Aamir Khan's first film this year, is a faithful remake of the Tamil film (with a lot of the original crew , including the director) barring a couple of twists in the climax. It has Aamir doing an out-and-out actioner after a long time (‘Sarfarosh' in 1999 was the last time he went around brandishing guns and decimating baddies). It also has him bare-chested for a lot of the running time, because he needs to display his impressively muscled frame. So is it all good?

Not really, no. The thing with doing a film like this is that you have to completely get with the flow of the film, and here Aamir is split down the middle. When he's Sanjay Singhania, the billionaire boy friend of wannabe celeb Kalpana (Asin), pretending to be a broke model himself, to insinuate himself into her good books, he's just fine.

The sequence in which he first sees her help a bunch of disabled kids and loses his iron-clad heart to her, is a winner. So are a few others: how many impossibly wealthy men carry ‘chutta' to give the ‘pani puri wala'? He flips him his platinum card, and we crack a smile, as we are meant to.

And then the transformation from smooth urbane tycoon, to the damaged violent guy happens, and the film starts to stutter. Not because Aamir doesn't try hard. He goes at this one with just as much effort as he does in his others, but he doesn't fill out this part with as much conviction. It's all his fault--- he shouldn't have done films like ‘Rang De Basanti' and ‘Taare Zameen Par', in which he coasted on his cerebral appeal. He just doesn't look the part of a man who can pulp other humans with his bare hands, despite the wild grimaces and the angry howls.

... contd.