Superb remake of Phone Booth that does not suffer from the tendency inherent in US remakes of foreign films of forgetting cultural context. This makes many pointed stabs at Indian political corruption that makes not only a remake but a re-tooling to fit the new cultural context. It also deals with the legacy of the British Empire - corruption in high places - as well as the meaning of nationhood, ones highest loyalty and trust. These issues are discussed in both a political and a personal sense as the film comes down on the side of the nation being more important than the individual.
Politics drives this narrative forward even more effectively than it did in The Bourne Identity and we discover that the villain is not so villainous after all and that the ostensible hero has feet of clay. As in The Third Man, we are clearly informed that no man can be affectively neutral in life and still be effective. Like Dog Day Afternoon the crowd of onlookers shown here becomes a proxy for the audience as it watches an apparent unmotivated murder turn into a hostage situation that reveals some of the political depravity of a ruling class still Anglo-centric in its ways.
Irrfan KHAN and Sanjay DUTT are both world-class in this characterful action-thriller as they make us overlook the somewhat wishful-thinking ending. However, it is hard to imagine the paunchy-but-avuncular DUTT as a Jason Bourne-like action hero when confronted with younger and fitter men; including Joey ANSAH from The Bourne Ultimatum!
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