User Reviews

Welcome to a land of Nowhere. If there is some award for the absence of logic or reasoning, than it should be given to this film, as it has surpassed all its contemporaries and shall have absolutely no competition with any other film.

Esha Deol meets Zayed and sings a duet with him. Soon after she gets the news of her Uncle who is killed in Thailand. She sets out for Thailand. Now look at the turn of events.

Other than an Uncle whom she has not even met for years, no relatives of Esha are shown. Who is paying for her bills, from her birth till her adulthood ? The Thai Police officers mutters some strange, nonsense, illogical words. Even an illiterate can make out that it can be anything but Thai language. The supposedly rich uncle of Esha is running down the streets with his only possession-a cheap handbag before he gets killed. The Killers who killed him for his money forgotten completely to take away the bag. Why in the first place did they kill him when they should know that he can be the only person who knows about the money ? The Police Deptt. who is investigating the murder case didn't even bothered to check a coin worth 10 Crore and it just escapes from their eyes whose very job is to find where all the money disappeared ?

Next, a Criminal not just enters an embassy but even poses as a high-rank official and nobody is keeping a check on it in the entire building. Now this Embassy official tells Esha deol that her life is in danger but he did not even send any security considering she is all alone in a Foreign Land. She turns out to be the Ultimate as she didn't even suspect his identity, at that time. Esha has enough money to stay in a luxury hotel but not enough to buy herself a mobile phone that too when her life is in danger. Esha is threatened again and again by criminals who are after her life and still she never asks for a Police protection. The Criminals including a skimpily-dressed bimbette look like cartoon characters straight out of a Walt Disney book-imagine them into stuff like Bank-Dacoity ?

Zayed Khan, a stranger from a foreign country lands up in Thailand and the so-called hard-core criminals not just employs him but even entrust him the responsibility of hooking the heroine and getting a fortune from her. All Characters stay in the same hotel, where the criminals openly attacks Esha Deol and Zayed Khan umpteen times, open fires at them but nobody not even a single waiter seems to be affected by it. To Top it, there is nobody seen around in the hotel. One after the other the murders took place in the hotel, but there is no sign of Police. Even the hotel rooms of the deceased are not sealed or locked. A Coin worth 10-crore is being sold openly in a small 10X10 shop at a shopping mall. Anybody can just walk in and buys it. There is no system of checking its authenticity.

In the climax, when Hero has to bash up the Villains he don't just kick them but jumps in the air, takes a complete somersault and then kicks them. One can just wonder why didn't the victim run away in the meantime. (Three cheers to Stunt Director Sham Kaushal for matching the imagination of the Director).

I'm sure there will be more such instances . The film is from a nowhere land and I just wonder how come the director Mr. Sangeeth Sivan considered his audience also to be from there ?

If you've seen Stanley Donen's classic "Charade", starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn or even the awful Jonathan Demme remake "The Truth About Charlie", you'll pretty much figure out what the story is. This movie is a big-fat rip-off with a predictable and well known storyline, cheap thrills and bad action. The script is absolute bulls**t, so are the performances.

For starters, Zayed Khan doesn't look like a cop from any angle (so what if he's undercover), what with all his wannabe styles and gimmicks. Even the Mark Wahlberg-Tim Robbins-Thandie Newton version's worth a rush through. But this one is absolute rubbish. Esha Deol needs to do lot more than a crash course when it comes to learning acting. Gulshan Grover is crap, but thats okay. As for the other sidekicks, the least said, the best. The songs are just a cherry on this piece of crap, making it even crappier. The action bit is an absolute disaster. Taken from almost every Hollywood blockbuster's that's come into the action director's head.

Skip it, even if you've not seen the original. Skip it, even if its the only thing you got.

When I first read this story I thought this is probably a remake or other of a big Hollywood blockbuster. Fortunately I couldn't figure out which one, so I could watch this movie with a completely fresh and objective view. And from a fresh and objective view it was quite refreshing. It's quite difficult to come across a Bollywood movie which has a good balance between romance and suspense. Churaliyaa I believe has managed quite well.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!! The story starts off with a daring armoured car robbery. One of the thieves gets away with all the money leaving the others to fend for themselves... in jail. Three years later the jilted thieves look up their cohort and guess what... he ends up dead. But where's the money? The thieves believe that he somehow passed on the money to his niece Tina (Esha Deol). But she doesn't seem to have it and certainly doesn't seem to have any knowledge of the robbery. As the baddies start chasing her and threatening her, she comes to rely on her new boyfriend Vijay (Zayed Khan). But can she really trust him? Can she trust anyone? And where is the money? Slowly we see the story unfold.

Churaliyaa is an entertaining thriller. As with any Bollywood romance/thriller the first part of the movie is focused on the romance and the second part on the thriller. The story now and then interrupted with a few mediocre songs at best. Aah... if only the producers could capture the beauty of the original Churaliyaa Hai Tumne song, but alas... the quality of the golden oldies escapes them leaving them with nothing but titles for new movies.

Churaliyaa does not offer anything new. Just 2 and a half hours of mindless entertainment like most Bollywood movies. The story is not bad, but it's not exceptionally original either. The romancing offers nothing new at all. And the action is as always unbelievable, and that is not a good thing. No matter how often a person gets beaten, kicked, stabbed or shot they manage to get up and still give it their best, unless ofcourse they HAVE to die in the interest of the plot. The fight sequences are similarly unbelievable. Perhaps Zayed Khan is angling for the role of Keanu Reeves in a Bollywood Matrix remake. Nonetheless, it's better than most but certainly no masterpiece.

A final word on the acting. I cannot but speak positively of Esha Deol's performance. Not because her acting was outstanding, because it was simply good (which is also a performance to be proud of), but because when I saw her laughing and dancing I couldn't help but be reminded of Hema Malini. She posesses that same charm and a certain je ne sais quoi which Hema also has. Star potential. This is why later I was not too surprised to find out that she is Hema Malini's daughter.

***/5 stars