Kidnap - Too much Hype for Too Average a Movie!. Review on Kidnap

A lot of times, these days, hype about upcoming movies get blown out of proportion and so has been the case with Kidnap. The promos were pretty catching with Irfan Khan, in this dashing avatar of his, saying stuff like “Hell is right here”, “I set the rules of the game”, etc. I also saw the cast appearing on Zee TV – “Sa re ga ma pa” last week performing some attention-grabbing stunts. But I think it was mostly because of the “heart break kid” Imran Khan, basking in the glory of the highly successful “Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na”, that expectations from this movie rocketed sky-high! But unfortunately the film didn’t quite live up to that!

I won’t write a spoiler here and pour water on the little amount of money’s worth you might get out of this movie while watching it for the first time but as per the promos: this movie is a “high-octane edge-of-the-seat drama about a power tussle between a young boy and the father of the girl he kidnaps.” Sounds good – but it doesn’t really feel so when you are actually watching it. And “edge-of-the-seat drama” seems to be a far cry! The truth is that the film rolls on and on about the game between the abductor, Kabir (played by our favrorite kid, Irfan Khan) and the affluent businessman, Vikrant Raina (Sanjay Dutt). But after a point of time, the tussles between the two begin to seem utterly pointless. The father is asked to do a set of impossible tasks, at the successful completion of each he is given a clue which would get the him closer to his daughter, Sonia (the sizzling Minissha Lamba). All this feels decent in the first quarter of the film but soon takes its toll on the audience and the film starts dragging along which is the probably worst thing that can happen to you when you go out to watch a movie.

Soon after, the only thing that seems to excite the audience is the cleavage and skin-show by Minissha Lamba and her young mom, Mallika (Vidya Malvade). The other day I was watching some movie called “Inteha” on TV where Vidya was playing an RJ in her early twenties and it came as quite a rude shock to me when I first heard Minissha Lamba call her “Mom” for the first time in this movie! Reminded me of those Ekta Kapur K-Serials where the actresses playing moms are, more often than not, younger or about the same age as their daughters!

As far as the music is concerned, it is pretty unimpressive with Pritam not really getting the chords right! On top of that, the lyrics like “Mausam is Awesome” don’t help him at all. At the end of the day, all I recall about the songs, most of which have been forcefully ill-fitted into the storyline (if there is anything like that), is a bunch of noise that would at best qualify as ‘Grade C’ item numbers! The only song that sounds good to me is the heart-touching “Mit Jaye” track that comes up at the end of the movie while displaying credits.

The film is being touted to be “From the makers of Dhoom and Dhoom 2…” and the makers seem to be setting lower benchmarks with each subsequent release. I remember loving “Dhoom” but was disappointed to find “Dhoom 2” about half as good as its predecessor. Today, “Kidnap” presented a pretty dismal picture compared to both “Dhoom” and “Dhoom 2” – I wonder where the makers will end up if they continue to make films according to this trend!

Overall, I would not really recommend this movie to anyone unless of course you have nothing better to do and want to check out some skin (courtesy Minissha and Vidya)! For those looking for thrillers and action-sequences, Yes – this movie does have some high-impact thrills, spills and chases (reminiscent of the Dhoom series, I guess) but would probably turn out to be more unrealistic than you can ever imagine! It wouldn’t really make sense for me to talk much about the acting because there was little scope for the same in this type of a fragile storyline! Sanjay Dutt is decent and both the babes (the mom – Vidhya and the daughter - Minissha) look pretty hot most of the times, irrespective of whether they are kidnapped or tense or whatever! And I can fairly understand the temptation faced by Imran Khan when he was offered this negative role – He probably grabbed it to get rid of his “chocolate boy” image from “Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na” and show the world how versatile an actor he is… But this one really didn’t work out for him as well!

This movie really doesn’t click in my opinion and from the reviews I have heard thus far, the other big release this week – “Drona” has bombed as well! Hope we have better stuff coming up in the upcoming weeks at box office to light up this festive season a bit.