Race

It’s been quite a few days since I wrote the review of any movie. Not finding any topic good enough to be posted on my blog, for the time being, I’ve decided to write the review of the recent movie I’ve seen, Race. Race is directed by the famous director duo, Abbas and Mustan. Not many people know that this name indicates two people as the name appears in the titles as Abbas-Mustan. These guys are the best directors of thrillers in Bollywood and gave us the genres like Khiladi and Baazigar.
Enough of all the hype surrounding the directors, let’s get back to our review. It’s the story of two brothers, Ranvir (Saif Ali Khan) and Rajiv (Akshaye Khanna). Ranvir runs the family business and is fond of horse races. He even has a stud farm, aptly named “Stallions”. We were shown that this guy is a talented businessman. On the other hand, Rajiv is an alcoholic, who wakes up in the morning to take a beer instead of a bed coffee. Sophia (Katrina Kaif) is the secretary of Ranvir and secretly loves him. On the other hand, Ranvir is in love with an upcoming model, Sonia (Bipasha Basu) and they both are yet to express their love for each other. Just when things seem to be going on well, Rajiv sees Sonia for the first time and falls in love with her, not knowing about his brother’s love. He promises Ranvir that he’ll give up drinking if he gets to marry Sonia. Ranvir loves his brother more than anything else in the world and decides to give up Sonia for the sake of his brother's future. But Rajiv breaks his promise as soon as he gets married to Sonia and a steamy affair between the old flames, Ranvir and Sonia, starts. Suddenly, a fool proof plan is made and a fool proof murder is committed.
At this juncture, a new character, Inspector RD (Anil Kapoor) and his dumb secretary(Sameera Reddy) comes in to investigate the murder. From this point on, the race starts. Sometimes, the race is between your brains and the writers’ brains (my personal feeling).
Race, as the title suggests, is a racy thriller. You get to see a new twist every few minutes, although most of these twists and turns are predictable. Just as “too many cooks spoil the broth”, I felt that all these twists made the movie a li’l bit boring. The performances are great. Saif does justice to his role and is the show stealer, almost. There’s a popular notion that Abbas-Mustan always bring out the best of Akshaye Khanna, which they did even in this movie. Anil Kapoor does make you laugh quite often, as a fruit-eating police officer and provides the much needed laughs in the thrilling movie. The damsels are good enough and I can bet that the front-benchers might go only for the sake of Bipasha Basu. She’s oozing with sex appeal and portrayed well as a seductress. Katrina Kaif is fragile, as usual and puts up a novel performance in this movie. But I was surprised to see her dance so elegantly in one of the songs as I was under the impression that she’s one of the worst dancers of Bollywood. Sameera Reddy is passable, as her role doesn’t require much acting skills except looking dumb.
The music is great, with some foot tapping numbers. The photography is one of the best in recent times and the action scenes are sure to make you sit on the edge of your seat. I give my rating for this movie as 3.25 out of 5.