User Reviews

Here, (The Fugitive) meets (Double Jeopardy), and of course - since it's an Indian movie - (The Count of Monte Cristo)!

The final outcome is entertaining yes, except for some matters. To instance: the point of providing a corpse for the police was passed by as trivial! The absolute trust in the taxi driver for nothing but being an Indian?! Then how that driver helps the lead out at "killing" without any objections?!! Look how the lead turns into Neo from (The Matrix) at the end, beating up 100 men solely! Or how his enemy runs from the law without even changing his name? Sure naiveties like these make me angry, and the movie crack!

However, the biggest bothering point was the violent solution. The way this lead chose KILLING FOR ALL provoked me. Even (Gul Panag)'s character, as his new love, seemed agreed with his violence and bloody revenge. In another movie, she would have been his conscience, rationality, etc.. but here, she wasn't. I recall another Indian (Count of Monte Cristo), (Dharmendra) in (Jeevan Mrityu - 1970), where he didn't get to kill anybody. But after 35 years, we moved from too-shy-to-kill heroes, to ruthless insatiable killing machines. I don't know, maybe things had changed to bloody? Maybe being a monster brings more money? Or maybe the audience suffers in their lives tough problems that need to be cured, in unreal way, by only a sadistic slaughter. Anyway, as (Martin Luther King) said: "The ultimate weakness of violence is that it multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn't solve any problems!", but who said that (Jurm) heard about some things like conscience, rationality, etc..?!

On the other said, the direction is beautiful. I loved how everything is intensified. And the cadres did amuse me. Utilizing the dazzling locations of Malaysia was big part of the movie's clever entertainment. The editing was fast yet sane. It managed to be sad, breathless and surprising. (Meri Chahato Ka Samudar), performed by (Abhijeet) & (Alka Yagnik), is one in a million song. And the manner it was used is brilliant; see how it differs according to the feel of the situation it expresses; that deepened the effect, brought some peculiarity, and most of all was lovely to listen.

Unlike similar Indian fares, this one has no problems at acting. (Lara Dutta) wasn't the pretty heroine only, she was talented too. (Milind Soman) portrayed a stereotypical villain capably. After being the loving friend, he turned into the mean opponent, and all the difference was taking off the glasses, and showing off some acting muscles. Well, it's very rare to watch someone from a younger generation succeed as the same as the classic Indian cinema's kings of evil. (Bobby Deol) reminded me of (Dharmendra), as a sedate loving type of a lead (I knew later that Deol is the younger son of Dharmendra!). He was convincing whether as angry husband, sad prisoner, backstabbed lover, or gritty avenger. His performance reached the top while seeing his wife alive again, and in the arms of his once-sincere then-disloyal friend. He did his entire job seriously, until (The Matrix Reloaded) started abruptly!

Here's a mix of many movies, but boy, did it work? It's watchable, rather captivating, twisted-crime-movie. I just didn't feel comfortable with the revenge celebration of the third act. The thing is its blood seemed too much for me, especially when the lead got away with it eventually, winning a true love as well; as if it's a reward he wouldn't deserve without a massacre first!

A terrific crime thriller from a great director Vikram Bhatt. The whole film is charged with unpredictable heart pounding suspense. It is a bit similar to "The Fugitive" but "Jurm" is 1000 times better. At the start there were so many questions like "Did he kill his wife?", "If he didn't then who is the killer?", "Why is she murdered?" and "Is she even alive?" all of them were answered very properly with many twists & turns. Bobby Deol, Milind Soman and Gul Panag were the best, Lara Dutta was OK but I really found her funny every time she was scared especially when she was running up the stairs with her shopping bags. Songs are excellent the best song is the very first one "Nazarein teri nazarein" sung by Adnan Sami. When Avinash found out that his wife is alive and she was with Rohit the whole time he took is revenge in a very cleaver way, exactly 200% like what they did to him. The best scene in the film is the last song "Dil dil haye" when they were wearing scary masks.

You cannot punish somebody for the same crime twice now can you? That's the case here, just like in the Hollywood movie Double Jeopardy, only this time the roles are switched, and the person doing time here is the husband not the wife (as was in the Hollywood version).

Bobby Deol plays the husband, Avinash Malhotra, a successful business man whom the evil eye has cast a glare upon when we recounts the story of the death of wife from a holding cell in central Mumbai. We initially meet Avinash as he awakes from a nightmare in which his wife has just murdered him, only to awake to the realisation that in a drunken rage, he has in all reality murdered his wife Sanjana (played by India's most perpetually pageant-like beauty Queen Lara Dutta). Okay, let's branch off for a second, honestly speaking Lara Dutta is a perpetual beauty queen! There is no film I've seen her in, no matter how glamorous the role or how daunting, she is always looking like a million dollars, and this film is no exception. Okay, back to the plot, Hehe! So, Inspector Vishnu Patnaik (played by Ashish Vidyarthi) plays a team of cops and investigators trying to recover the body of Avinash's wife as well as shake down the reason why the man has killed his wife.

While in detention, Avinash recounts the tale of how he came to meet his wife Sanjana and the whirlwind that surrounded them disguised as romance, subsiding only after they were married. During these flashbacks, we come to understand that Avinash rebuffed the affections of his very close friend Sonia(played by Gul Kirat Panag) whom everybody thought he would marry until Sanjana came along. And from that point of view, it becomes very easy to see where Avinash made his greatest mistake. He fell in love with the wrong woman.

Avinash's best friend Rohit (played by sexy Milind Soman), who is also a lawyer comes to his friend's aid in jail and tries to clear him of the charges. But when a mysterious witness to the crime shows up in the form of Sanjana's uncle Chamanlal (played by Shakti Kapoor) Avinash's fate becomes sealed. Sonia's supposed decomposed body is soon discovered and Avinash is sentenced to life in prison. While in jail, Avinash signs over power of attorney to his Rohit in order to keep his businesses running but little does his know that this is the worst move that he could have ever made compared to the crappy way he had handled his life so far.

A tacky escape from prison soon than later, then reveals to Avinash the true nature of his best friend Rohit. A few months past and Avinash gets wind of the fact that Rohit has relocated to Malaysia and is living large with his (Avinash's) money. Horrified, scorned, and ultimately hellbent on seeking revenge, Avinash packs up with the help of Sonia and heads for Malaysia with the intent of murdering Rohit when they get there but he is halted when he realises that his wife Sanjana is not dead after all, but very much alive and living large in the arms of his best friend Rohit.

The costume designers deserve a lot of kudos for they way they handled the film's wardrobe. The songs and dance were good and very well themed. The locations were very beautiful and believably a part of the plot. And just like I've always maintained, you can always trust the Bhatts to bring it! They are an asset in Bollywood film making, especially in the 'whodunit' genre. This film yielded one of Lara Dutta's and Bobby Deol's best performances to date.