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Rating : 4.2/5
Genre : Drama
Year : 2004
Running time : 3 hours 7 minutes
Director : Farhan Akhtar
Cast : Amitabk Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Preity Zinta, Boman Irani, Om Puri, Lilette Dubey, Sonu Sood, Sushant Singh, Ranvir Shourey, Parmeet Sethi
Kid rating : PG
This 2004 film was Farhan Akhtar’s second directorial venture after “Dil Chahta Hai“. DCH is a hard film to better but with Lakshya, Akhtar came pretty close. The film is kind of a coming of age story. In it our hero, a young and easily influenced Karan Shergill (Hrithik Roshan) is trying to find his goal in life.
Karan is a rich young man unsure of what he wants to do in life. He is swayed easily – a follower in other words – at first by friends who want to go the US for further studies, and then by a friend who decides that the Army is it for him. The friend changes his mind, but Karan, in a fit of pique enrolls in the Army anyway, much to the chagrin of his critical father. Softened by his rich living, Karan finds it hard to adjust to the disciplined life of a cadet in training, and decides to call it quits after a while. In short, he scampers over the compound wall on the sly, and returns home.
His mother welcomes him home but his father is convinced that no-good Karan did exactly what he had predicted – quit when the going got too hard. Also, Karan’s smart and articulate girl-friend Romila Dutta (Preity Zinta) breaks off with him once she realizes that loverboy is a lazy quitter. Karan is aghast – now he’s really done it. His reputation – such as it was – has plummeted further. But will he have the guts to turn a new leaf?
The film plays out in flashback, so you will have the answer to that question in the very first scene :-). Re-watching this film recently, via Netflix, I realized that I didn’t remember it very well. There were a bunch of actors I didn’t recall seeing earlier, or maybe it was that they weren’t that well known when the film first released. A skinny Ranvir Shourey plays a sardar jawan. Sonu Sood is a fellow officer as is Sushant Singh. Veteran OmPuri plays the experienced-in-war Subedar Major Pritam Singh. Amitabh Bachchan, ofcourse, is the Commanding Officer. And does he command!
This film is well-done – the acting, scripting, direction and music all come together to form a great package. The one thing that was odd were the hair styles of the lead actors – Preity had a mullet like cut framed with ringlets, and Hrithik’s seemed like a wig – neither of them did the otherwise handsome actors any favors. Hrithik, probably the best male dancer in the industry, performs an outstanding dance number “Main Aisa Kyun Hoon” in this film. In it, there is a sequence with Hrithik surrounded by multilple mirrors, and I recall a Farhan Akhtar interview where he talks about the difficulties of filming Hrithik reflected in the mirrors without filming the camera’s reflection also. Watch :
Kidwise : Scenes of war, but otherwise family-friendly.
