Movie Review of Kidnap The Film (2008)

Sonia (Minissha Lamba) lives with her mother Mallika (Vidya Malvade) and grandmother (Reema Lagoo). She yearns to meet her father Vikrant Raina (Sanjay Dutt) who has been divorced from her mother since she was ten years old and whom she has not seen since that time. Angry with her mother for not allowing her to approach her father she goes for a swim on some deserted beach and gets kidnapped from there. She finds herself in a boarded place kidnapped by Kabir (Imran Khan).Initially she believes that this is some kind of a prank by her friends,but when she finds that she has really been kidnapped she is stunned.

Kabir calls Mallika and tells her that she needs to get her ex husband Vikrant Raina to Bombay so that he can talk with him and that he will tell only Vikrant his conditions to release Sonia.Vikrant arrives in Bombay on his ex wife's request and receives the call from Kabir. He is told to do a series of things one thing at a time including getting on a train and apologizing to a nun and helping an inmate in some prison escape.After he completes each task Vikrant is given an incomprehensible clue that is supposed to lead Vikrant to Kabir. Vikrant is an arrogant and successful businessman who hates being pushed around but loves his daughter enough to want to try anything to help secure her release. He also has some of his security personnel working on trying to identify who Kabir.

Even with each clue Vikrant finds it difficult to find out who Kabir is, but realizes that Kabir is motivated by wanting to settle a personal score and tries to remember the people he has antagonized in the past ten to fifteen years. He begins to narrow it down to 3 or 4 people and with the clues provided he is able to find out who has kidnapped his daughter. In the past when Kabir was young about fourteen to fifteen years old and living in an orphanage his friend falls down and the orphanage vehicle is not working so Kabir runs to the nearby home that happens to be Vikrant's holiday home and "borrows" their car without permission. Vikrant's daughter Sonia then a young kid gets into the car with Kabir with a view to stopping him from taking the car. Kabir is so worried about his friend that he does not stop, their argument though results in Kabir crashing the car and Sonia getting seriously injured. Vikrant is so angry about the situation with his daughter that he has Kabir arrested on kidnapping charges and Kabir is jailed.

Sonia too realizes Kabir's identity because Kabir reveals it to her. The rest of the story is about Kabir and how he makes Vikrant pay for his mistakes and how Vikrant learns his lessons and gets his daughter back in the process reuniting with his ex wife too.

Overall this movie while attempting something different from the usual run of the mill love stories fails to evoke either sympathy or empathy for its lead characters. The pace of the movie is considerably affected by the unnecessary and badly positioned songs in the narrative. Moreover Sonia seems to be in desperate need of a wardrobe makeover since you find her prancing around in clothes that can only be described as atrocious during the entire movie. By the end of the movie Kabir is shown to move on with his life and get employed in a software company, but of course there is no explanation as to how Kabir acquired this education when he is said to have spent a long stretch of time in prison or when he finds the time to educate himself when by his own admission he has spent the last few years after getting out of prison planning his revenge. This movie would have definitely benefited from a tighter script and a tighter pace.

Both Sanjay Dutt and Imran Khan perform competently enough and do a convincing job of playing their roles as Vikrant and Kabir respectively. Minissha Lamba fails to impress and Vidya Malvade and Reema Lagoo have too minuscule roles to make a difference.

Rating

1.5/5