Acid Factory: A review

“A man can convince anyone he’s somebody else, but never himself” — Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects.

But if a man himself doesn’t know who he is, how can he convince others? The gas leak which causes “temporary amnesia” in the characters of Acid Factory had surely sneaked in behind the camera as well. They really must have forgotten what they were making.

The reason why somebody would put in Rs 25 crore to make a film like this is Unknown. [That’s the Colombian film from which the plot is pinched, point by point.] And yet Suparn and Co. supposedly wrote over 50 drafts of the copy!

Don’t worry, you won’t notice the effort. Not a single scene makes an impact. Not a single character packs a punch. Not a single line is worth remembering. It’s as if you are sitting in an acid factory yourself and someone’s released that mysterious pentane gas and you can’t recall why you stepped in to watch this junk in the first place. Trust us, those 100 minutes in the Acid Factory can be seriously injurious to health.

Basically, before they all went Ghajini, one very, very bad guy got four very bad guys to kidnap two bad guys. And all of them are in designer suits, all wear dark shades, all walk in slo-mo and all bring out guns at the slightest poke. Really, Acid Factory is one of those movies that make you rue the fact that Tarantino ever made Reservoir Dogs. Or at least that he allowed the DVDs to be shipped or pirated to Mumbai.

You have to admit that Sanjay Gupta does Sanjay Gupta better than Suparn Verma. At least you cared for the Kaante men and felt bad that Sanjay Dutt was left Zinda. Here you really don’t give a damn. You don’t even want to know their back stories when suddenly, all the characters get their memories back at the same time.

You don’t know who is worse than the other because everyone is so uniformly bad. But Manoj Bajpai has to be the worst. Ravi Kissen does the fast-talking maniac so much better. Dino only looks good. Fardeen should have done better given that the film is dedicated to his father. Aftab has one fixed expression throughout the film and it’s an expression you wouldn’t like to see. Even Danny, sadly, is very jaded.

Coming in 10 minutes after the interval, Dia Mirza is not bad. You wished the boys had found her a little earlier. And even when he is not doing anything, Irrfan is better than the rest of the guys put together.

There are also a whole lot of stunts in the movie, cars and trucks doing front rolls and back rolls, in the air and on the ground. They justify the budget, not the movie.

If you are really desperate to visit Acid Factory, watch it for Gulshan Grover. He plays the police chief who gives orders in Hindi to his South African force and is hilariously funny. Unintentionally, of course. “Get me the chopper!”


Pratim D. Gupta, t2