Just came back after watching Shootout At Lokhandwala. Had very high expectations since few of the critics rated it very high and a friend who saw it early in the day had few good things to say about it.

Its mainly the performances and the flawed direction that dragged the movie from a 3-4 star one to a mere 2 star stuff.

The movie started off well with Sanjay Dutt and his team being grilled by a committee headed by Amitabh Bachchan. First 15 minutes saw a bunch of Khalsa militants being encoutered by Sanjay Dutt. Then it moved on to Mumbai underworld. Maya Dolas(Vivek Oberai) is the new face in the underworld and has started to challenge the big boss of the Underworld. The movie went on to show some brutality by them which was less logical and more of the work of a maniac. DCP Khan (Sanjay Dutt) establishes a group within the police force to fight the Underworld. He choses the best officers available in the police force.  He fights Maya and his gang and finally manages to swipe them out after a bloody encounter in a locality in Mumbai called Lokhandwala.

Here is what I feel were the screwups:

• Vivek Oberai was just too patetic. I havent liked his performances lately but hoped it would be different this time. Reasons are his kickass performance in his debut Company and a couple of articles in the dailies claiming it to be a powerpacked performance by the guy. He kept laughing and smiling sarcastically throughout the movie for no reason what so ever. His entry, he is on an assignment to kill a guy, everyone of his friend is worried if they can pull it up and this guy emerges out of an autorickshaw, full of confidence, with that irritating smirk on his face. Few more incidents, he gets to know they are surrounded by tons of cops and what does he do ?? , he just smiles. His mother calls him up at that point and he just wears that confident smile of his. He is standing face to face with Khan, he runs out of bullets and again.. that irritating smile. Overall, the movie could have been lot better with him being replaced with someone else, lets say Ajay Devgan.
• Tushar Kapoor. Why would someone want to take him for a role of a shart shooter I dont understand. Not even worth writing about.
• Amitabh Bachchan. What was his role. He kept listening to Khans story. Kept giving impressions he is totally against them, ridiculing him for everything he said. The in the end, he turns out to be all for the Khan's cause. Atleast they could have shown a proper enquiry in the court. That typical Bollywood style case, full of drama but no substance. No proof given, no story told, no defence argued. He just put up a stupid question which was supposed to touch the judge and finally resulted in him waiving all charges from Khan.
• Finally, what the heck was the encounter. Khan and his team with their bare hands. And that is when the byline of the movie was that police fired 3000 shots in that encounter. At the least they could have shown a proper encounter. There were plenty of bulletproof jackets available but no one in the direct line of fire was wearing them. Sanjay Dutt even threw it away when offered one.
• All the gangsters calling their families when they are surrounded by tons of cops.

Finally some strong points:

• The plot was good.
• Sanjay Dutt and his team was good. That included Sunil Shetty and Arbaaz Khan.
• Abhishek Bachchan just had a cameo :) . This one is personal since I cant bear that guy.