6/10
A moderately slick thriller!
18 November 2005
Suparn Verma is at it again after Qayamat, Janasheen, Zameen and Karam. This time he's done the screenplay as well as the direction and the results aren't too bad.

Arjun, a conman, messes with the wrong guy, Sikandar, on one of his jobs and in return has to face the death of his best friend as well as having to pay back the duped money, with interest (Rs. 400,000 in total). The problem: He's spent all the money. So he gangs up with 2 other friends, Jack and Rohit, along with Kaif (who is Sikandar's watch-dog, played by the brilliant Kay Kay Menon) and they have to pull a heist where they can recover the money in 10 days. Enter Natasha, a behavioral psychiatrist who wants to do a research study on the everyday life of Arjun. She joins forces with him and unfortunately gets deeply involved with the crime. The result: the heist is a success, but not how you would expect it.

Anyways, Sikandar is a little too impressed and blackmails them into another job, a bigger one this time, and it involves stealing from the regional underworld kingpin, Jahangir Khan (Feroz Khan, who else??). So a plan has to be schemed up to steal Rs. 25 Crores from Jahangir Khan. Now it gets a bit complicated, because a few characters are suddenly put into play together, as well as the introduction of Sharad Kapoor who plays a CBI officer on the hunt for Arjun.

From then on, the film becomes a little hard to keep up with because the characters become interspersed within the multiple stories and it all boils down to a not-so-explosive end.

A little about the cast: Fardeen has done a decent job, not having been given too much dramatics. He's had to just look cool and deliver straight-faced dialog. Koena Mitra does nothing much except confuse us with her personality and wear lingerie-like clothes in public. The by now infamous steamy song is a bit too steamy for family viewing. Gulshan Grover: nice and evil, the usual fare. Feroz Khan: ha ha.. u know Feroz Khan... he's still looking lecherously at woman and guessing the brand of perfume they're wearing while he runs his many business ventures. Mukul Dev, Kay Kay Menon and Rohit Roy are good in their roles. Being TV artists they have learnt to be patient and do justice to whatever roles come their way.

The film packs too many songs which sometimes break the flow, and I think almost every song is a remake of a popular Hip-Hop/R&B number from recent times. As far as the story goes, be prepared to see "inspiration" from Hollywood flicks like "Matchstick Men" and Confidence". Still, "Ek Khiladi Ek Hasina" is one of the better attempts at the currently popular crime thriller genre.
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