Touted as the most costly venture of Hindi Film Industry, “Blue” releases on this Diwali weekend to make the most of the Festival season. With tremendous hype in the air, fresh visuals on the screen and never before underwater action for the viewers, the movie had all the ingredients of becoming a blockbuster before its release. But now after going through the watery experience of 2 hours in the theater, I can only think about the huge amount of money spent on such a weak and baseless project.
It really doesn’t feel nice to write negative reviews about a project in which a lot is on stake in monetary terms. But what can be done, if the movie itself doesn’t provide you anything positive or worth praising to rave about. Though, it starts off quite well with a brilliantly shot sequence where Akshay Kumar and Sanjay Dutt drive out a Shark from their underwater net. But after that, the movie goes on sliding on a never ending downwards slope sinking towards an unknown destination.
Revolving around a conspiracy to reach a hidden underwater treasure, “Blue” has a completely uninteresting first half, with nothing appealing for the viewer related to its main theme. In fact if you simply skip it off and start watching the movie after its intermission, then you miss nothing but only a few chase sequences and two hot babes, Katrina and Lara Dutta. Apart from this, the main plot of the movie actually unfolds after the interval, when the three men are set to go for the treasure hunt. So, it all comes down to the last 30 minutes of the flick, where you desperately start waiting for something very exciting to happen related to the hidden wealth and bloody sharks.
But unfortunately or rather very irresponsibly nothing happens even in the concluding moments of the movie and its climax simply leaves you confused and annoyed. There is no excitement felt as the treasure is found, there are no bloody games played with the sharks as shouted in the promotional campaign and there is not a single thrilling moment in this so called never before underwater thriller. Yes, there are breathtaking undersea shots worth watching and there are well conceived high quality actions sequences too, but……
Where is the content to win over the viewers?
Where is the famous charming spell of Akshay Kumar and Sanjay Dutt?
Where are the Sharks, heavily promoted in the T.V. campaigns?
Where is the excitement which should be there in a treasure hunt movie?
Besides this, the Kylie Minogue song is clearly added deliberately, which though sounds nice to the ears but has got nothing extraordinary to offer. All the chase sequences featuring Zayed Khan before and after the intermission are only there to add more glamour and gloss to the project. And as always the two gorgeous ladies feature in the movie as there can never be a Hindi Film without any hot heroines to set the screen on fire.
Talking about its performances, there is neither the actual Sanjay Dutt in the movie nor the real Akshay Kumar. In other words you can only find some glimpses of their famous charisma on the screen in few particular scenes here & there. And the most annoying dialogues are where Akshay addresses Sanjay Dutt as “Seth Ji”. I really couldn’t find anything interesting or entertaining in this unique way of calling him “Seth Ji”. May be the writers found it fresh & new, but this was earlier used by Mallika Sherawat in one of her movies too. On the other hand, Zayed Khan, surprisingly shines in his side role and Lara Dutta simply sizzles in her revealing outfits. Lara is undoubtedly looking more glamorous and different than any of her earlier releases. Both Katrina Kaif (in special appearance) and Rahul Dev have done justice to their short and usual roles.
Musically, A. R. Rahman comes out with a few melodious numbers in the soundtrack, out of which “Chiggy Wiggy” has been already made famous by an extensive promotional strategy. Otherwise I think with Kylie Minogue being there for him, Rahman could have belted out something more exciting & sensational for her. Moreover, it was sad to see the finest song of the movie, “Fiqrana” being played as a music video along with the end credits.
In short the best part of the movie is its Cinematography and that’s it. The film simply fails to impress in any other department completely and only one man gets all the blame and he is the debutant director Anthony D’Souza. With such enormous amount of resources available at his disposal he should have given more stress on the story, script and content of the movie to ensure its box office success. But ignoring these essential elements of cinema, he focuses more on the look and feel of the project, which has never been the Box-Office success mantra ever. He surely has got the talent to deliver and may come up with a winner next time, but with “Blue” he can only expect the least.
Rating : 1.5 / 5 (The extra half star only for its underwater well shot scenes)
