Naksha : No Raksha from flopping

If you think Bollywood is on a roll this year, please see Naksha. You can clearly see a wide chasm between the grade A and grade B movies. Naksha has everything that symbolizes B-grade , Sameera Reddy notwithstanding.

To be fair, Naksha could have been a good Indianized version of many Hollywood puzzle plus treasure hunt movies like National Treasure and to some extent Da Vinci Code. In fact using the Mahabharat and trying to hunt for Karna’s invincible Kavach and Kundal was a good plot.

But the execution is pathetic and the acting pedestrian. Instead of focusing on clues and deciphering them, most of the hunt is serendipitous and silly. Some of the Vivek Oberoi – Sunny Deol confrontations are copied from Rundown a B-grade Hollywood flick with the WWF star Rock. Plus you have to put up with a Liliput kingdom that guards a temple which is not at all funny and an item song for the climax. And Vivek Oberoi trying to speak Sanskrit verses is like Mayawati talking English.

Coming to the actors, Sameera Reddy seriously needs to watch her weight and paunch. She is surely going to be ‘de’ported to the South soon. Plus her make-up and clothes are so garish that even the sex appeal she boasted of in earlier movies is lost. She was strictly ok even in Taxi no.9211 and moving from bad to worse.

Vivek Oberoi already has the worst hair and looks. He is still hanging around due to some promise he showed in Company. But all his roles after that have been downhill. He hams , tries to be cool when he is not and is plain irritating. He just needs to go.

Sunny Deol needs help. His big ego now saddles him with B-grade directors like Guddu Dhanoa and Tolu Bajaj. So they make him shout, bash up goons and dance like jat yamla pagla just like others wasted his fathers talents. Sunny paaji we need some Damini or even Chaalbaaz type performances from you. Get over this phase and find someone who can resurrect your career.

Jackie Shroff is anyways a spent force. He is no longer cool. He is no longer a hero. So he is trying his hand at villainy. I don’t think anyone can save him now except his beloved Subhash Ghai.

Nobody can save this movie from crashing. Just because Pyar Ke Side Effects did not release in Singapore this week, I had to endure this torture.