Akshay Kumar is my guilty pleasure. He's an atrociously bad actor, and he dances like...well, like a body-builder, but he's so pretty to look at, and he can seriously kick butt, which I do enjoy from time to time.
Twinkle Khanna isn't much better an actor than Kumar, and she's not as pretty as he is either, but she was good enough for a stinker of a film like this.
International Khiladi is one of those really good bad films: funny for all the wrong reasons. It uses every cheap trick known to Hindi cinema, throwing red herrings at you left and right, showing scenes that later turn out never to have happened. And it pulls no punches going for the cheap tear-jerk reaction, or the cheap laugh, or the cheap thrill.
The story, if I remember, revolves around an international crime lord who is accused of murdering an undercover policeman, and of raping the policeman's sister. The plot unfolds as the story is re-told from the different points of view of several of the characters, kind of like Kirusawa's Roshomon. The uneven mix of slapstick comedy and brutal violence is par for Hindi films, but unfortunately a lot of the humor is just lame. It does have one or two nice songs, set to some of Kumar's endearingly klutzy dancing.
But I have to say, it kept my attention, and I was never bored.
