| Alright, listen up guys. Finally my views on 'Kaante'. Just got done watching the film about an hour ago and let me say I was quite pleasantly surprised. Not because the film was great or excellent, but because the film unlike almost all Sanjay Gupta films was not crap. It is definately his best film yet, and yes I know that does not say much.
 To sum up the film, as per Bollywood standards, the film is quite good and is definately better than most of the recent bollywood crap, although since the film is primarily made and produced in the US with hollywood technicians I am not sure if it can really be termed as a bollywood product. I am also not sure how much credit for this film Sanjay Gupta should get, but since he has gotten the discredit for all his other crap I figure it would only be fair to give him credit for this decent effort, albeit with a lot of help from hollywood.
 
 The acting overall is quite good, with Mahesh Manjrekar stealing the show from all. Other than him, the performances of Amitabh and Sunjay Dutt are good, Suniel Shetty is okay and so is Lucky Ali in a small role. Kumar Gaurav on the other hand is bad and the actress who plays his wife is atrocious.  Kumar Gaurav being Sunjay Dutt's brother in law, I can still understand why he was int he film, but why in the world was she chosen for the part? The film drags in parts and Malaika Arora also cannot act to save her life, nor can she really dance. More importantly her whole role and the songs picturised on her, were not only an irritant and unneccesary but they also spoiled the flow and tempo of the film. In parts the director becomes obsessive with stylizing his shots and the whole pathan episode was nothing short of tacky and absolutely unneccesary. The technical aspects of the film are all above par for an Indian film, although anything less would have been unnacceptable considering the budgets and the hollywood technicians involvement with the project. The music is quite good except for the fact that most of the songs are totally unneccesary in the film, also the Mahive song is totally out of place in the setting it is picturised in. Another thing, just as in a lot of other scenes, there is absolutely no justification for the characters to speak in Hindi, there is no logic behind why she would be singing a HIndi/Punjabi song in a dance club in LA.
 
 To sum up, overall the film is quite watchable and entertaining, specially due to the wonderful performanceby Mahesh Manjarekar who in my opinion keeps the film together. Without Mahesh's character and his performance, the film might not have been even half as entertaining. Mahesh is definately a far better actor than he is a director, maybe he should consider a career change. The film is definately worth the price of the ticket and in the midst of totally atrocious films from bollywood it is a great relief. So if nayone has any doubts about seeing the film, my suggestion is, do not hesitate to go see and enjoy the film in a movie theater and then later on enjoy it again on DVD. I just hope there is a decent release of the film on DVD.
 
 PS: The one thing that really irked me about the film was the attempt (so what's new?), as in all bollywood films, to justify the characters actions and to try and get the audience to sympathise for the characters. Why can't bollywood just let a bad guy be a bad guy without justifying his reasons for being bad.
 
 
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