Bollywood Movie: Maximum
The film, directed by Kabeer Kaushik (the younger brother of actor and director Satish Kaushik), also features actors Sonu Sood, Neha Dhupia and Vinay Phatak in lead roles.
The story is about two encounter specialists from Mumbai -- Pratap Pandit (Sonu Sood) and Arun Inaamdar (Naseeruddin Shah) who constantly try to outnumber each other and fight for control. The movie traces their grim journey across politics, bad money, and fake encounters. The game gets dangerous when each one tries to sabotage the other's efforts and attempts to kill the other's informants.
Arun Inaamdar plots to get Pratap Pandit suspended and succeeds in his efforts. Years later when Pratap Pandit returns, he is appointed to Inaamdar's role of handling the police efforts after the Mumbai blasts.
The film also features Neha Dhupia, the Bollywood actress and the winner of Femina Miss India 2002 and Vinay Phatak, a comedy actor, in important roles.
The movie received negative reviews from top critics upon release and collected under 2.5-crore rupees at the Box office.
"Kabeer Kaushik's Maximum is an excruciating watch," says film critic Deepa Deosthalee.
Covering a time frame between 2003 and 26/11 Mumbai bomb attacks, Maximum includes interesting plots and tries to handle real social issues of Mumbai such as the North Indian immigrants' insecurity, the hunger for power etc. But it does not succeed and ends up merely scratching the surface, Deosthalee adds.
Veteran film and theatre actor Naseeruddin Shah's performance was also criticised by the reviewers.
Watch the trailer here:
