A Masterpiece without the master part. Review on Kisna

?My Biggest Enemy?.Expectation?

• George Lucas in an Interview

The past decade or two have not been the best for Subash Ghai as a director. After a so-so ?Pardes?, Out-of-beat ?Taal? and out-of-control ?Yadeein? (The wost film he ever made) comes out-of-ideas ?Kisna?.

You wait in anticipation for the movie, stand in long queues for the ticket , and sit through large number of reels of ?Kisna? and at the end of the day all you have left to say is ?I want my money back !? !

On first look and in the first few reels, Kisna is gorgeous. Stunning locales, beautiful cinematography, great looking cast, slick opening sequence and titles and mind blowing music and you move in our comfy push back seat of a Gold Class ticket of the multiplex smiling silently and thinking your efforts were worth it?until the reality starts to set in and you start realizing somewhere down the line that you are seeing a product made by the same guy who made ?Yaadein?.

Quite frankly ?Kisna? doesn?t do it for me. It was not the kind of film I expected from a man who is called the ?showman??..it?s not a bad film if you don?t carry much expectations but from the trailers and Ghai?s reputation this one falls flat, big time.

The plot is as predictable as Juggernaut?s reviews with shades of ?Titanic?, ?Laagan?, ?1942 a love story?, ?The Last of Mohigans? , ?1947 Earth?, ?Gadar? . The films starts of with Catherine (British actress Antonia) goes back to India in the present times and old memories of her childhood and adolescence and her love and adventure lights up (aka Titanic) . When she was a child she was close to the son of his servent ?Kisna? (Vivek). Her father seeing her growing affection for this Indian kid sends her away to England for her studies. When she grows up she comes back to India, but that?s when the trouble starts.

The Independence mood was in the air and anyone with skins fairer than the model in ?fair and lovely? ad was in trouble. Kisna had now grown into a some sort of poet warrior (whatever that means ! ) and his mother asks him to protect the lady and take her to Delhi. Now a new trouble starts. Kisna had to first choose between fighting for is country and saving an innocent lady (aka 1942 Love story) and to make his mind which side he was on. He faces a lot of hardships in taking the lady to Delhi and on the way he has to fight his own brother and father and his own concise (aka Gadar). This and the love triangle between Kisna-Catherine and Kisna?s fiancé Luxmi (aka Laagan) and a few more subplots forms the basis of the story.

The plot is quite gripping in the beginning and you actually feel excited but then it starts going in to a predictable mode and by the end of it you feel that the film had nothing new to offer. Infact I felt that there were lot?s of elements that could have been added to this period film to make it much more interesting and thrilling but the four writers of Kisna thought of keeping it simple and the usual.

On the positive side, the movie is a visual treat, a film like they say, more enjoyable on the big screen. The music is outstanding and so are the dances especially of Isha which are a treat to watch. The acting department too is handled well. Aishwariya?s boyfriend is quite screen friendly. Newcomer Isha Sharvani is outstanding, atleast better than Ghai?s pervious find Mahima. Antonia is outstanding especially considering the fact that she has come straight from theatre. Sushmita and Hrishitaa in there smaller roles do a decent job too, infact Hrishitaa seems to have a knack for period films, I thought her small work in Asoka was good too. This is Amrish Puri?s last film and he is the usual, nothing exciting to write about.

All in all, Kisna is a good idea gone bad kinda film. I think it will get the same response as Asoka. This one mind you is no Laagan, infact far from it. The Verdict: Not worth the efforts.