This is a thriller, action-adventure movie straight out of the 1960’s but made in the 2000’s I believe. The screenwriter watched Rambo and the original Casino Royale back-to-back one too many times.

The movie starts out just like my favorite Jet Li movie ever, Bodyguard from Bejing, where superhero bodyguard Jet Li is single handedly wiping the floor with a series of bad guys only, as we find out at the thrilling conclusion of the opening sequence, it was all a training run and Jet is in trouble for his unorthodox methods of saving the subject.

Just like Captain Adit Arya (Rampal)! He’s in some paratrooper outfit which never quite made sense. For US viewers the obvious comparison is that Adit is basically a US Navy SEAL, only Indian and without the teamwork. Later on there is a fairly awesome shot of Rampal in a wetsuit. He single-handedly wipes out an enemy encampment and there’s awesome military-fu and vine swinging and explosions and at the end of the opening it’s all a training exercise.

Then Kashmiri separatists/Al Qaeda Terrorists kidnap the present of India and hold him and his home from Harvard for the summer knock-out of a daughter hostage on a posh and isolated Italian island Resort. I’ve seen elsewhere that they’re in Switzerland not Italy, but whatever.

Captain Adit Arya to the rescue! By himself but for a single sidekick who stands in for comic relief except when not and a beautiful Indian singer who ends up joining the gang because she’s being framed for drug smuggling. His mission is to pretend to be a journalist interviewing the Indian President and the beautiful Indian singer is posing as the photographer and then . . . uh . . . he does stuff . . . it’s never quite clear and I never understood why the Indian Army wouldn’t send in a team of SEALS elite paratroopers to take out the terrorists and rescue the President.

Intead, Adit is undercover and there’s this weird stuff going on with the Indian Embassy in Italy/Switzerland and some idiot puts Rampal in a cheap suit with what is obviously the White Belt of Doom and he has to pretend to an Indian Mobster that he can sing and dance and guess what! He can! Awesome. Only the belt is horrible. Honestly. What straight man under the age of 70 wears a white belt? Answer: not one single one. Obviously, the belt is a curse of some sort.

I am beginning to think every low-budget Indian film has a cursed item that someone has to wear and, as usual, they give the Item of Doom to Rampal because no one else could survive the curse.

Anyway, there’s all this undercover stuff that lasts days and how do we rescue the President of India from terrorists/Kashmiri separatists I’m-only-a-reporter-fu and some pretty lame fight scenes but we get Rampal in a wetsuit so that was good.

The Take Away

Production values are low and the special effects budget was minimal. The martial arts choreography left something to be desired. The plot will make your brain hurt. I recommend not thinking about it. The only reason to see this movie is Rampal.

Tags: Belt of Doom, Hot mess

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 17th, 2011 at 10:11 am and is filed under Arjun Rampal, Movie Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.