Knock Out | Bollywood Movie | Views and Reviews

Mani Shankar’s movies are having its own uniqueness. Either the content or the technology, he comes with something different and yet you can relate to it. His latest film Knock Out is no exception.

The main focus is the issue of black money, especially the money stored in the hidden accounts of Swiss Bank. If taken back to India it could be in thousands of crores or even lakhs of crores. Some candidates even use this topic as the central theme of their election campaign and try to get votes by assuring people that if their party will be in the rule they will bring such money in so and so days. We see a minister named Bapuji [Gulshan Grover] demands handsome amount of money to pass a contract for the businessman and how he easily translate his application from “Not Approved” to “Note Approved”.

When the movie starts we see Tony Khosla aka Bachchoo is leaving his home in an Innova car. He gets a call during the drive and he rather advises caller to call him from the public phone booth. He then reaches to the booth where he gets some instructions from the person and during the conversation itself he face some problems with two other people visiting the same phone booth. Then came a call to the phone booth and the thriller starts. The movie was having trouble with the issue that the movie was highly inspired from English movie Phone Booth, if not the blatant copy. In October 2010, the Bombay High Court ordered the film’s producers to pay a portion of their revenues to 20th Century Fox who own the rights to Phone Booth.

Though when watching the film you see that the similarity is the central character is trapped in a phone booth. Having different kind of events makes the movies different. Anyway, coming back to the point, Bachchoo was called by a stranger to him [Sanjay Dutt] and he reveals the wrong things done so far by Bachchoo. Bachchoo thinks that he is the lover of one of the girls he have used and dumped earlier and trying to settle the score. First by offending and then by offering money. Not taking the stranger seriously lead him got wounded by the bullet of the stranger. However the stranger saves him by killing the drug addict came to attach Tony Khosla. There comes in the Police. The team leader is Vikram [Sushant Singh] and if it is not all, there came the media reporter Neha Shrivastav [Kangana Ranaut] and her team too.

During the progress we learn that Tony was not only an investment banker as everyone knows but he have large political connections and is associated with some political personalities and their financial affairs too. The police team tries negotiating with Bachchoo by thinking that he is mad or something, but when capturing the footage, Neha noticed the bullet holes on the phone boot glass walls and informs Vikram about the same. Thus they realized that Tony aka Bachchoo is actually trapped in the Phone Booth.

In the due course of event Bachchoo confesses the wrong deeds he have done so far and then the chapters opens one by one and we realize that it is something much bigger than thought.

Irrfan excels in the performance as usual. Kangana is still trying to catch up with proper pronunciations during the dialog delivery. Sushant delivers first rate performance. Rukhsaar does her part well. Gulshan Grover is first rate of course. Sanjay Dutt did his part pretty well. Overall very good performances. Must to mention the very last few dialogs where Kangana’s pronunciations got right. The dialogs are all up-to-the mark. There is not much scope of the music in the film in order to make it a tight thriller and hence the background score is the only thing to take into account and it is up to the mark. The action scenes throughout are pretty good and of the international quality. Only in the climax when Sanjay fights on the edge of the top floor of the multi-story building, the special effects are realized for around a minute or two.

The direction is really first rate and the technology is used pretty well in the film. The Apoorva Lakhia cameo adds to the thrill, though he could have act even better. The story and screenplay is tight. The cat-mouse chase between the shooter and the police and then minister’s man and Tony’s family and again Ranveer Singh’s men and the shooter are filmed well. There are so much positive stuff in the movie that makes it one of the must watch movie. Mani Shankar succeeds in what he wanted to convey. Watch Irrfan dancing on the beats of “Touch Me Touch Me…” and in the stressful situation also you will burst into laughter.