Masand's Verdict: Kidnap is boring, predictable

NO SAVING GRACE: Minissha's costumes in 'Kidnap' reveal more than they hide.

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Cast: Imran Khan, Sanjay Dutt, Minissha Lamba

Direction: Sanjay Gadhvi

If not for Minissha Lamba's ample bosom, there'd really be nothing worth watching in director Sanjay Gadhvi's Kidnap, a tired ole' thriller about bad boy Imran Khan who kidnaps Minissha, and puts her richie-rich dad Sanjay Dutt through a series of twisted challenges as revenge for an old grouse.

As far as thrillers go, Kidnap is a pretty lame one, considering not once during the film's two-hours-plus running time do you feel your pulse racing. The challenges Imran puts Sanjay Dutt through are silly and juvenile, and they lack that edge-of-the-seat tension that is so essential in a film like this to keep the pace brisk. Ashamed as I am to admit it, here's one time I wished they had whacked a few good ideas from a smart Hollywood film. Instead, Gadhvi and his writer seem to have chosen to whack the plot of an obscure Pierce Brosnan-starrer "Shattered" from which they've derived the premise of Kidnap.

The least you expect from a thriller are a few fantastic sequences that will make your jaw drop for their sheer inventiveness. In Kidnap, there's precisely one good scene -- it's that breathless chase sequence between Imran and Sanjay which is the film's finest stroke.

Much of the film's problem lies in its sloppy narrative which is repeatedly punctured by unnecessary songs and unintentionally hilarious dialogue that digresses from the film's thriller theme. Too much time is spent establishing and then repairing Sanjay Dutt's estranged relationship with his ex-wife, played by Vidya Malavade. Vidya's character, in fact, is the weakest link in Kidnap, serving no real purpose in the plot, instead slowing down the narrative every time she shows up on screen. It doesn't help that the poor lady can't act to save her life, she can't even deliver a simple line of dialogue comfortably.

The worst disease a thriller can suffer from is predictability, and Kidnap falls bang into that trap. You know exactly what's going to happen when Imran takes Minissha out to the beach when she begs to be allowed to bathe -- although you probably can't predict the erotic dance she breaks into once there. You know exactly what's going to happen when Minissha has an opportunity to escape when Imran's injured himself. And you know exactly how the climatic challenge Imran puts Sanjay up to will turn out.

You see what I mean, there's virtually nothing good about this film. Which brings me back to Minissha's cleavage. If clothes were invented to cover one's body then Minissha's costumes in Kidnap reveal more than they hide. Her entire wardrobe in this film looks like it was stitched out of the bits and pieces of cloth you find lying around in a tailor's room, the bits that didn't get used when he was stitching a real dress. Not that there's anything wrong in showing a little skin, but the problem here is that you're convinced Gadhvi went the whole hog because he knew the film had nothing but Minissha's curves to keep the audience glued to their seats.

Of the two male protagonists, Sanjay Dutt looks completely disinterested in what he's doing; and Imran Khan appears earnest acting out his scenes but seems to be taking his character and the film a little too seriously. The final, most deadly flaw in Kidnap is the bizarre back-story about why Imran wants revenge from Sanjay. It's not only an unconvincing motivation but it's also a fundamentally wrong plot point especially when you consider Sanjay's 'crime' against Imran seems perfectly justified given the circumstances.

The film doesn't succeed in seizing your attention, and hence I'll go with one out of five for director Sanjay Gadhvi's Kidnap. Here's a film that could have been so much more but settles for such little.

Rating: 1 / 5 (Poor)