Zinda (2006): A different kind of movie

This is the movie that people love to hate. There is a lot of hard violence in the movie (including using a drill on a person), it does not have any kind of social message whatsoever, and in addition, is not a original movie. On the contrary, I liked the movie. It is one of the movies that I see that is moving Bollywood away from the romance and around-tree-song dramas and more towards a fast-paced Hollywood kind of slick movie. The movie is based on acclaimed director Park Chan-Wook's Korean classic OLDBOY [released in 2003], and there are very few scenes in the movie that seem out of control or excessive. And did I mention that I really really liked the songs and the music. The song by 'Strings' was very very good, and the singing by Shibani Kashyap was also excellent.
The movie is directed by Sanjay Gupta (who had made similar fast-paced thrillers 'Kaante' and 'Musafir'), and stars Sanjay Dutt, John Abraham, Mahesh Majrekar, Lara Dutta and Celina Jaitely (in a small role). Music is by a whole set of people, Nikhil Chinnappa, Dj Nawed, Kinky Ronald, Vishal Dadlani, Shekhar Ravjiani.



The casting is great, with the movie starting and ending with Sanjay Dutt, with John Abraham coming late in the movie, oozing menace (one felt that he could have done a bit more practise on the throwing menace part). The movie is all about the harm caused to the emotions of a child, and how that develops into a full-throated revenge effort that drives a person to commit his life to that revenge. However, owing to the movie being released in an Indian setting, the ending is a bit melodramatic, and it is not very clear and logical as to what suddenly changed John Abraham.
So there is this software engineer who is married, moving to Thailand with his wife, Celina. She is about to have a kid, and things are looking good. And one day suddenly, in their water-front house, she does not see him after he heads towards the waterline (and actually she never sees him again). He is shown locked up in a cell, with just a TV for company, and with no idea as to what happened. He does not get explanations, although he gets to see what is happening in the world, and gets to eat momos all the time.
Days and weeks and months pass by, and he has no answers; he gets shaved and a hair cut after being made unconscious over a regular interval; he also starts learning martial arts from watching the TV. And in a shocking scene, he sees his wife next to him one day and she dies, and we learn that she actually died and he is suspected of the murder and is hunted. Time passes, and one day, 14 years later, he is released as suddenly as he is captured.
He starts to find out what happened to him, and he runs into Jenny (Lara Dutta) who is taking him around the city. She does not know what she is getting into. Sanjay Dutt has a phone and some money from his captors, and then John Abraham, over the phone, reveals that the reason why this entire capture happened to him was because of a malicious prank that Sanjay Dutt and Mahesh played on John's sister, and she was unable to bear the humiliation and committed suicide. He also gets to know that Sanjay had a daughter who is under the control of John. There are some terrific scenes of violence when he goes back to the place where he was kept locked up.
The rest of the movie is about the cat-and-mouse game between John and Sanjay, and how it ultimately moves towards the final confrontation.

Strings featuring John And Sanjay



Yeh Hai Meri Kahaani



Kya Main Zinda



Zinda Hoon Main



A scene from Zinda (from the years of capture)