I was thinking about watching this movie, but after reading this review I am having second thoughts. Might go for Pirates of the Caribbean instead when it comes out next week.

Regarding your comment - “For one, I believe that terrorists such as these need to be treated in the same way that they treat their victims. They need to be tortured severely and then exterminated in the cruelest of ways.” - I don’t quite agree with this. If we treat those people cruelly and inhumanly, then what is the difference between terrorists and us?

We need to trust in the law of the land and as vigilant citizens make sure that is enforced fully without bias. I guess that even of the most ruthless criminal is just a misguided person. No one was born to become a criminal or a terrorist.

My 2 cents.

Priyank… I do agree with you to an extent. True, there will be no difference between them and us. But all I was trying to say is that innocent people are butchered, their families are made to witness heinous acts in front of their eyes and needless to say, those images haunt them for life. Children are extremely influenced by these brutalities and they nurse deep wounds from these experiences. They go on to commit acts of revenge some time in their lives as a result of such incidents. If swift actions are not taken, then what faith and hope will these children have in the law? They in turn go on to disregard the law and order system and it becomes an unending chain of events. By taking a mild approach, we are encouraging crime ourselves.

The same treatment needs to be meted out to the perpetrators. Fear needs to be instilled in their beings and etched into their souls so they know how their victims suffered. And it should be a lesson to others. Ideally they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with their sins. Regret, remorse or a guilty conscience is something they don’t understand. Agreed no one is born a criminal but we can’t just sit back and make allowances for these people and let negative elements breed in a progressive society.

i havent seen Lokhandwala yet. I was planning on it but once they started airing the promos with the dancing around in bars etc i decided against it.

To me it would have been interesting had this been an expose or a theoretical slant on what happened (a la Oliver Stone and JFK) but it seems that Lakhia has chosen to go the way of the bollywood version of the shootout.

pity.

as for the comment about torturing and cruelly exterminating terrorists or gangsters. that is a very irrational way of looking at it..Justice isn’t a means of vengeance, it doesn’t take revenge. If you do what they do, then there is no difference.

A point comes when those who guard you start to oppress you. Then what happens?

someone once said, Que custodiet, Ipsos custodet. Who watches the watchmen? If the protectors aren’t above the law, we are screwed. No one watches the watchers, therefore they have to be above all reproach.

Common torture is what gangsters and terrorists do. Not the good guys.

“One could argue that to save a million you sacrifice a hundred.”
Err.. nope I disagree. My life is precious to me, as is the case for everyone! And I have no right to decide who can die so that the terrorist is caught… No?

A very valid question was brought up in the movie. If there is someone standing outside your door with a gun, then who would you want it to be, the terrorist or the protector? The job of protectors is to protect and serve. The point where the protectors start oppressing the common man is another argument altogether.

Unfortunately, justice in India is delayed. And justice delayed is justice denied in most cases. Delayed to the point where people forget and move on. But not those who have been directly affected by extreme events. Cases like Priyadarshini Mattoo had been pending for ages. If it weren’t for the resilience and perseverance of her family and friends then justice would perhaps never have been delivered.

We speak of torture inflicted on victims so easily. That’s because we have been fortunate enough not to have known someone personally who has been through it.

Shirsha… Exactly. But in most cases that is how swift action forces think. And that’s what happened in the shootout. 112 innocent people living in the same building were made victims. What I go on to say at the end of the post is that a better approach needs to be taken in such confrontations, such as careful evacuation.

A vengeful state or a state that condones torture & butchery in the name of ________ pick one (religion, anti-terrorism, bad hair days) is pretty much either a basket case or set up to be one.

You just need to look at the excesses committed by States who have taken up this doctrine. Off hand i can think of WWII Germany, Serbia, Guantanamo, Turkey, Iraq, S.Africa.

One innocent person is tortured and executed as a terrorist under such a doctrine, means the collapse of the entire system. Maybe not visibly but on a moral, ethical and human standpoint.

Its much worse because the entire state, that is you and me supported that doctrine by voting it in.

gauravjain… these States you mention have a rich history of committing atrocities upon INNOCENT people. These States themselves are terrorist states. Their entire system of defining and recognising ‘terrorists’ is/was different. I am speaking FOR innocent victims. And when I talk of punishing or torturing here I am talking of people who are hardened criminals.

Bad hair days? Helloooo….Where did that come from???? And I resent the basket case reference if you were using it on me. I am entitled to my opinions without being judged here. Are there any better ideas or are we just going to be playing shrink?

To everyone else reading this post and crumbs.. I apologise because the choice of words in my post was not politically correct. But that was all because I was charged up after watching a scene in the movie, which showed a merciless shooting spree by the gangsters. But it was gory and agonizing so the reaction. A little reckless of me.

my comment bout the basket case is towards all hard line polities. i did not direct that comment at you at all

i dont find anything wrong with your post. it can be pretty justified especially if one has been a victim. But justice does not work from the victims point of view, it works blind. so a state has to be blind to the emotional aspects.

you are absolutely entitled to your opinions (hell, ill defend your right to em, even if i disagree )

I am steadfastly against torture. It simply doesn’t work. It causes people to admit to ANYTHING to make the torture stop. And then, when you begin that kind of campaign, how much different have you become from the outlaw in the first place. It all spirals out of control.

There was a great movie that looked at this. Damnit. Forgot the name. Munich I think It was… about Jewish athletes murdered at the 72 Munich olympics and and what happend when israel decided to take revenge for the deaths. Looks at the psychology of justice/revenge and how that can get out of control.

Oh yes, Munich it was!
Each death pokes you and makes you promise to yourself, you’ll never ever have anything to do with killing. Through out I sat terrified of what might happen to that lead character’s wife and son. Its almost like I wanted to run out thr and protect them!

I just don’t see how society can progress with terrorism and crime wreaking havoc on the common man. A strong system has to be in place to keep wrongful elements in check.

In the movie Munich (a really well made movie), the retribution was a means of warning the murderers that Israel would not bow down to terrorism. There were repercussions of that but it sent out a strong signal to the world. However, let’s not get too involved into that debate coz I’m simply raising the issue of domestic crime in my post and not international terrorism, with which one has to be more diplomatic, I guess.

In general, being submissive and under the control of someone else’s harsh actions is wrong. It is wrong for us as a society to accept it. That is why we need a more punitive stance on criminals.

the threat of violence or death is not a deterrent. the case of Israel is a great example to that. They fight back yet, they have a case of terrorist attack every other day. so where is the deterrent?

Texas has the most insane amount of executions a year, yet violent crime is committed?

problems are deeper than that. the threat of violence is supposed to serve the same purpose domestic crime is interchangeable with terrorism.

i think the mistake comes from assuming that the people committing these acts are acting outside of society. i reckon they come from the same fabric as you and me. something happens to lead them to this way.

we are as much a part of the problem in that case.

I think it might be one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, but I have to agree with Gaurav

You can see in cases of capital punishment that it does not deter crime.

I am not saying that any state should be submissive. Or that they should allow criminals or terrorists to run roughshod over law and control anything they choose. I just think there is a very thin line between maintaining law and becoming a terrorist yourself.

Look at the US. In an effort to stop terrorism within it’s borders they started taking away civil liberties from citizens. We all thought that was OK given the circumstances, until then we learned that even that was abused by people in power to further their personal agendas.

So for the most part, yes, I agree with you too Candy, I just think the government cannot be as bad as the people they are trying to protect society from.

I don’t endorse US actions towards Iraq and Afghanistan one bit. Both countries have been thrown into worse turmoil than ever before. When it comes to that I do agree with you. But of course there were vested interests in invading Iraq so it wasn’t all about controlling and eliminating terrorism.

Candy… I wasn’t referring to the invasions of foreign countries (which I also do not support)… I wasn’t very clear…. I was referring to acts the US did against it’s own citizens… it enacted something called the Patriot Act which allowed the US government to suspend some of the civil liberties of the citizens, such as our right to privacy. At first we were mostly OK with it, then we learned it was being abused and used to persecute people, and then we got angry. Then there was a huge fight about it…..

Oh ok.. I didn’t quite read ‘within it’s borders’. I’d heard of the Patriot Act controversy. I guess you’re right about power being used to exploit the masses for the government’s own agenda. I accept that absolute power kills absolutely. And I also accept that I reacted quite sharply to some of the scenes and used words that weren’t called for. What is required at the end of it all is a proper judiciary. Like I mentioned earlier in one of my crumbs, the Indian judicial system is plagued with a lot of problems like corruption, etc. We can never expect justice to be delivered within a certain time frame. Ask any Indian and he/she will tell you that they don’t have faith in the system. It’s an unfortunate reality which has got to change.

Ok guys, you are deviating from the main topic. We are here to talk about the movie and the consequences of the actions taken by the police. Everyone here says that these gansters need to be eleminated. Of course everyone agrees with them, but using just 2000 bullets?!?!?!?!! If anyone has taken care of learn more abt Shootout at Lookdhanwala, you would realise that the encounter is riddled with questions and cases against Kkan who supervised the encounter. First of all, it was supposed to be Dawood Ibrahim who tipped of Khan about Maya Dolas whereabouts. Second there was a case against Khan which charged him and his team of making off with 70 lakhs of Maya Dolas’s money. Hello, does it ring any bells!!!!! This doesnt sound like a police encounter, but some gang trying to bump of another gang. The police were used by gansters to take out gangsters. Now no one is complaining the its a good thing that Maya is dead, but imagine if he was caught alive, he would have spilled beans abt lot of high profile cases. But the police where used as thugs by again some gangsters and they made 70 lakhs!!! So next time, dont join any gang, instead join the police and do the work for the gangs. You get name, fame, and lots of illegal money!!!!

Oh Well..

To me, the movie was just about OK. For one, you really can’t tell what the truth actually is or what exactly happened there.

What I particularly didn’t like to see in the movie was the overdose of the “bollywood-ness” to it. I mean, come on. Is it really necessary. And I don’t mean the dance and songs. I mean the moments like where the top-cop Sanjay Dutt is shown all heroic walking into the building without a bullet-proof jacket as if he’s some immortal being. Wha ?

Then that moment where Vivek and him fire bullets… and guess what ? Bullets toh khatam ho gayee !! Now which sane cop walks into a building with no jacket and just 1 eff-ing magazine ?

There are many such moments too. Like the pandus shooting somewhere and seeing somewhere else or likewise.

TOo shoddy work by the director.

I agree there. The pandus were shooting randomly and not even 1 stray bullet hit the gangsters. It’s a bit hard to believe.

Well the film is friggin half baked. seriously, on a cinematic level, you have a level of retarded ness with the way the script seems to unfold. there is no real conflict or drama in the movie. Other than the usual, trite emotional melodrama. vivek oberoi needs to learn how to actually act, showing me your eyes dont scare me bro, no menace there.

the whole thing seems like it could have been so much, they could have raised so many questions, made a slick, entertaining, hard hitting film (Parinda anyone? still the best underworld movie made thus far) instead you get Aarti Chabbria dancing in bar with Tusshar Kapoor (Gangster, hahaha)

I find the movies in the 60s-70s to have a much better story telling abilities with a script and characters - maybe not so much with the camera.

On a philosophical level, the truth is that the police and society should be above torture and murder. Here however we live in a bribing, thieving, murdering society a akin to a jungle. Strong survive, people have their usefulness and when they cease to be, they are discarded. Good thing, no - but what you going to do?

Ultimately gangsters, policemen, others need to understand, there are consequences to every action. When you play with fire, you get burnt.