Aakrosh is about honour killing, where the family kills in the name of saving their honour in the community and kills in the name of religion. 3 MBBS students disappear in a remote town of India and to investigate their disappearance a 2 member squad is dispatched. Akshaye Khanna is the CBI guy, incharge of the investigation and Ajay Devgan is the military guy, who would help execute the plan. But their investigation is made difficult by the presence of an uncooperative police force, lead by the corrupt Inspector Paresh Rawal and by the local politician, who wields unprecedented power.
Priyadarshan has always had some atrocious songs in his films and he doesn’t throw any surprises in this department. The songs are consistently bad. The film starts off strongly, by quickly giving us a background and springs, surprisingly, straight into action by introducing the 2 Heros in a very non-descript manner. It’s very Hollywoodish in presentation and gives the illusion of being a classic. But surely and steadily it falls into the gutter it creates for itself.
First of all, the director seems to have fallen short of scenes for the movie. With material enough to last just 1 hour, the screenplay seems stretched and repetitive. There is a massive confusion in terms of how much power the investigative team actually has. In one scene of the film they have a team of 10-15 people and the very next moment they are just 2. Also, there is loss of continuity in many scenes. One scene starts off as a Night scene but suddenly turns in Day as soon as the Hero starts chasing the bad guy. A car parked on the left bank of a road, suddenly appears on the right bank in the next shot. And I am not knit-picking, these errors are glaring for such a big budget film.
Also, there is just too much apathy and too much cruelty to handle. The investigators are rendered impotent at will and the scenes are overly dramatized. In one scene the investigators are shown recording irrefutable evidence on tape and the very next moment their evidence is made a mockery off in the court. The excessive malice gets nauseating and irritating and you just hope the movie would end abruptly. But Priyadarshan stretches the film beyond tolerance. He peppers the screenplay with unnecessary action sequences and songs. The major problem with the script is that it conveniently changes tracks whenever it wants and does not follow logic. The screenplay is manipulative.
Akshaye Khanna hams consistently as the overconfident, suave CBI agent. Paresh Rawal succeeds in keeping you irritated throughout. Bipasha does not get too much screen time to show that she cannot act and Ajay Devgan sleepwalks through the role. Only Reema Sen manages to give some depth to her histrionics. The camera work is impressive and also the Post production done on the footage is top class. Some of the scenes have excellent use of lights and are conceptualized exceptionally well - visually. But the problem is that the visuals can only keep you interested for a while, after which the story has to take over. And with a totally stretched out storyline, the chances of maintaining interest is near impossible.
Aakrosh succeeds in creating the primary feeling of ANGER within its audience very easily. But this anger gets converted to outright irritation half way through. This movie is completely avoidable. Not “priya-darshan” i.e. lovable viewing in any sense of the word.
Rating : 3.5 / 10