| Mumbai Xpress | |
|---|---|
DVD Cover |
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| Directed by | Singeetham Sreenivasa Rao |
| Produced by | Kamal Haasan |
| Written by | Kamal Hassan Saurabh Shukla |
| Starring | Kamal Haasan Manisha Koirala Om Puri Vijay Raaz Ramesh Aravind Saurabh Shukla Sharat Saxena Dinesh Lamba Rakhi Sawant |
| Music by | Ilayaraaja |
| Cinematography | R. Siddharth |
| Editing by | Ashmith Kunder |
| Release date(s) | April 15, 2005 |
| Running time | 152 min. |
| Country | India |
| Language | Hindi |
| Budget | 2.5 Crores |
Mumbai Xpress is a 2005 Hindi-language Indian feature film directed by Singeetham Sreenivasa Rao, starring Kamal Haasan, Manisha Koirala, Om Puri, Vijay Raaz, Ramesh Aravind and Sharat Saxena. The film was simultaneously made in Tamil-language as Mumbai Express with a different starcast except the lead pair. Bollywood expected more from Kamal Haasan-Singeetham Sreenivasa Rao team, as they have already given successful films Appu Raja and Pushpak [1]
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Mumbai Xpress is a comedy of errors on kidnapping the wrong person starring Kamal Haasan in lead role supported by Om Puri, Vijay Raaz, Ramesh Aravind, Sharat Saxena and Manisha Koirala.
Three amateur thieves plot to kidnap a wealthy person’s (Saurabh Shukla) son from the boy's school. They do a trial run. However on the eve of the kidnap, the guy whose job is to operate a crane in this plan is hospitalized. The services of Avinasi aka Mumbai Xpress (Kamal Haasan), a deaf stunt man performing daredevil bike acts is roped in. Twists and turns take place where the other two gang members are hurt and invariably Mumbai Xpress is left to perform the all tasks by himself. He kidnaps a wrong boy Daddu (Hardhik), the illegitimate son of Ahalya (Manisha Koirala) and police officer Rao (Om Puri), but manages to get a huge ransom from Mehta by default. A brawl takes place between the original kidnap planners-Digambar (Vijay Raaz), Johnson (Dinesh Lamba) and Avinasi in handling Ahalya’s child but Avinasi delivers the child unhurt to his mother. He secretly listen to Ahalya's tele-con with Rao where Rao wants to settle both the ransom and sever his ties with her. Ahalya pleads and coaxes him to help her get the ransom which Rao is willing to pay. The child takes a fancy to Avinasi and wants him to be the man in their life, and gets him to agree.Ahalaya wants either Rao’s or Mehta'a money which Avinasi is holding, whereas Avinasi is in love and wants to be that protective person. Rao appoints Mehta to handle the ransom and what follows is a series of mix-ups.
Eventhough the film won good reviews, [3] it did not do well at the box-office because the cinematography was done experimentally with digital movie camera and mainly due to the Digital film implementation resulting in slight dark output which left the viewer uneasy. The film although widely considered a loss was a great victory technology wise in Indian cinema industry. As per " ibosnetwork ", India's leading Box-Office portal, Mumbai Xpress collected Rs.4 Crores in Hindi Belt alone. [4]
In the climaxes of both versions (Hindi & Tamil), you would see opposite casts viewing the newly opened Mumbai Xpress "death well". In this case, Kovai Serala, Vaiyapuri, Pasupathi, & Santhana Bharathy make a brief cameo during the climax of the Tamil version, while Vijay Raaz, Dinesh Lambha, & Saurabh Shulka appear in the Hindi version.