Apne (2007)

A Masterpiece!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This is good experience to see this type of movie,also the the macho trio-Dharamendra,Sunny and bobby together, its a good story but this type of movie is not successful in this generation.Its fit on past 60 or 70 decades. Its a nice movie on father-son, Mother-son , Husband-wife relation.if you ask me which couple is best in this movie,although there have 3 couples- Dharmendra-Kiron Kher (a very talented actress!!),Sunny Deol-Shilpa Shetty (hot beauty with extreme height),Bobby Deol-Katrina Kaif(pretty good but have language problem), I choose the Dharmendra-Kiron Kher Couple ,Old is Gold,what a chemistry between both of them,a natural acting overall..The action is good but inspired from Stallon's blockbuster 'Rocky'..nevermind..if length of the movie edited then it would be more good. Music is OK.. not more efforts by Himesh reshmia,background score is OK but sometimes its loud. In other star cast Victor banerjee,Divya Datta,Aryan Vaid,Javed Shaikh are workable.. But the excellent performance from-Jonnie Brown as luca the killing machine. Anil Sharma always make movies with Dharmendra and Sunny Deol but to see together is a nice experience. The National Champinonship is look childish..where the Final Heavyweight Championship is look like WWF. The Action hero-Sunny look old age..obviously but perform a good fight scene. Shilpa looks good and act good also..Katrina have less scope , also she have to improve her language problem and acting,same thing about bobby role ,he have comparatively less scope than Dharam and Sunny.The Main pillar of this movie is Dharam Paaji..what a stamina and performance at the stage of this age..excellent..new generation have to get inspiration from this OLD IS GOLD HE MAN!!! Anil Sharma knows very well that Indian people like Family dram with action and romance ka tadka... serve a dish,but not all dishes are good serve..Apne is like them.The story is good,star cast is good but screenplay and scripting are lower the marks.Nevermind,If you want to see a family movie with tears and punches then definitely go for movie with whole family.

If Sarkar was the best movie for Father-son duo Big B and Abhishek, then Apne is the best platform to feature the Dharmpaji-Sunny-Bobby trio. With a story that reminds you a lot about K3G, this movie does a little more effort in encouraging the Indians to shine in the international sports arena, in fact, Malaysians too should be inspired by this effort, as we have been pretty slow in that area for ages.Kiron Kher does justice as a typical punjabi mother, Katrina, was just acting, well, pretty. After Shilpa's popularity with Big Brother (UK reality show), one would expect Shilpa being showered with better roles, however, here she gets plenty of footage without substance.The story pace might seem slow at times, and lengthy that it makes you just wish that one of the characters kick the bucket as soon as possible to cut the story short. As boxers in the international level, both Bobby and Sunny have poor body, easily put to shame by the other boxers in the movie.The verdict, watch it, but with no hopes at all. The best thing about the movie is minimal songs, thankfully, because I can't stand Himesh's voice.

Apne stinks. That's just a fact. Recognizing self-stink (that should really be a word) is difficult, so the Deols are excused. But everybody else? Clearly a case of massive, large-scale nose-block. Or perhaps Dharmendra-euphoria, but even then, why doesn't Hindustani and Timely Khaild take a sniff, just a sniff; that's really all that's required.I don't usually speak of stink in vain. It's one of the worst things you can do. So my assertion doesn't come without reason. Or three, for that matter.1. The film, purely by nature of its characters and how they choose to behave (or misbehave), is the kind the Fantastic Farah (Khan, I mean) can, should and probably will, spoof. It's a film - (there are two schools of thought on just that) - of Fred's time (Flintstone, I mean). People, in films, just don't talk like that anymore, react like that anymore, or, most importantly, stink like that anymore.Closely associated with the essential graph of this three-hour 'film', is the execution of the graph. Here is where one wishes one hadn't taken the anti-flu vaccine. Why? Smell this: Every emotion that has been depicted has been stretched obscenely. If something is sad, it is incredibly sad. If it's happy, it's incredibly happy. And so, if it's stinky, it's incredibly stinky. And this excessive treatment, in itself, is fine - there is inherently nothing wrong in an effective emotional roller-coaster - but that has to be backed by strong writing. The only thing strong in Apne, of course, is the Paanch Kilo Ka Haath and the stench emanating from it. Smell this: The direction is clichéd, campy, hackneyed, unintentionally hilarious and stinky, to say the absolute least. Misplaced slow-motion moments, catastrophically cheesy crescendos and Dharmendra's 'I have to be sarcastic to Sunny Bwuoay' face are comic relief. Well, comic.2. It's all about hating your parents, children, children's wives and grandchildren. A film that professes to stand for placing your 'Apne' above all, smacks every Apne in its sight, and hard. It's a sorry story of a psychotic, self-centered man, whose warped sense of the rightness of things is backed by sickening Punjabi male chauvinism fueled whole-heartedly by women who bathe and get dressed and stop. A man who couldn't care less about his Apne and wants each to get smacked as hard and as quickly as possible. One down, one to go. And when all are down, the loon croons: 'Apne - arr - arr - Hrff - arr' - sorry, not a fan of the whole macho, hoarse voice. "But it's from the sons' points of view!" : Quiet! Then the message becomes: 'No matter how crazy your father is, do exactly what he wants even if it's bad for the whole family AND him, in the long run'. Aww.Still wondering what to do with the paanch kilo ka haath?3. Not funny. The two feeble attempts at humour - the 'Ek Joke Suna - arr- Hrrff' and the Sikh who forgets are not funny. Just stinky. Not funny. Only stinky.So, all I can say is this: Go, watch Apne. But when you return, take a bath. Coz this baby stinks.

I feel sad for the Deol family. Dharmendra's magic era is over, Sunny Deol is repeated over and over again and Bobby Deol is not up to the class of either of the former two. Now from their family stable they try to create a movie that would evoke strong Jat feelings. When this movie was announced and promos shown, I did not expect much from this movie. CNN-IBN review rated it very poor – 1 out of 5, and the audience reviews were okay. So my hopes for this movie really dwindled down. But for the sake for Dharmendra I sat through the movie.The story is about Baldev Singh Choudhary (Dharmendra) – a silver medalist in Olympics who is dis-qualified from fighting the world heavy weight championship due to false doping charges. He builds his hopes on his elder son Angad (Sunny Deol) who is not interested in boxing but makes a career as Agriculture products exporter and there is always a tension between father and son; while Dharmendra's younger son Karan (Bobby Deol) is interested in music. But after one of the students of Baldev Singh insults him, Karan takes the challenge to make a career in boxing. In the boxing bout in United States Karan looses due to a foul play with the World Heavy Weight Boxing Champion – Luca (Jonnie Brown) and Angad comes into the frame of things to take revenge of his brother's defeat and live his father's dream by defeating Luca.The Director Anil Sharma has tried to cater to Indian audiences taste by bringing in the whole family emotions, inter-cutting with some (poor) comedy, songs, drama in the first half – varies the second half mostly focuses on the boxing matches and fights.Surely for film audiences who have grown up seeing Rocky boxing fights in the 1980s would find this movie a B-grade stuff. But for North Indian audiences, I think this movie will still work magic. Dharmendra – who always gets a raw deal in not getting good role, has given a power house performance by his lion hearted character. He captures the screen and brings olden day memories back to forth; Sunny Deol has usual is very good and matches the scenes with his Dad – Dharmendra equally. The weakest link in the movie is Bobby Deol – who looks so unconvincing to carry on any part – be of a rock star musician or a boxer.The first half of the movie is much better than the second half – were it sinks to unnecessary melo-drama of olden day movies. I was not impressed by the boxing arena set too. It looked too Indian – even though it was in USA. The musical score was good and Himesh Reshamiya has given his nasal sounding melodies that would become popular for time being. I also liked the background score that jelled very well with the tempo and various scenes of the movie.The heroines characters – Shilpa Shetty and Katrina Kaif sadly does not have to do much, nor does Kiron Kher has much part to play in this movie.The direction could have been much tighter. This was the only chance for the three members of the Deol family to be together and that's it, I do not think it will happen again.Some scenes are quite emotional and bring tears to the eyes, while Sunny's entry into accepting the challenge to fight brings back electrifying memories of his Punjabi puttar's image. It was really hard to see Bobby Deol with floppy chest standing to fight a world champion – I did not know where to hide my face.I think CNN-IBN was too harsh on criticizing and rating the movie, may be he is a typical multiplex high class audience – who are remote from Bollywood front benchers! This is a Bollywood movie that would do good business especially in North India and smaller towns.(Stars 5.5 out of 10)