The 2001 attacks in New York on the World Trade Center was a major event in the history of the United States, a huge terror attack in the heart of the US, and together with the attack on the Pentagon, a shock to the whole world. It led to a severe fightback by the United States on terrorism, which included assistance in the removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan and its support to Al-Qaeda, the moving of a number of suspects to the US base of Guantanamo. Even now, 10 years later, the US is continuing to fight against terror suspects, monitoring to break up terror cell. The attacks also led to a number of laws that enabled the US Government to detain suspects, snoop on them, and so on. It is natural that in this fight, there would also be mistakes made, especially when it came to suspicious behavior on the form of Muslims, and in the surcharged atmosphere, this would have lead to innocents being caught and jailed for periods of time. Some of the laws that prevented such miscarriages of justice would also have been in abeyance with the application of the need for national security.
What would happen when a person was caught up in this search, was innocent, but was jailed and tortured ? Would this create a huge feeling of revenge in such a person, the need to strike out and fight back against this injustice committed ? New York is a gripping movie that explores this concept, which takes an innocent Muslim studying in New York at the time of the attack, and who was arrested and tortured, and then looks after some years to see what the impact of all these incidents were.
New York is a movie that was pretty successful, being declared a hit. The movie was a hit with critics as well, being seen as a taut movie that portrayed the emotions of a person caught up in something that he was not involved in, and how that incident changed him such that it drove him to a disastrous future.
New York also got approval to shoot in many situations at site, inspite of the portrayal of the movie about a person falsely implicated by the FBI, and who got traumatized by this experience, ultimately becoming a terrorist who came close to taking revenge, stopped by his own family and friends in the end.
Omar, Maya and Sam are friends in New York University in 1999, enjoying life and having a good time. Omar (Neil Nitin Mukesh) starts falls in love with Maya (Katrina Kaif), but withdraws from both of them when he realizes that Maya is actually in love with Sam. And then the events of 2001 happen, where Sam is detained by the FBI and kept in jail for 9 months, and tortured as well.
All this is revealed in flashback, since the year is 2008, and Omar has been arrested by the FBI for having guns in the trunk of his taxi, and he realizes that he is forced to work with the FBI to keep a check on Sam (who is now married to Maya, and has a son). Sam is now suspected of being a terrorist, planning a strike. Omar does not initially believe this, but the situation turns out that he starts believing this. And then a quest starts to stop Sam before he can carry out the plan.
