Three blind men find themselves part of a bank robbery thanks to Amitabh Bachchan.

'Aankhen'

The Plot

When Vijay Singh Rajput (Amitabh Bachchan) finds himself kicked out of the very bank that he's dedicated his life to, he decides to get even. Through the efforts of Neha Shrivastav (Sushmita Sen), he trains three blind men (Akshay Kumar, Arjun Rampal and Paresh Rawal) to rob the bank. Needless to say, things don't work out as planned.

The Review

Who knew that it would take playing an all-out villain for us to rediscover the magic of Amitabh Bachchan's voice! After nearly three decades of listening to him fulminate against bad guys, the System and (of late) the younger generation, it's a thrill to hear that familiar silken baritone wrap itself around lines insinuating evil.

In 'Aankhen', Bachchan savours his words like succulent morsels rather than spitting them out as stentorian barks. The power of this good-guy-gone-bad performance is in its restraint. I wish that the same could be said about the rest of the film, which certainly has its heart in the right place but loses quite a bit of direction in its execution.

Emblematic of the lack of restraint here is Paresh Rawal's character. The brilliant actor brings the house down with his off-the-cuff comments (When Arjun misses his mark while training to shoot, he remarks, 'Tera naam Arjun kisne rakha?'), but these comic breaks frequently defuse the tension that the screenplay is trying to build. Then suddenly, in a wild swing of emotion, Rawal treats us to a tear-jerking rendition of his tragic life story.

Like this role, written to include comedy, tragedy and everything in between, 'Aankhen' wants to have it all, including a Kashmira Shah item number and some half-baked comedy involving a bank employee and her besotted lover. You do not mind the be-everything-to-all-people nature of, say, our family dramas, but thrillers need to be taut. By the time you see the three blind men dance to a 'tapori' song, Jatin-Lalit's catchy 'Phatela jeb sil jaayega', you wish that certain more important things had been addressed.

For instance, why choose these particular blind men with no discernable skills other than Akshay's sixth sense? With the filmmakers so determined to create something different from the usual potboilers, couldn't more attention have been paid to details like (the blind) Arjun's always being perfectly coiffed and clad in designer clothes? And if you can find time to slip in a gratuitous Bipasha Basu song-and-dance, why not show Bachchan's transition to bad guy a bit more convincingly?

Yes, yes, I know this is a commercial film and its offbeat theme needs to be diluted with all this 'masala' to help it find an audience, but you can't help wondering how much better 'Aankhen' could have been had it stuck to its guns as a straightforward thriller.

Fortunately, after a wobbly start and some blissfully tension-free training sequences, the film finally comes alive during its last hour, which includes the actual robbery, double-crosses, deaths, and tables being turned in most unexpected ways. Ashok Mehta's wonderfully fluid camerawork keeps the momentum going, notably in a cat-and-mouse session in the dark between Bachchan and two of the blind men.

Aatish Kapadia's screenplay is more impressive in detailing these events, leading to a memorably ambiguous ending, than in delineating the motivations of characters. (We know why Arjun agrees to this scheme, but it isn't credible that someone as put-together as Akshay would buy into it.)

The scenes that show Akshay sensing Bachchan's presence crackle with genuine excitement and the former does a good job in an unusual role. Arjun, though, isn't given much to do. An unspoken romance between him and the very fetching Sushmita, doing what she can in a sketchy part, is thankfully not allowed to become too distracting.

Director Vipul Shah puts across a few snazzy touches here and there, like the word-jumble opening credits and a sequence showing Amitabh's thinking about the robbery in the form of a video game. The film could have used a lot more such pizzazz. With some extra visual chicanery that, say, Punkuj Parashar brought to 'Tumko Na Bhool Paayenge', and a tighter pace, 'Aankhen' could have been much, much more than just a competent entertainer.

The Rating

'Aankhen' definitely makes you wish that such an intriguing concept had been treated with some more care. Still, it's fun to watch how all the knots are resolved and the film itself is a welcome change from Bollywood's usual froth.

Baradwaj Rangan

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