Aankhen (2002)

Aankhen Movie Trailer 2002

Crew

Directed by     Vipul Amrutlal Shah
Produced by     Gaurang Doshi
Screenplay by     Aatish Kapadia ,Vipul Amrutlal Shah
Story by     Aatish Kapadia,Vipul Amrutlal Shah
Music by     Jatin Lalit ,Aadesh Shrivastava,Nitin Raikwar
Cinematography     Ashok Mehta
Editing by     Shirish Kunder
Distributed by     V R Films

Cast

    Amitabh Bachchan as Vijay Singh Rajput
    Sushmita Sen as Neha Srivastav
    Akshay Kumar as Vishwas Prajapati
    Arjun Rampal as Arjun Verma
    Paresh Rawal as Iliyas
    Arun Bali as Mr. Goenka
    Aditya Pancholi as the Police Inspector
    Ajit Vachani as Mr. Bandari
    Bipasha Basu as Raina (Cameo)
    Kashmira Shah in a special appearance in song "Chalka Chalka"
    Shreyas Talpade as Mushtaq (Chaiwallah / Tea seller on railway station)
    Paresh Ganatra as Shailesh

Story

Obsessive and temperamental bank manager Vijay Singh Rajput (Bachchan) loses his job after badly beating up a bank clerk who tried to embezzle money. Angered at losing his job he plots revenge on the bank by intending to stage a heist. He employs three blind men — Vishwas (Kumar),a blind person who has the power of the sixth sense, Ilyaas (Rawal) and Arjun (Rampal) — when, after passing by school for the blind, he understands that blind people can be trained to do things like sighted people. He blackmails and enlists the help of Neha (Sushmita Sen) who is a teacher at the school to train the trio to do the seemingly impossible heist. He chose blind people because they as robbers would never be suspected as no one would believe blind people can rob a bank.

The bank robbery is successful, with the jewels safely captured by the three. However, in the process of robbing the bank, Ilyaas's face is exposed, captured in footage and prompting city-wide posters with his face. Meanwhile, Mr. Rajput anxiously tries to extort information from Vishwas and Arjun regarding the jewels and their location. Unable to answer, as they did not collect the items, they try to defer the answer by changing subjects. Ultimately, it is revealed that Ilyaas is the one with complete knowledge of the box's belongings. Meanwhile, tensions rise between Rajput and Neha; the latter resists the abusive nature of Rajput and his obnoxious harassing of Vishwas and Arjun. Arjun confesses his love to Neha, who reveals that she is associated in the plot only for the well-being of her younger brother, Rahul, who has been kidnapped by Rajput.

In a furious attempt, the police try to locate Ilyaas. Ilyaas lands up at Rajput's place after getting drunk. Rajput tries several ways to force Ilyaas into revealing the location of the box. Unable to generate an answer, he slams Ilyaas, who falls on the ground and injures his eyes, causing bleeding. Even in this scenario, Rajput tries to get the information, but Vishwas and Arjun resist and claim that they will reveal the location if Ilyaas is treated by paramedics. Rajput send them to get Dr. Siddiqui. Vishwas senses that Ilyaas is in danger and Arjun and Vishwas double back to the training center to save him. Rajput starts to harass Ilyaas by tickling him to force him to reveal the answer. In the action, Ilyaas falls of the balcony and dies. Unable to bear the shock of the death, Neha pulls a gun on Rajput and threatens to reveal everything to the police if he does not leave her and the other two alone. Rajput notifies Neha that all these acts were done under her training, and he is spotless. Unable to bear this fact, Neha shoots herself, just as Vishwas and Arjun return after hearing loud screams.

Both men gang up on Rajput and try to attack him. Once Rajput realizes that the men are ignorant about the jewels, he starts shooting them. The police arrive, and confusion ensues. Vishwas and Arjun come out and claim that Rajput is abusing them while he claims that there is a big conspiracy involving the two men, Neha and Ilyaas. Unable to believe that blind men can ransack a bank and amidst Rajput's impassioned defense, the police start getting suspicious. In the heat of defending himself, Rajput reveals that he had sent over Ilyaas, thus confessing his crime.

In the end Rajput is locked away. Vishwas and Arjun decide to take care of Rahul and ultimately find the jewels — they were hidden in Ilyaas' musical instrument.

In an alternate ending for overseas viewers Rajput bribes the cop and is set free. Vishwas and Arjun are sitting in a train (waiting for it to depart) and Rajput is standing on the platform with a smile on his face. He then warns them that "A dangerous game is about to begin", after which Vishwas and Arjun both draw their guns, before the film then ends.

Did you know?

1. The original title of the movie was "All The Best", but while in production, the filmmakers decided to change it to a Hindi title, believing that an English title wouldn't be so appealing to the Indian audience.
2. Bipasha Basu had a larger role, but her scenes were edited out, leaving her with just a special appearance in one of the songs.
3. The film had two endings; the makers felt the Indian audience will not fathom Amitabh Bachchan's character not getting justice. Hence the ending for the Indian audience had Amitabh repenting and being locked away by the police, the moralistic ending. The overseas ending shows Amitabh bribing the police and on the loose chasing Akshay Kumar and Arjun Rampal.
4. Towards the completion of the project the Director and Producer had a major fallout, after which they decided never to work with each other again.
5. Amitabh returned to negative roles with this film, after playing a villian many years back in Parwana (1971) and Gehri Chaal (1973) and to some extent in Don (1978).
6. Shreyas Talpade makes an uncredited one scene appearance as the tea shop vendor.