Knock Out

Great acting by everyone. Interesting plot and a higly refreshing entertainment piece everytime I watch it. I am really surprised to see why it's rating is only 6, after 10 years of it's release.

The remake of phone booth is actually great, the added some points to the original story and made it about india politics corruption and economics.

The case is well chosen Irfan and Dutt are good.

Good story / nice remake.

Overall 7 out of 10 Watched 17.6.2022.

This is one AWESOME film. There is a whole lot of hue and cry that it is a straight lift from Phonebooth. Well, you can judge for yourselves. Phone booth is a movie about this loose character guy who cheats on his wife and gets trapped in a phone booth (while making a call to his girlfriend)by a sniper in a high-rise building who insists that either he confesses his cheating or gets himself/his wife/his girl friend killed. Knock out's similarity lies in that it is also a movie with a guy held up in a phone booth by a sniper, but the reason is political- regarding Indian politicians hoarding the tax payers money in swiss bank. Unlike Phone booth, Knock Out has a solid motive going for the sniper. It has Sanjay Dutt and Irrfan to do the title roles which they do with so much intensity and screen presence that you'll forget everything else. It is also more funny and colourful, what with Irrfan forced to dance to "Zara zara touch me touch me touch me". O God! I was in splits after that and had to re watch it several times. The pace of the film is tense and the drama convincingly gritty. The comedy is real good comedy and not the Hindi film staple of Johny Leverish headache inducing hamming. The action sequences are good. Kangana, Satish, Gulshan Grover are apt in their roles. Gulshan is especially good as the corrupt politician and never overplays it. This has to be one of Sanjay Dutt's and Irrfan's great movies. Kudos to the director for making a movie on a much needed topic with such aplomb. And-it is a whole deal better than Phone booth!

After a long time it was good to watch a thriller with a blend of patriotism. Though it was a copy of Hollywood flick 'Phone Booth' but copy also calls for wisdom and here Mani Shankar succeeded in adding another feather in his cap. Portrayed true Indian picture where everything is remote controlled. It bounds till the end. Irfan Khan did a great job. Sanjay Dutt was good but sometimes his dialogue delivery looks monotonous. Sushant Singh and Gulshan Grover were good (as usual) and Kangna Ranaut was OK. Cameo played by Apoorva Lakhia was a fair effort.The action sequences were totally filmy(away from reality) because in real Indian scenario everything would have gone politician's way. Humor created by the satire was good. All in all a good presentation with all necessary ingredients. Must watch for every honest Indian.

If a film has to be judged only on the basis of noble intentions behind its making and its main aim of generating some awareness among the viewers (about their own money) then KNOCK OUT works in one way. But if the movie has to be judged as per its style of making, taking into account the various sources of its inspiration then KNOCK OUT is a complete waste of time, money, effort and creativity put in by one and all in the project.

In other words, to describe it as a movie, let's keep Joel Shumacher's PHONEBOOTH and our own Neeraj Pandey's A Wednesday together in a mixer and then mix it to have a new crispier and designer product to sell out in the market. That's what Mani Shanker's KNOCK OUT is in a nutshell. Taking its major inspiration of execution from PHONEBOOTH and then incorporating the national awareness theme adapted by a common man from A Wednesday, Mani Shanker comes up with his own project which unfortunately stands no-where close to any of its originals (if you have seen them both). In fact for the viewers who are well familiar with both of the above mentioned classics, KNOCK OUT remains a completely inspired and unwanted project which very childishly tries to take away the credit of the works done by the other filmmakers previously.

So for me, the moment I witnessed its clear unaccepted and unacknowledged link with PHONEBOOTH, the movie lost all its meaning and importance of being an Irfan Khan, Sanjay Dutt or Mani Shankar film. It was extremely shocking to see both Irfan & Sanjay doing the roles which are nothing but the copy of the work of others. This once again raises the same question that Are these well known actors so uninformed or unaware of the roles they are assigned to do by their directors? OR Are they only interested in the monetary rewards they are getting in return? With the body of work associated with both Imran Khan & Sanjay Dutt, there is no way that they may have not seen the hugely famous English film PHONEBOOTH and the Hit Hindi movie A Wednesday. Still they readily agreed to do exactly similar roles as seen in these two films is indeed questionable.

As far as the movie is concerned, Mani Shanker continues to show his fascination with Electronic Gadgets, Computers and Passwords as earlier used in his 16 December. His intention of making the people of India aware of the amount of money deposited by the Indian Politicians in Swiss Banks is appreciable. But his choice of executing the same by the means of copying is not acceptable. The film is simply PHONEBOOTH made in Hindi before intermission which starts moving towards becoming A Wednesday in its second half. Performances too in the movie have nothing much to write about as they have all just performed like a routine job including the versatile Irfan Khan.

And with a court verdict coming in the news today about the original makers of PHONEBOOTH wining the case against KNOCK OUT, there is nothing more to say about this latest example of Bollywood copying from the West.

Ratings : No Rating as its simply a rip-off.