REVIEW: Knock Out

KILLER COPY

I remember watching Joel Shumacher's Phone Booth at a Hong Kong multiplex in 2002. It's 81 minutes long and for almost its entire duration, Colin Farrell's scumbag PR agent, Stu, is locked inside Manhattan's last surviving phone booth with a sharp-shooter's gun ominously pointed to his head. The sniper has called him on the public phone that Stu regularly uses to dial his girlfriend (he's cheating on his wife, hence) and refuses to hang up till he confesses to all his misdeeds and owns up to his general sliminess. We never get to see the shooter, but his voice (Kiefer Sutherland) holds our attention, as it does Stu's and before you know it, the neat little thriller ends without a dull moment, nor much fuss. It's a morality play about a self-styled avenger out to put his victims through an inquisition that'll make them repent their chosen path in life. That's all.

Now when Mani Shankar decided to transport this story to India (taking full writing credit, of course), he knew audiences aren't interested in amoral PR agents. Indian viewers don't find faceless voices engrossing either. Then again, which Indian star would agree to play a faceless voice in the first place? Or an irredeemable Stu, for that matter? MS is also a very patriotic filmmaker. So he couldn't possibly envisage a story without a nationalist agenda. Last year, there was much discussion about some 70 lakh crore rupees of Indian money lying in Swiss bank accounts that nobody wants to audit. Before that came a film called A Wednesday, which everyone liked. MS found the perfect ploy to transport Phone Booth to India. And Knock Out was born.

Irrfan is Bachchu, a fixer for political bigwigs to transfer funds and disburse money for election campaigns. But officially he's a respectable investment banker (with that ridiculous hairdo?). He enters a phone booth in Bandra-Kurla Complex and finds himself the target of a sniper's gun. Since the shooter is played by Sanjay Dutt, he gets to mouth such priceless lines as "Agar meri ungli chalegi, to tere bheje ki khidki khulegi." Or "Jab maut apni aankhon ke saamne hoti hai, to achche achchon ka Gateway of India ho jaata hai." Kangna Ranaut is a media snoop in high heels, who's smarter than the cop in charge of the investigation (Sushant Singh, looking very confused). Gulshan Grover sweats and swears as a politician named Bapuji (I told you MS is an ardent patriot) who's dragged out of his luxurious spa treatment to be told that it's his money the sniper is after. Apoorva Lakhia makes a late entry as an 'encounter specialist' in a red van with SWAT written on it, and fitted with remote sensor mini-choppers for surveillance and other such filmi-looking gadgets. As for the post-climactic revelation of Dutt's real identity, you have to see it to believe it. 

Twentieth Century Fox sued the producers of Knock Out for copying their film without license. But perhaps they should have actually taken greater affront about the shoddy mess that they eventually made of it.