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CAST: Om Puri, Anupam Kher, Jimmy Sheirgill, Soniya Mehra, Jaaved Jaffery, Kamal Sadanah

DIRECTOR: Anant Mahadevan

This film calls itself, honestly, a remake. And it stays much closer, in its execution, to the original than RGV Ki Aag. Priceless diamonds are stolen from a high security museum, and they end up in a victoria. The rocks are being pursued by an unlikely bunch: Bad man Bambatta (Jaaved) and his moll (Preeti), two small-time cons Raja and Rana (Om, Anupam), and the victoria's driver-in-drag (Soniya).

Kamal Sadanah's father Brij was the director of the 1972 film, starring Pran and Ashok Kumar, Navin Nischal and Sairu Banu. The cheesy, hammy charm to the original, as well as its sense of boisterous fun, is sadly missing: Kamal and Anant, producer and director, haven’t managed to bottle those all important ingredients into this curiously dated version. In 1972, it was okay for Saira to dress as a boy, because no good girls would be caught dead driving tongas in the city (Basanti was a gaon-wali, remember?): but in 2007, to have Soniya do a repeat is silly.

This one is lackadaisical and listless. And this is despite the latter-day Raja and Rana. Both Anupam and Om get into the lunatic spirit of the enterprise, and bumble around dead bodies, wigs, and stolen keys. It's easy for these consummate clowns to steal all the scenes, especially when they confronted with Soniya, late Vinod Mehra's daughter, who tries very hard, but doesn't leave any impression.

The only other real actor here is Jaaved, who has so much fun with his lines, that you almost wish he'd got the darned diamonds.

Let us, immediately, pass a law against remakes. And re-interpretations.

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