jai does a Houdini underwater, the brother come face to face with Jai ready to accept Jeet, eventhough he killed so many including his father. Sheila at this point tries to kill Jai, Jeet shoots her and in the process get shot himself.
The movie ends with the mother and son laying the photographs of the now really dead brother on a table along with other family photographs.
