Alag
Starring: Dia Mirza, Akshay Kapoor
Direction: Ashu Trikha
In this week's new release Alag, Akshay Kapoor plays Tejas Rastogi, a 20-something boy with unusual features who's discovered living in the basement of a remote farmhouse.
He's never interacted with people, he's read more books in these 20-odd years than most people do in a lifetime, but after his father's sudden death, he must go out and face the world.
Tejas is admitted into a centre for orphans with criminal backgrounds, hardly the right place for him, considering he's meek, hardly speaks at all, and wouldn't hurt a fly.
Now, the dean's daughter, Dia Mirza befriends him, but he's constantly picked on by the other boys at the centre.
And that's when the surprises come tumbling out. He's blessed with all these special powers that enable him to heal the wounded, survive electric currents and lightning, and fight evil with destruction.
In his own little way, Tejas is trying to make the world a better place, but then a control-freak scientist kidnaps him with the intention of using him as a lab rat for an experiment.
Ripped off shamelessly from the 1995 Hollywood film Powder, the plot of director Ashu Trikha's Alag has potential no doubt, but it's handled so amateurishly that it's a real shame.
Like the original film that it's inspired from, the screenplay of Alag is so full of holes, you could use it as a sieve. Basic questions are unanswered and far too many creative liberties are taken.
Now as far as I see it, the film's intended to be this heart-wrenching story of a misfit in a society that won't accept him. But the writers digress too many times from this basic premise and get too caught up with gimmicks that involve too many special effects.
As a result, the feeling you're left with is not so much sympathy for the protagonist as confusion towards the film's intention.
I'm not sure exactly what it is about "Alag" that one should be most upset about. The fact that the writers and director just plagarised a plot entirely and then didn't use any imagination in adapting it for a Hindi audience, or then the fact that Alag doesn't even come to a logical conclusion.
What could have been an exciting story about finding one's place in this world, turns out to be a half-baked saga about a reluctant superhero who spends pretty much the film's entire two-hour running time moping about like a sad-sack.
So Alag is a letdown. It's different yes, but at the end, you hardly even care! A piece of advice: If you've stuck around for the entire film, hang around for the end credits as well, the star-studded music video might actually be the best thing about this film!
Rating: 1 / 5 (Poor)
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