Masand's verdict: Shootout ...

GUNNED DOWN: The film tries to be a boy's picture but it lacks both style and substance.

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Rajdeep Sardesai

26/11: Terror comes precariously close

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Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Vivek Oberoi, Tusshar Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan

Direction: Apurva Lakhia

Also at the cinemas this week is director Apurva Lakhia's cops-and-gangsters drama Shootout At Lokhandwala that's more or less based on a true incident that took place in 1991.

The anti-terrorist squad of the Mumbai Police Department led by Inspector A A Khan opened fire on a group of underworld gangsters headed by notorious hitman Maya Dolas in a residential society in Mumbai's Lokhandwala area, putting at risk the lives of hundreds of innocent people living there.

Borrowing this skeletal true story, Lakhia creates the two protagonists of his film -- Sanjay Dutt as Inspector Shamsher Khan, and Vivek Oberoi as Maya Dolas. The rest of Lakhia's film is a sketchy amalgam of fact and fiction, based on recorded statements, media reports and hearsay.

Now there's not very much we don't already know about encounter killings, we've read about so many in the news.

Therefore the only real significance of this particular incident, in my opinion, is the recklessness shown by the cops who chose to put so many innoncent lives in danger by carrying out this operation in a densely populated residential area.

Sadly however, this very important detail is only once touched upon in the film. Lakhia simply doesn't take up this matter and I think I might know why -- because one of the consultants on this film was Inspector A A Khan himself, so can you really expect an objective and honest representation of the facts under these circumstances?

What you get, instead, is another one of those typical Bollywood-ified versions of a true-life story -- think about it, you'll find all the cliches here -- smart-talking bad guys, earnest cops walking in slo-mo, nagging wives of cops who complain their husbands spend no time with the family, the gangster's bar-girl sweetheart, even a gruesome murder scene shamelessly plagarised from the Edward Norton hit American History X.

There's absolutely nothing new about Shootout At Lokhandwala , you've seen it all before and many times over.

Not a patch on such cutting-edge gangster films as Satya, Company or more recently Black Friday, the problem with Apurva Lakhia's Shootout At Lokhandwala is that it doesn't quite know which direction its going in.

Lakhia confuses us completely by telling us too many little stories before he tackles the big one -- like that absolutely pointless story about the police force's best cop Abhishek Bachchan who gets killed by some Khalistani terrorists -- now what was the point of that story?