Blank

BLANK is the story of a terrorist who is a 'living explosive'. Hanif (Karan Kapadia) is a part of a terrorist group called Tehreer Al-Hind, headed by Maqsood (Jameel Khan). He has arrived in Mumbai along with other terrorists with a deadly plan - to set off 24 bomb blasts, each by a terrorist. However, on the D-Day, he meets with a road accident. He faints and is taken to the hospital.

"Harish yeh niklega ya nahin," Sunny Deol playing ATS chief SS Dewan asks angrily. You might think Dewan is asking about a particularly stubborn food stain on his shirt. Actually the yeh in question is a bomb embedded into a man's chest - not strapped on as we've seen countless times on screen and sadly, in life. But a bomb actually stitched into his body. The contraption can't be taken out because, we are told: uski dil ki dhadkan bomb ki battery hai. Yeh mara toh phata, bomb agar nikale toh phata. It's a dead man's switch.

A young man Hanif (Karan Kapadia) is walking on the streets and suddenly a car bumps him off bringing him to a nearby hospital. During Hanif's medical examination, a shocker sends shivers down the spine of everyone. Hanif is a suicide bomber with a difference. A bomb which works on biorhythm is fixed to his bare chest and its tickling as per a plan. Shutting it off forcibly or killing Hanif will trigger a blast. Time for ATS Chief Diwan (Sunny Deol) to take over, but Hanif is suffering from short term amnesia due to the sudden accident.

A human bomb is created to trigger potential blasts in Mumbai: on this premise a two-hour film is stretched, and filled with a debutant actor supported by a veteran action hero, 'tukde tukde' gangs plotting the destruction of India, and brave cops keeping us safe. The trick to making us swallow improbable ploys is slick treatment, and keeping everything moving chop-chop. On both counts, the film largely draws a blank.

All the bad guys in this film have beards. Sunny Deol does not. He is a good guy, and therefore shortchanged in the facial hair department. As chief of the Anti-Terrorism Squad, Deol is instead given a moustache, the kind that looks scared to sit on his face, making him look like a swole Manoj Prabhakar. The reason the terrorists have beards, of course, is because they are all evil fundamentalists, and Blank goes some distance in making all Urdu words, even "Inshaallah," sound sinister. Yep, this is that kind of film.

Between Sunny Deol straining his facial muscles for a good 111 minutes and Akshay Kumar turning up right towards the end credits to screech Ali Ali lies a star relative's lacklustre launchpad. It is called Blank, but they could have gone with bunk too.

The film starts off with a young man getting hit by a car. He's brought to a hospital where the doctors discover a bomb strapped to his bare chest. The bomb is running on biorhythm and forcibly shutting it off might result in a detonation. ATS chief Dewan (Sunny Deol) wants to interrogate him but finds out that the youngster, identified as Hanif (Karan Kapadia), is suffering from memory loss as the result of the accident.

The unfortunately named Blank marks the debut of yet another young man with the good fortune of having been born into a Bollywood family. Karan Kapadia, son of costume designer Simple Kapadia and nephew of Dimple Kapadia, shares the screen with Sunny Deol in a loud and shouty thriller littered with bombs and damp squibs.

A young man (Karan Kapadia) meets with an accident and suffers from amnesia. During his medical examination it is revealed that he's a suicide bomber. That sets off the ATS Chief Diwan (Sunny Deol) his team on a manhunt to figure out the impending terror plans on Mumbai.

Blank starts on a promising note. The opening scene is both symbolic and engaging. It immediately draws you into the urgency of the situation, which director Behzad Khambata manages to maintain throughout the film. But by the time the close-to-two-hour-long film ends, the urgency gives way to convolution. The suspense that served as the backbone of the film in the opening minutes gets overcooked by the time the film nears its conclusion.

Behzad Khambata informs his first directorial venture, Blank, a terrorism-themed thriller, with pace and pizzazz. The sporadically intriguing film merits praise for the way it stays true to its bare-bones plot, creates the requisite atmospherics, and barrels a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between a tough-as-nails anti-terror squad (ATS) officer and an on-the-run suicide bomber into an explosive climax in which the latter turns the tables on the lawman. All the spiffiness, sadly, stays on the surface, leaving Blank groping for purpose.