Yakeen Review

Trust the Bhatts for spinning infidelity drama year after year, month after month. Couple of decades back, Mahesh Bhatt stuck to his instincts in the intense three dimensional drama about 'pati', 'patni' aur 'woh' in 'Arth'.

His successors continue to churn movies based around similar lines, albeit giving it a different shade every time. The result is movies like 'Raaz' (supernatural angle), 'Jism' (lust), 'Murder' (passion), 'Zeher' (greed) and now 'Yakeen'.

The basic crux still remains the same, a spouse crossing the 'lakshmanrekha' of fidelity to look outside for greener pastures, but the treatment changes.

This time though the producer is not Mukesh Bhatt, but the fact cannot be denied that Vikram Bhatt as a story writer and Girish Dhamija (who has written many a dialogues for the Bhatts earlier) as the debutant director follow the footsteps of their mentor and walk into a similar terrain.

Lives of the two prime characters (around whom the entire story revolves) is going through a turbulent period. Not just Nikhil Oberoi [Arjun Rampal], a wealthy businessman and his glamorous wife Simar Oberoi [Priyanka Chopra] have met with a road accident in the hills of Manali, Nikhil's face too has been disfigured as a result of this.

If this was not enough, he has lost his memory entirely and doesn't even recognize his wife. To make matters worse, he is informed by his business partner Siddharth [Ankur Nayyar] and his sister Tanya [Kim Sharma] that he was looking for a divorce from Simar before he met with this accident.

The reason? On the day of the accident, he had accumulated proof from detective Chamanlal [Saurabh Shukla] about Simar's relationship with another man. Nikhil is confused! Why? Because he is being showered by all the love in the world by Simar post accident. Whom should he trust? His friends, his wife, his mind or his heart?

The truth discloses soon that Simar indeed was in love with a guy called Kabeer [Sudhanshu Pandey] but now her feelings had reignited for Nikhil. Even more so because Nikhil had already killed Kabeer before meeting with an accident.

But is this the complete truth? Does Simar really love Nikhil?  Does Nikhil fall in love all over again with Simar? Is this a happy ending of their love story? Do they live happily ever after?

Bhatts are back in business with Hollywood DVD rip-offs, this time with Wolfgang Peterson's flick SHATTERED [1991; starring Tom Berenger, Greta Scacchi, Bob Hoskins]. But they are not the first ones to have done this.

All avid TV thriller watchers may remember that the same story was shown as a two part suspense thriller around a decade back on good old 'DD Metro' channel, the difference though being that 'Yakeen' has a much wider canvas than television.

The movie may not be as tout a thriller as 'Agnisakshi', 'Gupt', 'Humraaz' or'Ajnabee' (all of which were centered around man-woman relationship), but dismissing 'Yakeen' without giving it one look would be a wrong option.

Prime factors that work in favor of 'Yakeen' are consistent pace, a twist every 15 minutes, novel script for (most of ) the Indian viewers and above all the performances. It won't be wrong to say that Arjun Rampal walks his complex role maturely once again after 'Moksha', 'Vaada' and now 'Yakeen'.

His performance here would be watched closely by Bollywood filmmakers. He looks handsome too and in certain shots reminds every bit of the hunk that Sylvester Stallone was in his prime. Priyanka Chopra's good form in front of the camera continues with 'Yakeen' and does extremely well for a role that required her to change her chameleon like personality.

Though one wishes she could h