KIDNAP IS A CLASSIC.
Yes you read it right. You are not hallucinating and I am not drunk. Kidnap is a CLASSIC. Well not quite yet but with time it will be. Doubt my words all you want, but twenty years from now when someone will be getting ready to pen a new season of the torture series you will know the truth behind my words. But anyhow to give a justification of my statement for now, let me tell you that KIDNAP consists of every element a film worthy of being regarded as a classic should have. It has gripping drama, stupendous acting, and a story worth telling your grandchildren. To quote the lead of the film IMRAN KHAN from an interview on NDTV, the script of KIDNAP kept him glued till the end, wondering of the outcome, it is probably the best script he has read in a long time. I would agree, but more on the masterful script later…
To be honest I had no intention of walking into a morning show of the film, not atleast on the one holiday I have got, but somehow someway again I ended up dozing in the car and praying to god to have mercy on my logic as my friends almost kidnapped me to the theatre. But boy o boy am I glad that they for once did that. Needless to say, I was skeptical, but it took Sanjay Gadhvi just over 15 minutes to wash every bit of it away. As the initial credit sequence and song made way for a skimpily clad mrs. Midriff.. oops I mean mrs.lamba and her mother ( get ready for it ), Vidya Malvade ( incase your memory is failing you like mine, she is the captain in chak de), I knew for certain that this was going to be no ordinary experience. And then the realization dawned that this was not only a thriller, rather a comedy in disguise. One that can give you long lasting satisfaction if you would just look for it. And that did it for me and most of the audience inside the theater, from there on it was a laugh riot that hardly any film can match in the recent times. Still don’t really believe me? Ok let’s have a few sample sequences (irrespective of spoilers) from the film,
CLASSIC SEQUENCE-1
Imran khan threatening Sanjay dutt on the phone, when Minissha Lamba walks in. looks at Imran with her beady eyes flowing with anxiety, fear etc etc and says “Bathroom mein pani nahi hai”. Imran looking dead serious, a mad glare in his eyes says “humare pass bas itnahi pani hai, soch samajh ke kharcha karna chahiye tha, aur pani nahi milegi”
Minissha is stricken to hear this, her voice quivers, the forever exposed grand midriff throbs. Moving closer to Imran she musters up all her courage and says “please samjha karo, try to understand..I….I cannot stay without a bath”. (the common plight of every house hold, water. Explained with such simplicity, in an almost satirical veil)
CUT TO
A beach somewhere in some foreign land (supposed to be India though), song starts in the background “mausam ye awesome bara”, Minissha playing in the sea in a white bikini. Imran looking at her from the shore, a wicked glint in his eyes…..fast forward to the sea shore, both Minissha and Imran facing each other, Imran’s hands slowly moves to her shoulders, they are about to embrace, and just then…BANG!! Here comes the twist, Minissha has a broken glass bottle concealed behind her hand. For a fraction of a second it seemed to me as if she just might stab him in the groin, but alas the leg takes the beating instead.
CLASSIC SEQUENCE-2
Imran walks into the house she has kept Minissha in, he is hurt and almost immediately becomes unconscious as he enters the house and falls near the feet of a chained mrs.midriff….oops again, god knows why I keep saying that, I meant mrs.lamba.
Having been kidnapped for more than a week, she decides to seize the opportunity; slowly pulling Imran’s body towards her she removes the key around his neck, unlocks her chains and runs out of the house. But alas when she is safely out realization dawns on her, HOW COULD SHE LEAVE HIM THERE TO DIE!! After all she is not like him, so she decides to return to her kidnapper and start taking care of his wounds.
In case if anyone is wondering about the final outcome of this bitter sweet courtship, let me briefly tell you, months later after her father rescued her, she meets the kidnapper aka Imran again one day at a restaurant, and what do you do when you meet a guy who kidnapped you once in a blue moon back, surely you don’t run, cry, get angry or anything. One simply starts flirting. Yes flirting, incase you were unaware, women get turned on by their ex kidnappers. All the desperate single men in the room you know you owe me a drink for that tip.
But now without further delay lets move on to the absolute masterpiece of a sequence in this film, this by far takes the cake, bear etc……
CLASSIC SEQUENCE-3
After much effort Sanjay Dutt finally managed to find his daughter, daughter with whom he lost contact owing to a divorce. Obviously it’s a moment of extreme emotion for both father and daughter, so what can one do in such a situation when you are stuck in the kidnappers house, biting time before one can escape…..? Well if you are watching a Sanjay Gadhvi film, the most obvious thing would be to start a conversation, enquiring about the well being of each other and the other family members. Oh by the way Minissha is still tied to the chair and her mouth taped. Someone somewhere had once given me a lecture on how to act with expressions without even uttering a single word. The meaning of that lecture remained unclear to me until I saw minissha lamba so meticulously enact the scene, fluently conversing with her dad, all in that tied up state. PRICELESS.
so there you go, hope the examples satisfied the doubter in you. There are many more, of which I won’t disclose and leave them for your viewing pleasure. A few more pointers, do watch out for the battle of the cleavages. Any one who said cleavages can’t act is biting his tongue right now, not only cleavages but even midriff have extreme capabilities to portray emotions, its just that not every director is so capable of extracting such performances from his subjects like a certain MR. Gadhvi does.
When the show ended a few amongst the crowd gave a short applause as they walked out, still giggling and thoroughly satisfied at a holiday well spent. ON THE “WHOLE”, kidnap is a must watch film, you wont understand what you are missing until you experience it for yourself.
Tags: imran khan, kidnap, minissha lamba, sanjay gadhvi, vidya malvade
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Ha ha, what a classic for sure, Dhoom series itself was one of the most overrated piece of crap, and i guess Sanjay Gadha Vi(pun intended), was plain lucky to get away with it. But when Taran Adarsh, trashes a mainstream flick, you can sure bet how atrocious it will be.
By the way from one of the comments, i head Imran’s dialog delivery seemed to be like an ABCD learning Hindi, any comments on this. BTW Minissha Lamba should be given instant admission to Lee Strasberg’s school of acting, for starving herself to get into a bikini. BTW i wonder what the hoopla was about, considering these days every female sheds clothes.
BTW looks like the other flick Drona is also a classic. Two classics releasing on same date, that too on Bapu’s birthday. Anyway i honestly don’t have the intellectual capacity for such classics. I would rather watch more simpler stuff like A Wednesday, Rock On, Welcome to Sajjanpur, Mumbai Meri Jaan or Tahan once again.
But for 2 words used in this write-up “Torture series” I really would have thought that you loved the film!
Or do you? I’m not sure if this was a sarcastic take on the film.
Btw I thought Kidnap was a rip-off of A Life Less Ordinary….
Well, ‘Drona’ was much better than this nonsense!
Not that ‘Drona’ was a masterpiece, but atleast it entertained.
The trailers of ‘KIDNAP’ fooled me!
I was under the impression that it would be a racy thriller.
‘Lazy’ thriller more like!
Sunju was the only decent thing in it.
hahahahahha….
rusted rick …im still laughing…
“Yes flirting, incase you were unaware, women get turned on by their ex kidnappers. All the desperate single men in the room you know you owe me a drink for that tip.”
u could definitely assist Oz on the torture series man…….
“Yes flirting, incase you were unaware, women get turned on by their ex kidnappers”
Stockholm Syndrome i guess ;)
Rusted Rick..You are so unfair..how can you miss the classic scene of Sanju helping the convict escape from Jail..It was so unique, there was so much of suspense, so much of thought has gone behind the writing…how could you miss it??
On a serious note, really good movies like Hulla and Welcome to Sajjanpur, are trashed for their shortcommings, but what about classics like these?
Lol Rick! What an amazing month we have..First Kidnap and then a couple weeks later Karzzzz is scheduled to release..two movies that will change the Indian cinema landscape as far as Unintentional Comedies are concerned !!
I have not see this movie, but from the story line it could be a inspired by a Hollywood movie “Dont say a word” that starred Michael Douglass.
Yeah Sudhir, agree with you.
Was fortunate to see Karzzz trailer when I went to watch Rock on. Though Rock on had some funny moments, I dont remember the audience laughing harder than what they did during that Karzzz trailer.
Oh yes!!!
Bollywood’s indisputable contribution to World Cinema – a whole new genre of film, the Unintended Comedy.
And the first time I realized we had cracked this was years ago in a class at NYC film school where we were each supposed to make presentations on Cinemas of the world. Naturally I chose Indian Cinema.
Due to lack of time on my end I wasn’t able to put together a decent audio visual for my presentation, so I thought a ready made trailer of a Hindi film which one normally finds in Hindi VHS rentals would do the trick. After an extensive search I found one, Prem Qaidi. Yes, the Karishma Kapoor debut film.
I know I know, that’s not the best trailer to show anyone anywhere for anything in the world but still this was all I could find at the time.
The lights went out and I waited in anticipation as the video played. To my disbelief all I heard were squeals of laughter emanating from all corners of the hall the moment I hit play on my VCR and lasted well after the tape ended and rewound itself.
Now before you run to your nearest dvd store to grab your copy of Prem Qaidi thinking you might have missed out on a comedy of International repute, let me just stop you there with a revelation that there was nothing funny about the trailer. My audience was giggling away to all the “emotions!” “Romance!” “Thrills!” “titillating music!” and “Action!” in that trailer, all the serious stuff we here are used to take seriously. There was no “comedy” in it anywhere. Yet my audience was an ensemble of rare hilarity that I had never expected.
And it had dawned upon me then that we guys were on the threshold of redefining something really unique in Cinema. And here we are many years down the line, having proved it right by perfecting the art of The Unintended Comedy, the creation of which I am sure has been anything but intentional.
Ok found the inspiration for Kidnap
“Butterfly on a Wheel (US: Shattered) is a drama film starring Pierce Brosnan, Maria Bello and Gerard Butler. It was released in 2007.
Chicago residents Neil Randall (Gerard Butler) and his wife, Abby Randall (Maria Bello) have the perfect life and a perfect marriage. With their beautiful young daughter, Sophie, they are living the American dream… until today. When Sophie is suddenly kidnapped, they have no choice but to comply with the abductor’s demands. The kidnapper, Tom Ryan (Pierce Brosnan), a cold and calculating sociopath, takes over their lives with the brutal efficiency of someone who has nothing to lose. In the blink of an eye Neil and Abby’s safe and secure existence is turned upside down. Over the next twenty-four hours they are at the mercy of a man who wants only one thing: that they do his bidding. It soon becomes clear that Ryan’s demands are all the more terrifying because he doesn’t want their money. What he wants is for Neil and Abby’s life, the life that they have built over 10 years, to be systematically dismantled and destroyed, piece by piece.”
Wonder where Sanjay Gadhavi’s next source of inspiration will be.
Rick, tune Dronah nahi dekhi? Kutte kaminey! And ‘don’t talk like a child!’- yeh bhi koi classic hai? Haven’t you seen Mission Istaanbul? This sounds like chicken shit compared to that, and I won’t even call that a classic. Being a true blue unintentional comedy classic needs altogether different levels of bad brilliance, contained in films like Jaani Dushman, Prem Aggan, Raja Ki Aayegi Baraat, Aap Kaa Suroor and of course:
http://passionforcinema.com/so-bad-its-bloody-brilliant/
Jesus!!
its a big crap , might give tough competition to RACE and TASHAN in the worst movie of decade. Oh i went thr with big hopes and came back hugly disaapointed. What a stupid plot , reveange, oh c’mon Sanjay !! did someone else watched the heart transformation and Gyaan in the climax ( Cross scene). oh bt i forget to mention Minnisha has got big B**Bs,yummy and i guess she needs to work on her thighs… and she might get more skin work.
What about DRONA guys… i read on rediff that it falls short.. :(
@ANAND
exactly how could i forget that, the guy who played the prisoner was spot on. the way he said “no chance” every time….kya bole dont have words to describe it. deadpan comedy at its very best. and oh dont forget his real punch line, ” raate hai toh chance hai”.
@JAHAN
saale drona was houseful, ticket nahi mila!!!!
unlucky me. my friends got so excited after watching kidnap…they wanted more comic relief, so they went for drona in the afternoon, unfortunately i couldn’t…..but am just saving up that film to relish during the puja’s
all in all this has been the best 2nd of October in years, and am so so thankful to MR.GADHVI and co. for making this happen.
cheers to more such memorable experiences from him in the coming years
@RATNAKAR
Stockholm syndrome indeed ;)
@ajay
dont call it crap man, just because you and me dont have the intellectual capacity to appreciate the humor so subtly hidden in the film doesn’t make it crap ;)
@ARTHI V
oh yes, i loved it. loved it more than any other film in a while. pure unadulterated fun
ho ho…i cant BELIEVE producers are willing to put their money on garbage like Kidnap and Drona. I mean, a script may not look as good on screen as it does on paper.But i’m sure anybody who’s planning to invest crores into a film should be able to make out a crappy script from a good one.
@raunak
didn’t you hear IMRAN, the script was gripping, it made you wonder throughout, so stupid of us to consider anything negative about their judgement of scripts.
Ajay Saxena ji,
‘Drona’ wasn’t bad. Quite ok actually.
Yes, it has borrowed from Hollywood in places, but it’s still alright.
Abhishek, IMO, was superb!
Even Priyanka was good for a change!
Music is AWESOME!
That Dhruv guy has a great future!
K.k? Hmmmm… Not sure if I liked the comical aspect to him.
Wanted him to be weirder and more sinister.
i havent seen kidnap but smeonee here said that its based on a film from hollywood which didnt even get a theaterical release and was straight out on dvd . well that was me putting it mildly but it is a rip off . a divorced man witha daughter kidnapped bys omeone who doesnt want money but wants to control their lives . now this i make out is present in kidnap also from the promos and the review above . now heres the twist in the original ‘ the kidnapper wants the father to kill an innocent man if he wants to save his daughter ‘ …is it also there in kidnap , which will make it a complete rip off and would rubbish the claims of the director sanjay gadhvi that eh wanted to make kidnap before dhoom . what liars ??…and to think of it they copied a film whichc didnt even make it to theaters, easier to hide the original source i guess . but what amazes me is how quick these guys are to punce upon such movies . the original released on dvd only mid last year .
Drona is the biggest piece of crap I have ever seen.
A sure fire contender for the TORTURE SERIES.
Drona is one film which seems to be a dud, by just looking at the advertisements, making, songs, etc. Money put in the trash bin. I will never have the courage to see this movie, just like I did not have the courage to see many others like Phoonk, RGVKiAag, Tashan, etc
Sougata/KCP, oh please come up with your post on DRONA , i am in no mood to watch GOLDEN COLORED AB. i guess auditions shud have a platform to sue the producers and directors for torturing us, after all we pay hard earned money (200 INR per movie) and get mental harrasment.
Sougata/KCP, oh please come up with your post on DRONA , i am in no mood to watch GOLDEN COLORED AB. i guess audience shud have a platform to sue the producers and directors for torturing us, after all we pay hard earned money (200 INR per movie) and get mental harrasment.
hillarious…
There is no comparison with DRONA. Its he ultimate movie…. you guys remember AJOOBA??? well ajooba looks like sholay in front of DRONA. Its so bad that even thinking about the movie now gives me a cold shiver down my spine.
Sanjay Dutt: ‘Go to hell!’
Imran Khan (in dead serious expression): ‘Hell is right here, Raina!!’
Priceless dialogue- LOL!
another scene: after broken glass water scene , Imran forces back Lamba back to the den and tries to overpower and then leaves her. Minnisha realizes that he is a good hearted man and saya ” TUm mere sath kuch bhee kar sakte they” ho ho .. seems like a 80s movie.
Rick, you dint like Kidnap???I though it was an exceptional movie..nice pace!!
@ajay
i thought minisha lamba’s expression seemed a tad bit disappointed when imran didn’t do anything
@sorav
offcourse i loved kidnap; how can i not
@ Rick …hahaha
i sumwt liked da movie bt nt dat much
As Ramu rightly says most of you are losers who can bul shit any film. When given a chance if you make some shit that stink even more. This has been proved a count less no of times before. Internet is a great media however it empowers fools to write crap like this.
I think most of you are out of sync living in a world of your own. Agreed Kidanp might not be a very good. But what about Dhoom. It is highest grosser till date not Chak De or Aamir . It is a proof to the fact that majority ( aam janata) loved it to the core.
Before who write such shit next time try pen a script for your self and test your own talent. It will be inspired and insipid as the movie Kidnap is
sanju baba is following the orders to save the bikni clad minisha lamba.how can one have such bold and beautiful clothes being kidnapped.well that is a distrcator kidnap is image change for imran khan and minissa lamba too.story is running in present with past hangover loaded with revenge.
this movie was insult to my intelligence