Moral Lessons

CAST: Kunal Kemmu,Amrita Puri,Manish Choudhary,Mia Uyeda

Rating: **

Young,ambitious Kunal (Kemmu) lands in Cape Town,straight into a dream job. Big house,flashy lifestyle,everything money can buy. He plunges right in,loving every minute of the dealing,till he discovers the job also requires wheeling. And stealing. His diamond firm,run by the seemingly affable Zaveri (Choudhary),is mired in all kinds of dodgy stuff,and Kunal is in so deep,he doesn’t have space to cut and run.

Like all Mahesh-Mukesh Bhatt ventures,Blood Money has a story which starts off interesting but becomes familiar as it unspools,underwired with the usual flash. The location is Cape Town,which we’ve seen in other Bhatt movies. The hero has to work with shiny baubles and babes. So there’s some of that on display,including a slit-eyed red-lipped creature (Udeya) who’s constantly brushing up against the happily-married Kunal,even if his pretty wife Arzoo (Puri) sits around telling Hansel and Gretel-type fairy tales,all wide-eyed.

Kunal Kemmu,who seems to have dropped the ‘h’ from his surname,is a painless watch. Manish Choudhary,whom we should be seeing more of,does sinister well. And the first half passes by quite swiftly,despite the songs. But post-interval,Blood Money starts listing. There’s a sequence which looks straight out of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Blood Diamond; the idea itself is a distinct lift. The writing gets sloppy. And the end lets down the film,as we are left with multiple messages: being ambitious is a bad thing; being in foreign lands leads you into temptation; and you have to go live a simple life to be good.

If you agree to go into a chocolate house,you will meet a witch,okay?

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com