Richard Hawes Heavily influenced by Hollywood, there are a growing number of non-traditional Bollywood movies that eschew song and dance sequences and employ sync-sound rather than dubbing all dialogue. KURBAAN (aka Sacrificed, 2009) is one, particularly good example of this kind of new Bollywood film. Like so many Hindi films this does use a Hollywood film as a touchstone, but thankfully the source here (1999's ARLINGTON ROAD) is only alluded to in a couple of the plot points and beyond these the story moves in new, interesting directions that make this an interesting companion piece. Gripping for its two and a half hour running time, Renzil D'Silva's movie shares a few things in common with Kabir Khan's NEW YORK but superior thanks to it's consistent tone and credible characters and performances. Om Puri is particularly good in an extremely understated performance.

smartysidster firstly..when you're dealing with a movie that covers such a sensitive topic..you cant afford to commit silly mistakes!.the director himself was not serious about the movie i guess!. when there's a plane blast, and you know who the terrorist is..then you get to him within hours!..but thats not the case here!.. even though saif is known as "the most wanted terrorist"..still he roams about freely in the city without any problems!.. that was just one goof-up among the dozen!. secondly..the ending is too typical and easily predictable!..which is what people don't like!..there should have been some more spice in the ending i feel! lastly..talking about the actors..i feel om puri was brilliant!..and so were the others..but vivek oberoi was a stupid choice!.. u'll really laugh if you see his fake accent of English..in the movie!.. talking about laughing..there are absolutely "NO JOKES" in this movie!..its pretty serious from the beginning till the end!... overall not a great movie..even though it had a great subject!..

Avinash Patalay "New York" & "Kurbaan".... seems like there was a race between the buddies Adi & KJo. The similarities are aplenty and let me not go there on a listing spree. Having accredited and acclaimed for one of the finest screenplay in "Rang De Basanti", expectations are bound to run high from Rensil D'Silva. Paradoxically in "Kurbaan" the screenplay turns out to the weakest link, owing to which the Titanic starts going down under with each passing reel. The DOP also needs to share the blame for giving it a feel of suspense thriller/ whodunit at unwarranted places.° Saif Ali Khan: The character seems to be a direct lift from "Fanaa". He puts up a strong performance however the the fallacies in the movie overshadow his effort. The smooth talking professor/ love story did not quite gel well.° Kareena Kapoor: "Love is blind, marriage restores sight" is an apt phrase to describe her character. Avantika appears to be either an emotional fool or fickle-minded. Poor writing indeed.° Vivek Oberoi: Not quite there.° Om Puri: The fundamentalist part of the character is straight lift from "Shoot on Sight". However he seems to be having a streak of poor/ impulsive planner.° Kiron Kher: Get the diction spot on and everything good ends there.° Nauheed Cyrusi & Dia Mirza barely had few scenes. ° Khulbushan Kharbanda's character was unwarranted. Coming from the house of KJo music is generally one of the strong points and therefore a few songs are quite good. There are too many coincidences/ cinematic liberties in the movie. Coming to the premise, the writing of KJo attempts to give a balanced view of both sides of the coin. Sadly the research is inadequate and can be aptly termed as school homework. The writing hardly manages to touch a layer or two at the most. The planning/ plotting/ execution - if the actual terrorists would watch "Kurbaan", they would fall of their chairs and die laughing.

DesiBaba Okay, so I had seen a couple of time pass movies, all fluff no substance prior to this one. So I was pleasantly surprised by this movie, from start to the end, it never stalls or gets off track. Unfortunately the movie does little to break the western stereotypes for the Muslim male, which is what I thought it would do, at least to some extent. From gross DV, honor killing to sleeper cells, this movie/characters reinforces most of the stereotypes except for Riyaaz and her GF, played by the ravishingly beautiful Dia Mirza. I took away two points for one sided portrayal of the Islamic community in America. There should have been a couple of more scenes to show that majority of the Muslims don't fit the stereotype and that the characters shown represent a small minority. Overall it is an excellent thriller, one of the better movies out of the Johar stable. Highly recommend taking a look. Add 2 to the IMDb rating for a fair rating, the current rating grossly underrates the movie, I suspect it is due to backlash from angry Muslims, some of which is justified given the largely one sided portrayal of the Islamic community.7.5/10