Family - Ties of blood

Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Sushant Singh, Bhumika Chawla Direction: Rajkumar Santoshi

Ten gallons of blood, a truckload of pounding pistols, a song and a dance and a superstar. That just about sums up the new release Family — Ties of Blood. Nothing new about Bollywood making mindless masalas such as this, but it surprises when one realises that it is Rajkumar Santoshi, who had earlier made such exceptional films like Damini, Ghatak and Ghayal, has directed this.

It is the story of two men who fight against each other with guns in both the hands and how their actions are shaped by the type of families they come from. One is the angry young Aryan (debutant Aryeman) and the other is the old Viren Sahai (the usual flawless Big B).

Sahai is the all-powerful Bangkok-based don whose partly estranged family lives in Mumbai as his wife Sharda (Shernaz Patel) never approved of his ways. His truant son Abhir (Sushant Singh) lops off a ‘big’ man’s son in a night club squabble which sets the ball rolling for the high and mighty to gang up against the don. In the cross-fire, Shekhar Bhatia (Akshay Kumar), a simple man, gets killed as he just happened to be at the venue looking for Aryan. That’s how Aryan and Viren Sahai get pitted against each other. The rest of the story is about how the two angry souls go about their fight and how the hero - Aryan - wins, leaving a broken don to live out the rest of his life with a guilt bigger than the death of his wife and son.

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There are several flaws in the film. But the saddest is that a seasoned director like Rajkumar Santoshi fails to establish his storyline.

The film appeals only in two patches. One is when Akshay Kumar is wooing his love, Dr Kavita (Bhumika Chawla). Akshay Kumar is simply charming. The other patch is when the Big B takes over as a don on the run as his family has been taken hostage.

There are several flaws in the film. But the saddest is that a seasoned director like Santoshi fails to establish his storyline. Till about first half, he is just playing around with Akshay Kumar’s character and suddenly casts him away as a picture in a frame. In doing so, he even neglects the task of establishing the don’s character. What a waste to have an actor like Big B do nothing to bolster up his character. And to top it off by pitting him as a failure against a non-impressive debutant.