saran hasn’t been able to make much news since Sivaji happened and Sangeeth Sivan is yet to find a foot hold in the Hindi industry. Will EK be the one for them?

If only Bollywood can send this movie to the Razzie Awards, this might bring in more statues than the Slumdog Millionaire. Being a remake of the Telugu super hit movie Athadu, it did try to be a loyal inspiration in the first few reels but when the director tried to take things in his hands, the movie swayed from average to worse.

The story is about a contract killer Nandu, who is framed for a murder of a politician. He escapes and gets into the train where he meets Puran, A man, who ran away from his home town at a tender age, returning home. Fate follows Nandu and an aim at his life kills Puran. Nandu takes his place and becomes part of Puran’s family. Rane, a CBI officer, is appointed to find Nandu. Will Nandu be able to find the real killer? No points for guessing the answer.

Sangeeth Sivan, the talented director, has made a mockery of Hindi film industry, a movie that tries to bring down its uptrend. A collection of movie viewer’s worst nightmare woven into a single strand of highly predictable text termed as screenplay. Whether it’s the first song for the heroine or the hero’s sister’s outburst post-interval or the clichéd melodramatic moments between the grandfather and the hero - the sequences can either make you nostalgic of the good old black-and-white movies or make you curse your decision-making abilities.

Cinematography by T. Ramji is one of the assets of the movie. The camera work does make the movie worth watching to an extent. Editing is passable with some very impressive transitions. Music by Pritam is dull. Stunt by celebrated stuntman Peter Heins, which has a lot of Southern feel to it, would surely not be welcomed by the Hindi audience. Dialogues penned for Nana Patekar impresses but the rest are filled with clichéd.

Bobby Deol is an actor with potential but bad at selecting scripts. Maybe, the next time he should ask his younger brother Abhay to select for him. He looks totally out of sorts in the movie and his usage of kajal doesn’t help either. Shriya Saran has little to do with the total of her dialogues hardly filling half a page, and even then hams and overacts. Kulbhushan Kharbanda is bad as Puran’s grandfather, he doesn’t come up with the Punjabi dialects either, actually no one else does too, and maybe just wearing the turban, according to the director, does the trick. Nana Patekar is the saving grace of the film. He comes up with a spirited performance of that of a cop. Raghubir Yadav overacts and others are strictly ok.

The movie can be said as an old wine in a new bottle, but old wines are actually much tastier and will be preferred so to explain it in the same page, its sour milk in old plastic cover. The only factors which save the movie from getting the absolute are cinematography and Nana Patekar.

Verdict: EK – Strictly one