By Hindustan Times
Film: Tezz
Direction: Priyadarshan
Actors: Anil Kapoor, Ajay Devgn, Boman Irani
Rating: **
Tezz is an unapologetic, unacknowledged copy of the 1975 Japanese film The Bullet Train. Director Priyadarshan and writer Robin Bhatt liberally lift the plot and whole sequences from the film. So here too, we've a bomb on a train for you to blow up if the train slows down. But protagonists in Hindi cinema who bask in criminal activities should be accessorised with a suitably tragic backstory. So the mastermind behind this heinous deed — Aakash, played by Ajay Devgn — is an illegal immigrant who's rudely evicted from the united kingdom and separated from his pregnant wife. He joins hands with two other illegal immigrants and decides to show the authorities a lesson!
Even if you happen to can get past the foolishness of this premise, Tezz has little to provide. Once the location is ready up, the entire characters begin to snarl orders. So the top traffic controller, played with minimal finesse by Boman Irani, rages at his counterpart from the counter-terrorism unit, Arjun Khanna played by Anil Kapoor (yes, the entire key jobs within the UK has been taken by Indians). To up the emotional stakes, the traffic controller’s daughter is at the train, but this narrative thread goes nowhere (within the second half, the film becomes the chase-for-Aakash and the train and its passengers are almost forgotten). Meanwhile, Aakash makes ransom demands but additionally finds time to mope about London reminiscing about his wife. There’s even an item number in a spot called Desi Club, where London Indians gather to look at Mallika Sherawat shimmy about, surrounded by dancers dressed as vampires.
The neatest thing about Tezz is its length — mercifully short — and the action, choreographed by Gareth Milne (Bourne Identity, Bourne Ultimatum) and coordinated by Peter Pedrero.
There’s a fascinating parkour-inspired chase sequence or even Sameera Reddy, playing one in every of Aakash’s helpers, gets to perform a little nifty moves on a motorcycle. But, for a movie with a speeding vehicle at its centre, Tezz is curiously inert. I felt most sorry for Mohanlal, certainly one of our country’s finest actors, here doing a cameo as a cop at the train. At one point, he's straddled between two trains, helping passengers shift from the only with the bomb to at least one without, as both move at deathly speeds. Can Bollywood please offer him a greater role?
