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By Joginder Tuteja, October 30, 2008 - 14:58 IST
MOVIE DETAILS
Cast: Sameer Dattani, Om Puri, Sushant Singh, Suneil Shetty, Alok Nath, Rahul Dev, Raima Sen
Director: Mani Shankar
Producer: Sudhish Rambhotla
Music: Sashi Pritam and Kartik Raja
Lyrics: Iqbal Patni and P.K. Mishra
THE FILM
Om Puri must be fuming. He has died the same death twice. A decade or so back it happened to him when Milind Gunaji encountered him in Drohkaal and now Sameer Dattani does the same in Mukhbiir. Hardly a coincidence if one looks at the fact that in both the films, Om Puri played a top cop and the new kids on the block, his informers who had infiltrated the terrorist organizations.
Clearly, this has to be the first ever instance of a 'remake' of a scene, if not the entire film. Something which is unpardonable considering the fact that director Mani Shankar had started off with such a bang with 16 December. Not that Mukhbiir held much promise on the face value. After all Mani Shankar is the same man who went on to make Rudraksh (unbearable) and Tango - no one cared - Charlie hence truly succeeding in ensuring that he won't be making feature films for long. A title like Mukhbiir hardly helped his cause and inclusion of Sameer Dattani in the all important role, regardless of the fact that he did reasonably well, was hardly going to help him get the mega-bucks backing.
To his credit, he still went on to make the film and though on the face value the subject sounded exciting - the life and time of a young boy acting as an informer for the cops with uncertainty around the number of days he would live - an out and out depressing mood of the film completely killed whatever impact a handful of sequences succeed in making.
Depressing feel - that's really the reason why Mukhbiir just doesn't move well in spite of some sparks in the narrative. Sequences like Sushant asking Sameer to go for a killing on a busy road or Sameer's interaction with Alok Nath or his entry into the Rahul Dev gang do manage to catch the attention of the viewer. However, the film tends to turn dark at number of instances (something which reminds one of No Smoking), and frequent voiceovers and painful sad songs only hamper the flow further.
Add to all of this some poorly written characters of Jackie Shroff, Suneil Shetty and Rahul Dev and you know that Mukhbiir has clearly lost the plot somewhere down the line. Even Mr. Reliable Om Puri is out of sorts in the film which would be one of his most forgettable ever. Sameer too has hardly come up with a performance of a lifetime, as was widely proclaimed, because though he is good, the 'excellent' tag perhaps stems from the fact that none of his performances from the past have hardy been even worth mentioning.
Coming to Raima Sen, well her little sis Ria Sen perhaps had a longer screen time as she, in her heroine avtar, merely danced to a 3 minutes song 'Badmash Launde' in recently released Heroes. And that pretty much tells the tale!
PACKAGING
The film comes in a ordinary paper and plastic packaging
DURATION
The film comes in a single DVD pack with the duration being 130 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES
The DVD doesn't come with any special features.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
- The DVD does not come with 16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation. In layman terms, it's in a regular format (with thick top and bottom stripes) which is associated with VCD format.
- Subtitles in English
- Dolby Digital 5.1 and Stereo
PRICE
Rs. 299/=
CONCLUSION
Coming back to the scene as mentioned at the beginning of the review i.e. Om Puri sitting on a chair, all battered and bruised, and his informer required to shoot him just in order to prove his loyalty to the 'dushman log'? One wonders whether Puri himself didn't raise a voice when exactly the same scene from Drohkaal was now being shot in Mukhbiir?
  
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