SHOOTOUT AT LOKHANDWALA 
Apoorva Lakhia, India, 2007; 121 min. NY Premiere.
In Hindi, with English subtitles.
Based on a real-life front-page bloody encounter between the Indian police and gangsters, director Apoorva Lakhia's "Bollywood" action film - the subject of Liz Mermin's SHOT IN BOMBAY - is an all-singing, all-dancing gangster film. A gray moral murk hangs over the encounters between Khan (played by Sanjay Dutt), a police officer from the Anti-Terrorist Squad, as he clashes with Maya (Viveik Oberoi), an ambitious young goon. Good guys and bad guys - complete with a Ma Barkerish gangster mother - are hard to call, as corruption and violence come together in a corrosive and explosive mix. New York and Bombay- based director Lakhia brings a hunk-and-babe look to his examination of the extortionist "bhai" culture of Bombay's underworld, with references to spaghetti westerns and Donna Summer riffs. Also with Amitabh Bachhan, Suniel Shetty, Arbaaz Khan, Tushaar Kapoor, Rohit Roy.
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