Movie Review: Aankhen (Eyes) (Hindi Film) (2002)

A schizophrenic 6-footer works his ass off for his bank (The Vilasrao Jefferson bank, no less) (a winner of 20 consecutive best employee of the year awards, we mean business here), at the end of a lifetime ends up as a violent employee-bashing boss, bashes one employee too many, gets fired by the board in a public firing involving 60 bank staff, plans a grand bank robbery as revenge, which involves preparing an animated computer simulation singly, chances upon a blind school and devises a grand imaginative larceny, gathers blind accomplices with the blind school teacher as a front (by kidnapping her brother), (his first blind comrade-in-arms had his eyes taken away by a vile uncle to graft onto his son, the second is a blind beggar so rendered by the begging syndicate guru, the third, an athletic type who loses his eyes and girlfriend in a bus accident; not entirely a bad tradeoff when u factor-in that Bipasha’s the girlfriend (Grena is her screen-name, unbelievable)), the theft is successful but not before lots of twists and turns that leave you nauseated and the end is not really the end at all, it’s a preparation for a sequel. Crap!!!


What else did you expect, it’s a Hindi movie!!!! If you want to watch meaningful cinema, go watch ‘Gandhi’



Sushmita overacts consistently, Amitabh overacts in patches (and displays terrible voice modulation), Arjun Rampal barely acts. The rest (wo)/manfully struggle. That’s ‘Aankhen’


Credits:
Based on Shobhana Desai’s ‘Andhalo Pato’ gujarati play

Starring

Amitabh Bachchan
Akshay Kumar
Sushmita Sen
Arjun Rampal
Paresh Rawal
Aditya Panscholi (the new surname spelling doesn’t seem to have worked wonders to his career)
Bipasha Basu – Sp.App – does skin show number 1 and departs
Kashmira Shah – Sp.App - does skin show number 2 and departs
Choreography: Ahmed Khan, Remo

Playback: Amitabh, Alka Yagnik, Sonu Nigam, Vasundhara Das, Aadesh Srivastav, Nitin Raikar, Arun Bakshi and Remo Fernandes
Editor: Shirish Kunder
Lyrics: Prasun Joshi, Nitin Raikar, Praveen Bharadwaj
Background Music: Aadesh Srivastav
Music: Aadesh Srivastav, Jatin Lalit
DoP: Ashok Mehta
Story/Screenplay: Aatish Kapadia, Vipul Amrutlal Shah
Written by Aatish Kapadia
Directed by Vipul Amrutlal Shah


P.S. The main characters Rathod, Srivastava, Verma, Iliyas, Prajapati. All non-Marathi. Do we see a trend here? The world’s largest churner of celluloid dreams based out of a Maharashtrian city and over the years has hardly any references to Marathis’ and Marathi culture. Hmmmmmm……… Not entirely misplaced, this angst of the Marathi manoos, who appears onscreen in the form of servants and maids mostly. (S)/He just doesn’t exist for the Hindi movie-makers…………