Kurbaan

Though a native of India, Avantika (Kareena Kapoor) is currently a professor at a college in New York. On a trip to visit her ailing father in Delhi, Avantika meets and falls in love with another professor, the dapper and dashing Ehsaan (Saif Ali Khan). After a whirlwind courtship - which seems to take place in a slickly-produced shampoo commercial - the star-crossed lovers set up a new life for themselves as a married couple in the States. But all is not unadulterated marital bliss for the newlyweds, as Avantika quickly discovers that Ehsaan is, in reality, a secret Islamic terrorist who married her strictly as a means of getting easy ingress into the United States. The other major character is Riyaz (Vivek Oberoi), a war correspondent for a local news station, who allows himself to be recruited into the sleeper cell of which Ehsaan is a member.

Though "Kurbaan" starts out as a fairly typical - i.e., overly cutesy - Bollywood romance, it quickly transitions into an admittedly bloated but moderately gripping action-movie thriller with serious social overtones. Perhaps because this is an Indian film, the terrorists, though by no means the "heroes" of the story, do get to air their grievances in a somewhat more sympathetic and even-handed fashion than they would were it an American-made production. On the other hand, like most Indian films, this one suffers from over-length and a tendency towards hyperbole when understatement might have been the better course to take. And while the Indian actors are all fine, the American performers leave much to be desired (perhaps the result of an Indian director, Rensil D'Silva, not being able to identify poor line readings when delivered in another language). In addition, the action sequences are often clunky and unconvincingly staged, especially when contrasted with something like the expertly executed "24."

Yet, despite its flaws, "Kurbaan" combines suspense, social commentary, romance and clue-gathering in generally appropriate proportions, which makes the two-hour-and-forty-minute running time pass reasonably quickly.

Overall the movie gives two messages: 1) The Non-Muslims should leave the Muslims alone. 2) 9/11 was carried by Muslims.

But the fact is the it was not. And the whole world knows about, but a subliminal message is given in the movie that Muslims were responsible about 9/11.

Yes both the good and bad side of a human society is shown in the movie i.e. the good Muslims and the Bad Muslims and i believe that it is common in every society irrespective of any religion.

Om Puri is a superb actor and i have always been a great fan of him.

One should watch this movie for the sake of entertainment, however this movie might bring up some emotional anger factors at some points.

Heavily influenced by Hollywood, there are a growing number of non-traditional Bollywood movies that eschew song and dance sequences and employ sync-sound rather than dubbing all dialogue. KURBAAN (aka Sacrificed, 2009) is one, particularly good example of this kind of new Bollywood film. Like so many Hindi films this does use a Hollywood film as a touchstone, but thankfully the source here (1999's ARLINGTON ROAD) is only alluded to in a couple of the plot points and beyond these the story moves in new, interesting directions that make this an interesting companion piece. Gripping for its two and a half hour running time, Renzil D'Silva's movie shares a few things in common with Kabir Khan's NEW YORK but superior thanks to it's consistent tone and credible characters and performances. Om Puri is particularly good in an extremely understated performance.

"New York" & "Kurbaan".... seems like there was a race between the buddies Adi & KJo. The similarities are aplenty and let me not go there on a listing spree. Having accredited and acclaimed for one of the finest screenplay in "Rang De Basanti", expectations are bound to run high from Rensil D'Silva. Paradoxically in "Kurbaan" the screenplay turns out to the weakest link, owing to which the Titanic starts going down under with each passing reel. The DOP also needs to share the blame for giving it a feel of suspense thriller/ whodunit at unwarranted places.

° Saif Ali Khan: The character seems to be a direct lift from "Fanaa". He puts up a strong performance however the the fallacies in the movie overshadow his effort. The smooth talking professor/ love story did not quite gel well.

° Kareena Kapoor: "Love is blind, marriage restores sight" is an apt phrase to describe her character. Avantika appears to be either an emotional fool or fickle-minded. Poor writing indeed.

° Vivek Oberoi: Not quite there.

° Om Puri: The fundamentalist part of the character is straight lift from "Shoot on Sight". However he seems to be having a streak of poor/ impulsive planner.

° Kiron Kher: Get the diction spot on and everything good ends there.

° Nauheed Cyrusi & Dia Mirza barely had few scenes.

° Khulbushan Kharbanda's character was unwarranted.

Coming from the house of KJo music is generally one of the strong points and therefore a few songs are quite good.

There are too many coincidences/ cinematic liberties in the movie. Coming to the premise, the writing of KJo attempts to give a balanced view of both sides of the coin. Sadly the research is inadequate and can be aptly termed as school homework. The writing hardly manages to touch a layer or two at the most. The planning/ plotting/ execution - if the actual terrorists would watch "Kurbaan", they would fall of their chairs and die laughing.

I generally have no expectations from films that preach. Most of the films on terrorism do exactly that. More so, bollywood movies try to preach quite often, terrorism or not.

So I successfully gave-New York, Fanaa a miss without regrets.

But somehow I watched Kurbaan and it turned out to be a non-preachy good piece of art. Its a decent suspense thriller which will make the first-time-viewer think. It quickly moves from some romantic-love-story to conspiracy-theory without a preachy or sympathetic moral of the story - "its only-innocent-poor that are lured into terrorist activities." It sticks to the story and portrays the confusion of an individual who is torn between religion and his unborn child. Also a lesson for girls who fall prey very easily to romantic one-liners from guys who are very sacrificial for the girl they love. Beware of them and watch this worth-a-watch thriller.