Gunaah   Producer: Mukesh Bhatt Director: Amol Shetge Starring: Dino Morea, Bipasha Basu, Irfan Khan, Ashutosh Rana, Yashpal Sharma and Avtar Gill. Music: Anand Raj Anand & Sajid-Wajid Lyrics: Anand Bakshi, Praveen Bhardwaj and Faiz Anwar. Genre: Drama Recommended Audience: Adult Approximate Running Time: 2 hrs 45 mins Film Released on: 20 September 2002 Reviewed by: Aniket Joshi  - Rating: 2.0 / 10   Let us know what you think about this review Music Review

The Raaz team of Mukesh Bhatt-Dino Morea-Bipasha Basu returns with

Gunaah, this time however, the director is Amol Shetge. Raaz has been this year’s only universal hit, and industry folks are counting on Gunaah (since it has the same team) and another biggie released this weekend to bring in the audiences. However, after viewing Gunaah, it’s safe to say that the industry will not get what it wants with Gunaah – and that’s a good thing – because if a film like Gunaah becomes a hit, God save the industry!

The film does follow one ritual though which is a must for a Mukesh Bhatt production, and that is to be “inspired” from a Hollywood film. Though Gunaah is not an entire rip-off of a Hollywood flick, its theme is borrowed from the Jennifer Lopez-George Clooney film Out of Sight. Inspector Prabha (Bipasha Basu) is an honest inspector who doesn’t get along with ACP Pandey (Irfan Khan). Pandey doesn’t like Prabha because she is always trying to unmask him – you see he’s a corrupt officer. To spice up the proceedings, and Prabha’s personal life enter Aditya. Aditya is caught by Prabha because he’s the prime suspect in the murder of an industrialist (Avtar Gill). However, Prabha wants to find out why Aditya would murder someone, when he saved her life in an accident when she was pursuing him. So Prabha sets out to learn about the reasons for Aditya’s deeds and trying to reform him.

The screenplay (Mahesh Bhatt) and direction are really dry. There is no scene or moment in the film that is memorable. And a lot of the times, you feel like you’ve seen this somewhere before. The director and writer try to make the film look realistic by using dialogues that would be used by the type of characters that are in the film. However, that works against the film. The dialogues are plain vulgar and abusive. Instead of the mandatory “kutiya” that the Bhatts usually have in their films now they have substituted “rundy” and a few other choice words. I don’t have a problem with foul language used in films. However, the language must fit in the dialogue that is taking place – and not just thrown in to make the film look realistic – that’s what it seems like the director and writer were trying to do here. In a film such as Chandni Bar and Satya, this type of dialogue seems to flow with the ambience. But do police officers talk – at least casually to one another – like this in real life? I hope not! Also, why is Bipasha Basu shown wearing those skimpy clothes (not that the male members of the audience would mind) when she’s on duty? Amol Shetge has a long way to go before he will be able to churn out something impressive.

Performance wise, no one is able to rise above the script. However, Bipasha and Irfan Khan do try to do justice with their scenes. Dino doesn’t have any dialogues for about three-fourths of the film, and that’s a good thing, because we’re spared of listening to his awful dialogue delivery.

Ashutosh Rana (I’m trying to remember when was the last time I saw him in a non-Bhatt production) doesn’t really have much scope, his role is more of a special appearance. The music of the film is below average – and most of the songs don’t fit in the film. Cinematography is above average, though nothing ground-breaking.

Simply put, Gunaah is just a very bad film – that’ all! There’s nothing about the film that is able to hold the viewer’s interest – unless you like Bipasha Basu and want to see her in skimpy outfits. But even if you go out to see the movie just for that, you’ll be disappointed as well..