Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena is a Hindi language film and means "a player and a beauty". One could class this is a comedy action thriller.
The film stars Fardeen Khan as Arjun, Koena Mitra as Natasha, Kay Kay as Kaif, Gulshan Grover as Sikander, Feroz Khan as Jehangir Khan. There are quite a few other supporting actors including: Rohit Roy (as Rohit), Murli Sharma, Mukul Dev and Amin Hajee.
The film was directed and written writer Suparn Verma (his debut film) and runs for about 140 minutes. The action is by Parvez Khan and it was produced by Rangita Pritish Nandy and Pritish Nandy, it was released in November 2005.
PLOT SUMMARY
Arjun and his best friend Rohit are conmen; their career is basically to con people out of large sums of money. Their latest con goes seriously wrong when they con the accountant of an underworld gangster, Sikander, out of 300,000 rupees. Sikander sends someone to kill them; Arjun happens to be out getting drinks and his best friend is killed. Arjun leaves town as he knows Sikander will be after him too.
It's not so easy to escape a gangster as he tracks him down and says he has to pay back 400,000 (the original 300k plus interest) within 4 days or else. Sikander sends his most trusted man Kaif to make sure Arjun doesn't do a runner again. Arjun meets Natasha, a psychiatrist, who gets interested in his cons and wants to tag along with him everywhere. They pretty much fall for each other but he ends up conning her too. As revenge she tells Sikander that if Arjun can come up with 400,000 before his time limit was up why not get him to do a big heist against Jehangir Khan. Sikander gives them 10 days to con Khan out of 27,000,000.
Will they succeed? Will Natasha forgive Arjun for conning her? Will Arjun forgive Natasha for suggesting this even bigger heist to Sikander which could get them all killed for Khan is notorious for being even more ruthless than Sikander?
MY ANALYSIS
This movie is a big con. Everyone's trying to con everyone else. It's good entertainment; I really enjoyed it!
Fardeen Khan would not have been my first choice for the lead in this film. He's very good to look at and comes across as quite sincere but I didn't find him convincing as a con artist. He comes across as too nice, too bland almost. Casting him and his father as conman and potential victim might have looked like a good idea on paper but in reality it wasn't the best casting decision. The film might have made more of an impact had it starred someone with more charisma and screen presence like Sanjay Dutt or Abhishek Bachchan (although it might have felt too similar to the recent Bluffmaster for Bachchan).
I've seen Koena Mitra before in one other film (but didn't remember that till I looked it up) and found her to be average in most of this film and over the top in some scenes. She was probably chosen for the role for her looks and stunning figure, she really looked good in the steamy scenes but not sure if anyone would believe that she was supposed to be a psychiatrist. She makes some very stupid choices in the film, which one would find hard to swallow that someone that educated and supposedly professional would make. For example, what sensible doctor would go into a con situation without knowing anything about the people she's with (apart from the fact that they're con artists) and where there are guns involved? There was one particular song/scene (Jal Jal Ke Dhuan) when it gets very steamy in a hotel room and Fardeen and Koena get very up close and personal which I found quite surprising. It was a very erotic scene especially for a Bollywood film. I'm surprised it got through the Indian censor board who are notorious even in this day and age for cutting out scenes where there's even full on kissing!
Gulshan Grover was quite true to form as the gangster Sikander, he plays this type of role for a living, so it was no surprise that he came across well. I have to admit though that he could have been portrayed as more menacing than he actually came across.
Kay Kay Menon was the surprise for me here! I'd never seen him in a film before but he really stood out in his role as Sikander's right hand man sent to keep an eye on Fardeen's character. Initially he doesn't say very much at all and comes across as almost dumb, but as the film progresses we get to see him open up and even start to feel some affection for Arjun and make comments about not wanting to kill him but that he'd have to when push came to shove. His character is actually quite endearing (when you forget that he's a cold blooded killer) and I found him very amusing and very easy to watch. He was very shy and nervous around women and his social skills (or lack of them) were a real issue for himself as you see him throughout the film trying to overcome this.
Feroz Khan was only mildly threatening as Jehangir Khan, the supposed big time don. I think he played the character for laughs more than for the menacing aspect one would have expected this character to be. There's a scene where Feroz and Fardeen Khan meet in a lift and Khan Senior makes a comment about a female passenger in the lift; "ah the scent of a woman"- it's supposed to be suave, but it came across as disgustingly creepy. I think this was a ploy on the director's part to get the real life father and son in one scene together to show their on screen charisma, it worked to some extent, except it might have worked better had neither of them spoken! There's another scene at the end of the film when Khan Senior winks at the camera to show that he was in the know about what's going on; this was just confusing and didn't go with the rest of the film.
One thing that really amused me was the blatant product placement in the film. It seems to have been partly sponsored by Red Bull and in at least half a dozen scenes Red Bull (the soft drink) is blatantly mentioned and ordered in bars, clubs, etc. There, they've even got a free plug from me somehow in this review!! (I hate the stuff though)!
MUSIC
The music director for the film was Pritam Chakraborty and playback singers include: Sunidhi Chauhan, Kunal Ganjawala, Sonu Nigam, Shaan, Suzanne D'Mello and Sukhwinder Singh. The dance song Ankhiyan Na Maar by Sunidhi Chauhan was quite a hit in the Indian music charts and I'd actually heard the song quite often on the radio prior to watching the film. Apart from the songs Jhoom by Suzanne D'Mello which is a haunting dance melody and Jal Jal Ke Dhuan by Sonu Nigam which is a very slow song with a somewhat of a Spanish guitar influence, none of the other songs in the film particularly stood out for me.
WHERE TO GET IT
I bought the VHS of this film from erosentertainment.com for £1.99 (this time thankfully there were no annoying trailers at the start of the film). You can buy the DVD from Amazon for £14.99, from selectcheaper.com for £11.54 or for £10.99 from sentit.com. I'm sure you could pick up a cheaper copy from ebay or try your DVD rental source.
OVERALL
It's not a deep and meaningful film, and the ending was a bit clever, some reviews I've read elsewhere have said that the ending was too clever for Indian audiences which I think is rather cheeky. Formulaic Bollywood films are not the norm anymore and people are craving to watch films of a different nature. The story worked well enough to entertain me and overall I'd rate the film a good 7½ out of 10.
Production Year: 1991 - Thriller - Director: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes, Tim Burton, Julian Schnabel - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over
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