Im Kreuzfeuer der Gewalt

Aan is an action movie where action never stops.Aan tells the story of Mumbai Cops.The irony is that they are handcuffed by corrupt politicians,businessmen who influence police to get their job done.Mumbai is ruled by underworld who work in tandem with politicians and businessmen.All the three of them take one another's help for getting their job done.Thus,all of them escape from law. Some cops like Appa Kadam Nayak(Suneil Shetty) do try their hands to cleanse the city.They meet with little effort because the minute they go little far,they are made to take several steps backwards.Shatrughan Sinha plays a cop who becomes passive to the system.Paresh Rawal is a small time hawaldar who has his own problems eeking out a life with meagre support from his job.However all of them try their level best to do their job awaiting a superior who would "open their hands".

Enters Hari Om Patnaik(Akshay Kumar)who initially does not like his subordinates' ways but bends on knowing the ground reality.The cops handle a political murder and rest of the story tells how the cops get to the criminal and succeed in exposing a corrupt minister and a business tycoon,despite the corruption which permeated from top to bottom.

The film is technically good.There is lot of action.It seems that Madhur Bhandarkar attempted John Woo.The action scenes are well shot.The director makes use of Split screen images to show how underworld mafia use top connections and escape from law.The movies showcases some of the cops' problems.The movie is also inspired from some of the real life incidents.But Madhur's films are like that,a good director.The acting is good.Suniel Shetty is particularly impressive.Akshay Kumar ,Paresh Rawal also do their job well.Irfaan Khan is also good playing an underworld bhai. As for the flaws,there are many many sub-plots.The story goes awry at times and at times it appears that screenwriters go tangential from the original plot,bringing out defects in the society and ills of the system. Inspite of the flaws,the movie is watchable,for its action sequences.The action is very good and I believe it is the only action movie sans romance.Madhur Bhandarkar wanted to combine commercial cinema and his own style of film-making.The effort is not very impressive but still okay.

Madhur Bandarkar started his career with TRISHAKTI a commercial film which bombed and then he made art films like Chandni Bar, Satta and got a niche audience for himself

And then suddenly he makes a big budget Firoz Nadiadwala film AAN MEN AT WORK oh my god?

With a huge cast starring Akshay, Suneil, Paresh(regulars of Firoz), and then Jackie Shroff, Raveena, Irrfan.etc and also his regulars like Manoj Joshi.etc

OK the movie is nothing but a clichéd cop film and is damn outdated

The film is actually script less, it's a jerky film with change of focus from a cop film to a commercial film to a song- dance film.etc

Luckily there isn't too much of romance, emotions.etc or it would be more boring

The starting 40 minutes seemed to be shot in sleep by the director There are too many jump of characters and also boring long introduction sequences and the item songs

The old politician nexus everything seems old fashioned

The film does get interesting with the murder of Milind Gunaji and then the entire confrontation scenes between Irrfan- Akshay.etc but things get too boring and slow paced

The death scene of Suneil is so hilarious it makes you laugh

The last few scenes seem shot by the producer himself, if that is true what i heard, but there seem all going nowhere

Madhur handles a few scenes well, but the impact is missing

Music is routine, though Nasha stands out

Action scenes are outdated

Akshay Kumar gets the major focus and he excels in his serious cop role This is a far cry from his routine Daava, Insaaf type cop roles here he is a serious cop and he stands out

Suneil Shetty does a good job but hams badly in many scenes

Paresh Rawal has some good moments, while Irrfan steals the show with his unique style of humor and acting Shatrughan Sinha gets less importance and plays a second fiddle to Akshay, acting wise too he is a letdown He repeats his typical style and overdoes it His lectures are boring Raveena gets some few scenes are her role is badly sketched Preeti has no importance Om Puri too is wasted, Manoj Joshi stands out in his act, Here he gets to do lot more then just being a comedian and he is a stand out Jackie Shroff literally has 3-4 scenes and he is hardly there Rajpal, Vijay Raaz get less scope Rahul Dev is okay

I really enjoyed this movie, it has all the elements. Action, thrill, politics, fun, great acting, little comedy is also there. Highly recommended.

In a span of few movies, including the last one "Satta", Bhandarkar has gotten a reputation as a good director, albeit he is not in the same league as a Varma. The movie is loaded with "Stars" some of them good some of them not so good as in Akshay Kumar and Suneil Shetty who will never know what acting is as long as they are gainfully employed. Irfan Khan, here is an actor who I think is born to portray "Bhai" the Mumbai equivalent of "Don". He is typecast in roles like "Pran" was in the yesteryear movies and rightfully so. There is plenty of action, but the flaw I see is a poor script and Screenplay with few gems. I think Madhur Bhandarkar is good in a documentary style movies like "Chandini Bar", "Satta" where his real talent is-in other words this is a "bummer from a Helmer" the caliber of Bhandarkar.

Aan-Men At Work is an average cop movie.It was flop considering there was huge flood of cop movies during 2004.

Direction by Madhur Bhandarkar is not up to the mark. He could have made better cop movie but since producers wanted to commercialize it his direction left lot to be desired.

Performance wise, Akshay Kumar did well although he did such roles before.Sunil Shetty was okay. Lara Dutta and Raveena Tandon were wasted. Shatrughan Sinha was also okay. Paresh Rawal was good. Irrfan Khan was highlight. Jackie Shroff and other villains were okay.

Overall an okay movie which could have been better considering the plot and director it had.