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Hostel is the story of Karan who starts his 4 year engineering degree moving into a hostel. Within hours of arriving at the hostel he finds out that life at college is not going to be what he imagined as there are a group of guys who extort money from younger students, bully and harass them at all opportunities, even to the extent of stripping them naked, parading them in front of other students (male and female) on college grounds and even worse, in some cases molesting and raping them. Karan tries to stand up for himself but this makes things worse and eventually he realises he has no choice but to keep quiet. When his best friends from the first year start getting involved in the bullying of younger students in the seconds year, does Karan get involved or just concentrate on his studies? Can anyone get through college without some form of abuse? This is a real eye-opener of a film if you've never lived on college accommodation. It's shocking and distasteful but sadly based on reality which is the saddest thing. This is not your typical feel good Bollywood film and many will find it very disturbing.

Vatsal Sheth as Karan is superb in the role, he looks the part, innocent and "pretty" - the perfect target for disgusting bullies. Tulip Joshi as Payal, Karan's love interest, doesn't have a lot of screen time but she performs well and this is not a love story - although their scenes provide some life relief from all the violence and humiliation endured by young students.

Mukesh Tiwari is suitably sinister as Feroz bhai, the main gang leader, who it seems will stop at nothing to show he's top man.

The side actors were nothing of note but the story overall was shocking and this viewer feels the film should be compulsory viewing to all deans and principals of further education institutions in India to make sure they are aware of what's going on under their noses! Watch this if you have the stomach for it. I didn't enjoy it but I'm glad I watched it.

As far as story goes, there was absolutely nothing original about this film. It just seemed to be a tired old typical Bollywood plot - honourable guy gets killed in the line of duty leaving a widow and child, child grows up to take revenge on those responsible, falling in love with the wrong girl in the process! What happens in between, in this film anyway, is all rather tiresome and gave me a real sense of déjà vu and not in a nice way!

Surprisingly (or maybe not - this is Bollywood after all) the plot leaves you totally confused in some places as to who is who and who is not who they're supposed to be and who is really whose son! There I've confused myself again - just be glad it's me trying to work it out and not you - you'd get a headache!

Bobby Deol might be cute to look at but I've always found him rather hammy as an actor. He's tall and muscular and suited to this type of role but his acting skills in 1998 (even though one of his earlier films) and acting skills in more recent movies don't seem to have changed. I guess it's always difficult living up to a famous actor of a dad, Dharmendra, who I found somewhat "hammy" even in his best of films (1000s of Bollywood fans would totally disagree with me, mind you)!

This was one of Preity Zinta's first films and thank God she picked better roles after this as her character didn't have much to do in this film except look pretty and she was worth so much more than that even back in 1998! Zinta won the Filmfare and Screen Weekly Awards in 1999 for her role in the film as Best Newcomer and Most Promising Newcomer respectively. Although Zinta gives it her all to convince us that her character is in love with her leading man, his almost buffoon like acting prevented me from taking them seriously and it therefore made them on screen romance look rather forced. On the one hand, he's supposed to be a soldier out for vengeance and on the other hand, he's dancing around trees romancing his target's daughter? Are we really supposed to stomach that?!

I was rather disappointed with Raakhee in Soldier. She has become rather typecast in recent years, since she became too old to play the leading lady herself as the weeping, grieving, whining mother or mother-figure of the hero or heroine of films. I was rather bored every time she appeared on screen in this film to be quite honest and to add insult to injury I never found her to be appealing even back when she played the heroine in films. She just has a miserable sounding voice and mostly did roles where she had to deal with some sort of tragedy in her life…

Dalip Tahil (he of short lived UK soap Eastenders fame as Dan Ferreira) and Sharat Saxena were painful to watch as the bad guys. Like in other films Tahil has appeared in and to a lesser extent Saxena they both came across as pantomime baddies! I wanted to shout BOOOO when the appeared on the screen. Suresh Oberoi can pull off a decent enough bad guy (if that's a contradiction in terms, I do apologise) but I'm more used to seeing him as a good guy so I didn't quite buy him as a villain.

I did feel (as with many other Bollywood films I've seen and relentlessly reviewed) that there were too many songs in the film which dragged it out even more than was already acceptable and they were mostly placed at totally inopportune moments! I can't say that I would recognise a single song from the film should I hear one again.

Oh and did I forget to mention Johnny Lever as the token comedian? Well I should have forgotten to mention him for all the additional entertainment he tried but failed to bring to the film! As I've gone to the effort of mentioning the annoying comedian I might as well mention that the music included playback singers such as: Sonu Nigan, Kumar Sanu & Alka Yagnik.

If I have to say something positive about the film apart from that fact that the beautiful and talented Preity Zinta was in it; I would have to say that there was some nice scenery in the film which didn't go all the way to redeeming the film but definitely didn't hurt the film.

One thing which was unclear to me by the end of the film (which made more sense nearer the start) was why the film was called Soldier. The thriller aspect of the film was supposed to be suspenseful but personally I didn't find it at all suspenseful and pretty much guessed the ending at the halfway point and was really hoping that the storyline called for some sort of surprise ending, which disappointingly it didn't!

Daniel D'Souza (Rahul Roy) is widower as well as a famous singer. On his wife's deathbed 18 years ago; he promised to dedicate his whole life to bringing up their daughter Jenny (Mriga Saklani) by spending quality time with her which he was unable to do with his wife because of work. Jenny is a doting and doted upon daughter who has a very close relationship with her dad and refers to him as her best friend. She is in love with Romi (Manish Mathur) and hopes to marry him. Jenny's best friend Mehak (Janki Shah) comes to know about her relationship with Romi and is upset that Jenny hadn't told her about it. Jenny takes Mehak around to meet her dad and Mehak falls for her dad. Daniel (along with Jenny and Romi) invites Mehak and her parents to Goa for a short holiday to celebrate Mehak's birthday. Daniel has a one night stand with Mehak (seemingly whilst dreaming about his late wife, Maria) and regrets it instantly. When they get back home Daniel tells Mehak it was a mistake and basically tries to shake her off, not wanting Jenny to find out as she means the world to him, although Mehak won't take no for an answer and pursues him relentlessly.

Where can I start with my analysis of this film? It has to be about the most poorly acted/produced/directed/scripted film I can remember ever seeing. None of the actors in the main roles seem to have any idea about acting. Rahul Roy in the lead role has been around for years apparently and he is just one big joke. Not once during the film did I see any different facial expressions on the leads, whether they were laughing, flirting, crying or even angry. It was so bad that I actually wondered if they had been told to keep the same boring deadpan expression on their faces throughout the film. It really was shocking to see the lack of chemistry between any of the characters.

Are you getting the impression that I did not enjoy this film? Well, you'd be right. The dialogue tried to be clever and sensitive in parts but as a whole it was really quite appalling. The characters' physical behaviour and subsequent attitudes to each other made no sense whatsoever. Mehak starts as an innocent young woman dressed rather conservatively - she has a one night stand with Daniel and turns into a man-eating vamp chasing a man who keeps telling her he is still in love with his late wife. Jenny's boyfriend Romi is quite happy to jump into bed with Jenny at every given opportunity and seems quite modern and forward thinking and then gets upset when he finds out about Daniel and Mehak and cares more about what society will think. If he was so concerned with what society thinks, what was he doing having a romp with his girlfriend in bed in Goa with the door wide open so anyone walking past could get an eyeful? Overall I'd give this film a poor 1 out of 10. If I could get away with giving a lower rating I would! Don't waste your time watching this; the film is so poor that no one seems to have written a review about it ANYWHERE on the net. There, I've saved you over 2 hours of your life!