Aetbaar

"Aetbaar" is a thriller revolving around a psychopath who gets obsessed to a doctor's daughter amid the doctor's plight to get his daughter out of his vicious obsession. Burrowing its plot from a Hollywood caper "Fear" (1996), the film though grips at instances is muddled and hackneyed on a whole and fizzles for the cheaper cliches by the end, along the poor performances from John Abraham and Bipasa Basu, added the annoying dubbed voice for John Abraham. If any, the saving grace of the film remains the superb screen presence of Amitabh Bachchan as a protective father, who has lost his son in an accident and his college going daughter is stalked by a psychopath, in which he steals the show.

Rating: 1 star out of 4

With a tag line like "Love can kill", I expected some thrills out of this movie which had some talented names attached to it. Sadly what I got was a damp squib. This particular director has a habit of borrowing heavily from english films for most of his movies. In this case the Marky mark movie "Fear", a tale of a obsessed lover. The three principal characters are amitabh bachan, bipasha basu and John abraham. Amitabh is shown as a over protective father to bipasha who's studying at a local college. One rainy day bipasha encounters a group of bikers, John is one of them. He then follows her to a disco and then to her college and somehow manages to get a date with her. John has got all the bad habits one can think of, he hangs around with his hooligan friends stealing, drinking, going to brothels and beating up whores etc etc. Amitabh has planned something different for the weekend and takes the daughter away for a song routine at a scenic location. When Bips does not turn up he goes all wild and decides to show up at Bips house. Where as expected the lovers are caught by the Dad. Amitabh asks Bips to call him for tea, where Amitabh realises he has seen John somewhere, but can,t remember. The rest of the story is about how Amitabh finds out who John is and decides to save the daughter from his clutches. The story is nothing home to ride about and has been seen in a earlier movie of the same director "Inteha". Technically movie is slick. Music very functional. Amitabh is the only saving grace. Bips is badly miscast as the innocent lass. The talent shown by John in "jism" and "saaya" is missing mainly due to bad characterisation.

After watching the movie, some of the things which gave me heartburn are:

On their first date when Bips does not show up, John ends up at place where Bips is, and they are suppose to be on holiday. How in the world did he know where they were.

Later when he meets Bips he almost chokes her to death for not being there. Hello!! what does the director wants the viewer to think.

He beats up the hooker like a savage beast. No complaint, No police report. Nothing

I dont have any thing against getting inspiration from hollywood movies, but one should get inspired not completely make a mess out of it. The director has done it in the past with movies like "Ghulam" and "Raaz" which were inspired but were well made in their own rights with some excellent performances by Aamir khan and Bipasha basu respectively.

This one is strictly for Amitabh fans only.

This movie does keep you watching. Unlike the typical bollywood movie, the story moves along rapidly in this one. So even though you can predict exactly what's coming next, while the traditional Hindi movie takes its sweet old time in getting there, this one gets right to the point.

The story was quite unrealistic. I don't mean the premise, as that in fact was a pretty good one. However, the way the story unfolded was quite far-fetched and worthy of a cheap horror novel. Amitabh Bachchan gave a strong performance as always but the rest of the cast can't act at all. Moreover, the characters of Ria and her mother were unintelligent to an extreme. Especially the mother... I know they wanted to established that Amitabh as the father was the head of the household, but having the mother's character be this useless is well, quite useless.

The only positive thing I can say about this movie was the looming dark feel it had to it. I haven't seen this in a Hindi movie since Aks and Sangharsh. This gloomy, evil, dark, helpless, "feel something in your stomach" shade is rarely seen in bollywood, and perhaps writers and directors need to explore it a little more. It works wonders in Hollywood, so why not bring it home? They bring everything else home don't they?

Perhaps I'm being too critical. Perhaps the movie was only meant to be as good as it ended up being. All in all, not worth it. 4.5/10

This was a slick thriller. Amitabh, of course, gave another performance worthy of applause. Bipasha perfectly suited and portrayed her role of a rebellious daughter. John was a convincing psycho. The trap scene and the climax were excellently shot and were edge-of-the-seat. Amitabh and John's confrontation scenes were well shot. Songs were really nice. The movie was slightly reminiscent of the recent flick, Inteha. The only thing that didn't make sense was why Bipasha was falling head-over-heels for John when he's obviously abusive towards her.

Movies are influenced not copied and in this case, well influenced and directed. John Abaraham debuted in "Jism" and it is amazing how far he has come in span of few movies. In "Jism" he was wooden, here he has great depth and range almost matching the Veteran Bachchan. Hindi movies have been dominated by actors like SRK, Salman Khan who have neither the looks nor the depth to portray the diversity required for an actor. Last decade the Indian Cinema has been cheated,orphaned and greatly deprived of this diversity-in the younger set-where as we always had feast from the older actors like Bachchan, Patekar, Om Puri, Amrish Puri-just to name a few. Actors like John Abraham are filling this gap and Actors like him have heightened interest in the otherwise dormant Hindi Cinema. The movie showcases incredible dueling between Abraham (Aryan) Bachchan (Doctor Trivedi) and his daughter (Bipasa Basu). Bachchan is indisputable Icon who has a commanding presence in any scene in any angle-a born actor like Pacino-where as Bipasha most of the time looks like she is hiding a secret (seductively I may add), but she does emote well when called for,unlike actors in her class Ash Rai; who looks good but the woman cannot act period-which can be a handicap for a director the caliber of Vikram Bhat.