Dus

Technically slick but amateurish in plot and execution, Dus is a big-budget race-against-time thriller. Its completely simplistic story is jazzed up with today's technical wizardry, leading to a rather odd concoction. You never know whether to laugh at its plot or admire its style.

Sanjay Dutt, Abishek Bachan, Shilpa Shetty and Zayed Khan, members of an Anti-Terrorist Cell, learn the bare details of a plot by a terrorist Jambwal. Now the team has just 7 days to learn about Jambwal’s plan and break it up. The investigation takes Abishek and Zayed to Canada, where they are joined by Suneil Shetty, a cop, and Esha Deol, another agent, in the race to foil Jambwal's plans.

Considering Dus is an action film, emphasis on stunts and thrills is to be expected. But still, logic and plausibility are pushed to the background to a pitiable level. The glossy look and fast editing and fancy camera tricks try in vain to hide the amateurishness of the underlying plot and its lame execution. Strip away those and all you have is a movie filled with outrageous plot points and laughably silly setups.

So you have heroes romancing agents in the middle of a serious mission, agents joking while diffusing bombs, a villain using a silly codename that pretty much reveals everything about his plan and gun-toting foreign extras looking like they were hired from the nearest Home Depot. Secrets are uncovered based purely on intuition and the little planning that is done is haphazard. Not to mention grenades (fired from what looks like a rocket launcher) exploding harmlessly near our heroes and supposedly powerful explosives causing as much damage as a Diwali firecracker.

Like Paramasivan, the film’s only chance of working is if it is seen as camp. Unfortunately, the technical expertise makes that tough. But the story does contain two very good surprises that rise above the juvenile nature of the rest of the plot. One is a little predictable, especially if you’ve seen a particular Hollywood flick. But the director still does a good job of keeping us in doubt about it. The other twist, though smaller, took me completely by surprise.

Abishek slips smoothly into the action persona and is the most convincing of the actors. Zayed Khan, on the other hand, is irritating and his seemingly playful personality gets on our nerves, especially when he is casual in the middle of something serious. Sanjay Dutt wears his usual doped-up look and Suneil Shetty is wooden as usual. Pankaj Kapur catches our attention, making us laugh even as he is scared. Shilpa Shetty looks good even in fighting attire but Esha Deol looks almost masculine with her atrocious wig and bad dress sense.