City Scrape

Omar (Neil Nitin Mukesh) is a newbie in the State University of New York,fresh from the gullies of Daryagunj. The university of course,conforms to the Bollywood version of a college— a place saturated with colours and populated with Manish Malhotra clad extras. Now this unsuspecting desi,very predictably walks straight into a love triangle involving a porcelain doll with a taste for rugby,Maya (Katrina Kaif) and jock who is a champion chess player too,Sameer (John Abraham). Soon he he realizes that the porcelain wonder has eyes only for the jock. The desi sheds a few tears (which makes his peaches and cream complexion even more shiny),and makes a graceful exit from their lives only to return a few years later as an FBI agent,sent to spy on Sameer who is suspected to be a terrorist.

The 9/11 metaphor (well it’s hardly a metaphor since the director insists on hammering it into our heads) is the film’s pivot. Khan’s response to the event is clearly a premeditated one. But it comes without any cultural perspectives,concerns,anxieties and touchstones. His protagonists are people without any discernable context,shaped by Bollywood dictum rather than narratorial motives.

Or maybe it’s the hopelessly miscast actors who contribute nothing to the film apart from lending their pretty frames to it. John Abraham as the wronged college student (and we thought the age 30-something actors playing college students ended with Shah Rukh’s turn in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai) in the first half and the reckless terrorist in the second,betrays no emotional graph.His weather-lined face is consistently expressionless. Neil Nitin Mukesh who lands up with an author-backed role in the film has the strange ability to make himself the second lead even when he is not one. And Katrina Kaif,well what does one say about her? A sight for sore eyes she may be,but a conflicted wife who is torn between her husband and her sense of duty? Nah!

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