Acid Factory Movie Review: A Good Ten Minutes Into the Movie and You Know You are Watching a Sanjay Gupta Movie

Sanjay Gupta takes his fetish for thrillers a step ahead with 'Acid Factory', which is a story of six people locked up in an 'Acid Factory' with temporary amnesia, and their struggle to find out who is an enemy and who is a friend out of the lot. The plot sounds good and fresh but the fact is that its rewind and forward moments reveal too much and make the plot predictable, leaving no room for imagination towards the climax. Fardeen Khan (Romeo), an under cover cop is hired by Gulshan Grover to bust and nab don Kaizer (Irrfan Khan). And to get to Kaizer, Romeo has to go through his sidekicks Manoj Bajpai and Danny Denzongpa. What follows next is a series of events in forward and backward mode unraveling the mystery. The cast of the film is a decent mix of experienced actors consisting of Fardeen Khan, Dino Morea, Diya Mirza, Manoj Bajpai, Aftab Shivdasani, Irrfan Khan, Danny Denzongpa. The locations chosen for the movie are exotic, the entire movie being shot in South Africa, the beautiful locales are optimized well by cinematographer Sahil Kapoor, the isolated factory looks like an apt location to kidnap somebody and lock them up there. The direction is good by Suparn Verma but somewhere the momentum and the interest is lost by the audience, probably the fact that he reveals too much too soon. The film has flashes of Sanjay's earlier movies 'Kaante', 'Mussafir' and even 'Aatish', which was his debut film. A good ten minutes into the movie and you know you are watching a Sanjay Gupta movie, who seems to have made a mark for himself and his style of movies, comprising mostly of dark thrillers. The star cast does a good job, with Manoj taking away applause for his cranky and humorous role. Irrfan excels in his character of a Don, though reminds you of a funny Don a la 'The Killer' but he is as always good with his one liners. Danny does a good job too and makes you wonder that why isn't he seen too often. Fardeen, Gulshan Grover and Aftab give average performances whilst Diya appears only after the interval and is not so impressive with her tough lady look. She seems out of place doing action scenes and yes Diya, just yelling doesn't make you a cat woman. You should stick to cutie pie roles, action is not your cup of tea. One wonders why does Dino Morea even exist in Bollywood, forget acting, this guy cant even get one dialogue right be it Hindi or English, he should read Italian scripts now. Acid Factory promises to be an action thriller, so it does give you a little bit of action, like car chases, bike races and some dishum dishum. Tinu Verma is good with the action scenes but a film like 'Fast And Furious' stills seems like a far fetched thought for Bollywood, in terms of car chases and road action sequences. The editing by Hemal Kothari is crisp and the flashback merging with the present makes for a quite decent visual. The background score is good and so is the film music, with one song almost like a trance and on the lines of 'Door Se Paas' from 'Mussafir'. Though 'Acid Factory' promises to be an action thriller, the director falters to make any real life action sequence. Like having a car chase or a bike race on a two way road(a highway) with almost no vehicles speeding from the opposite direction or the good guys not being able to take even one single shot right on Irrfan, who is almost out of his car whilst driving and manages to get his aim right each time on the cops. Some things which could happen only in Bollywood, including the police turning up extremely late, even in South Africa, which is like the most clich? thing to happen in a Hindi Movie. Probably the best thing about the movie are the dialogues by Saurabh Shukla and Sanjay Gupta which keep the mood in the movie hall alive. The plot is interesting and quite western, the action sequence and the witty one liners and the humor of the movie are definitely going to make it worth watching once. 2.5 stars for Sanjay Gupta's fetish for thrillers and the guts to keep on churning out one after another, regardless of the fact they do well or bomb at the Box Office, for Manoj's character in the film which is quite loveable and for Suparn's attempt to give us an entertainer, an action thriller.