Naksha Review

Someone once told us that the number of letters in a film’s name is a good indicator of the age of the audiences it will appeal to. We don’t believe it, of course. Besides, that guy is dead, so please forget what you read and move on to the next paragraph.

Naksha looks like a film made for 6-year-olds. Now don’t get us wrong – we at fullhyd.com have nothing against 6-year-olds or against films made for them. However, we’d like to be told beforehand if a film has been made for 6-year-olds, since that will give us an opportunity to take our jump ropes, our marbles, our spin tops and our hobby horses so we can have a whale of a time in the theater. Next time, we guess we’ll read the reviews before going for movies.

Naksha’s story looks like an Enid Blyton Famous Five mystery, but is much easier to understand. Vicky (Viviek Oberoi) and Veer (Sunny Deol) are half-brothers who go on the path of a map that they’ve suddenly discovered – their archeologist father has spent all career trying to uncover something, and came up with this map before he mysteriously died. Which is why it always pays to have a proper mainstream Dad, who’ll leave you property or shares or something when he goes – I mean, how much fun can it be when your lawyer tells you’ve inherited a map, which your Dad couldn’t make head or tail of all his life?

But loyalty to their father gets the brothers to set off on a trail shown on the map. They don’t know what the map means, why it exists or where it’s pointing to, so they decide to do what anyone else would have done in that position – they just keep going North. Soon they find Sameera Reddy, who Vicky promptly falls in love with. You’re thinking this must be the first time that someone followed a 5,000-year-old map to find his girlfriend, but no, she is just randomly there along the way. Vicky however immediately know she’s the girl for him, since she talks like a 6-year-old.

As they continue their search through forests, braving boobytraps and tribal warriors and exiting audiences, they run into Karan (Jackie Shroff), the villian who’s been searching for that map for 20 years and who’s killed their father. He tells them that the map points to the place where the kavacha and kundalas (armor and earrings) of Karna, the Mahabharata warrior, were stored after Indra took them away from him, and that whoever wears them will become invincible and rule the world.

Two important things happen now – Karan shoots the three and takes the map, and the remaining audiences leave the theater. The only reason you’d continue in the theater after this is moral responsibility – someone has to find out what happens next.

The three however aren’t dead, and pursue Karan and his gangsters into some ancient Himalayan cave temple. Lots of weird things happen there, and finally someone comes and tells you the moral of the story – that you should not spend your life hunting for divine powers hidden in deep corners of the earth. We don’t know about you, but next to global terrorism, we at fullhyd.com consider this to be the biggest problem facing mankind today, and it’s about time someone made a movie on it.

Naksha tries to be an Indiana Jones, and actually succeeds in terms of look-and-feel. However, the Indiana Jones movies had a secret power behind them, called Steven Spielberg. He bothers about such banalities as a plausible and engaging script, subtlety and humor. Naksha looks like a storybook for children who’ve just finished toilet-training. And they screw up even that with some unnecessary skin-show.

The performances are all as decent as they can be in the broader context. You feel sorry for the actors mouthing such inane lines, and especially for Sameera who has nothing to do. The film does, however, stand out in art direction and the sets.

Reserve this one for when you become 6 years old.