Aamir (Released in 2008) - Starring Rajeev Khandelwal - A serious movie about a terror attack

Once in a while a movie comes along that is gripping. You have these romantic comedies that are released in thousands of theaters and go on to make hundreds of crores in revenue, but those movies leave you unsatisfied. And then you get a movie, made low budget, with unknown characters, that leaves you thinking, that grips you during the movie and you start thinking for the character in terms of what will happen next. Aamir is one such movie, a movie about terrorism, but an angle that is different from other movies. It is a simple story, but does not pull any punches, and makes you think about the tragedy that happens to the hero of the movie. Rajeev Khandelwal was not unknown before the movie, since he had made a name for himself in TV serials, but a movie is a different ball-game all together.
The movie started out slowly, since there were no major stars, but when a movie is good and is also praised by critics, it starts getting good word of mouth, and that ensured that the movie went on to earn a good profit and created a good name for Rajeev. The movie was directed by Raj Kumar Gupta (who later went on to direct the hit and serious, No One Killed Jessica). Music for the film was given by Amit Trivedi, lyrics by Amitabh Bhattacharya and the movie was produced by UTV.




A man is returning from Britain, back to his family, and suddenly, his life is turned upside down, thrown into a mix that will eventually take his life. Dr. Aamir Ali (played by Rajeev Khandelwal) is returning back to Mumbai, when he is given a cellphone by a stranger and told to wait for further instructions. The video in the phone scares him, since it is clear that his family has been abducted, and he has to now wait for further instructions. Further instructions make it clear to him that he has been caught in the trap of an Islamic terrorist who urges him to do something for his religion rather than the work that he is currently doing, and plays upon his name (Aamir means a leader).
From then on, it is a frantic series of movements, a lot of them over a red suitcase that has been given to him, and which gets stolen from him in between. It is full of cash, but when he finally gets to sit in a bus and is told to leave the suitcase under his seat and move out, he realizes that the suitcase contains a bomb, and the intention was to use Aamir to cause mayhem in a bus through the bomb. He finally makes a choice, deciding to ensure that no one else gets caught up in the bomb blast, clearing an area, and dying in the bomb blast - and all his tension, his sacrifice, is unknown to people around him, since he is suspected of being the bomber who died in the blast.

Black and White (released in 2008) - Starring Anil Kapoor, Anurag Sinha, Shefali Shah, and Aditi Sharma

This is a serious movie, on a serious topic. India has seen one spectacular suicide bomber, in the form of Dhanu who blew up in 1991, killing the former Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and a number of others (including his security personnel) in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. But even though India has seen a huge number of terrorist attacks, with such terror attacks at many different regions of the country; there have been very few such suicide bombers in India (it has occurred in many other movies though, another one being the film Dil Se ). There have been many cases of terrorists attacking the police or acting in a conflict where they are not likely to survive (including the Mumbai attacks where the terrorists would have known that they would not come out alive), but no suicide bombers.
The movie starred a few known actors such as Anil Kapoor, Anurag Sinha, Shefali Shah, and Aditi Sharma. The movie was directed by Subhash Ghai, more know for romance movies, and other such movies (Taal, Karz, Pardes, and many others). However, over a period of time, Subhash Ghai also contributed to meaningful movies, such as the movie Iqbal. This is a movie of a disaffected man, whose passion have been bought to a boil and he has agreed to be a suicide bomber, and in turn takes on the identity of a man who has been brutally affected by the horrible communal riots in Gujarat. He has been recruited to strike at one of the most significant celebrations - the speech of the Prime Minister from the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15th.




He (taking on the identity of Numair Qazi - played by the actor Anurag Sinha) comes to Chandni Chowk in the older section of Delhi (right next to the Red Fort, a crowded area where Hindus and Muslims live next to each other and take part in each other's celebrations). The idea being that he will make friends with a college professor Ranjan Mathur (played by Anil Kapoor) who lives in Chandni Chowk along with his wife Roma Mathur (played by Shefali Shah). He is the perfect example of a person living in harmony in Delhi - he is an Urdu professor at Zakir Hussain College, and lives with both Hindu and Muslim neighbors.
When in Chandni Chowk, Numair discovers a lot of things that are alien to him. Hindus and Muslims live among each other, they help out in the religious activities of each other (the Chandni Chowk area takes on an air of celebration during festivals of all religions - Hindu, Sikh and Muslim), and even those local politicians from either religion who supposedly play to religious fervor are actually friends of each other and are doing all this for political reasons. He was supposed to be tricking the professor by getting his help and managing to sneak in bombs and blow himself up. Does this experience of communal amity that he sees change his plan ? With the CBI and the police on the trail of terrorists, can he be caught before he can blow himself up ?
This movie was not a big hit commercially, but it is a serious movie for those who are interested in such a topic, and is decently well made with good acting. Well worth a watch.

New York (Hit movie released in 2009) - Starring John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, Neil Nitin Mukesh, and Irrfan Khan

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.