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Agent Vinod, which had a fairly wide release in the U.S. (for a Bollywood film), hasn’t done well at the box office.
And that’s a shame because the movie is a decent Hindi action, spy thriller.
Here’s how Agent Vinod fared at the U.S. box office compared to a few prominent Bollywood films:
Related Stories
Agent Vinod Review – Oozes Panache
Like the warning found on all cigarette packets, it’s time to insert a statutory declaration at the beginning of all Bollywood movies:
This Indian movie may have been stolen in full or part from Hollywood and/or other foreign sources with impunity and reckless disregard for the intellectual property of others.
Indian media reports suggest that the climax of recent Bollywood hit Kahaani may have been stolen from the 2004 Hollywood film Taking Lives (Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke).
It’s no secret that Indian film-makers are notorious for stealing plots from Hollywood and foreign movies.
A bevy of Indian movie stars including Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan, Kamal Haasan, Aamir Khan, Vidya Balan, Vikram, Surya and many many others have been the rich beneficiaries of flagrant theft.
Watch the below YouTube video and decide for yourself if the Kahaani ending is original:
Related Posts:
Kahaani Profile on Wiki
Taking Lives – Wiki Profile
It took the bozos over four decades but with Agent Vinod Bollywood has finally turned in the first Indian action thriller that desi Bond and Bourne aficionados can watch without cringing.
Written and directed by Sriram Raghavan, Agent Vinod (Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Prem Chopra) is a well crafted Hindi action film that has more than a bit of class.
Sai Ali Khan may lack the brand recognition of Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan, but Agent Vinod is a million times better than SRK’s trashy Don 2 with its Junglee Billee and assorted nonsense.
Saif Ali Khan also packs superior acting skills compared to Bollywood leading lights like Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan and Akshay Kumar.
Like with any action thriller, you pay more attention to the slickness quotient and the action elements and Agent Vinod does not disappoint on both scores.
Fortunately, there is also more than an hint of an engaging story (a rara avis in Bollywood) and the script is tightly written.
Kudos to Sriram Raghavan and his team.
Sure, Agent Vinod may not match the gee wiz special effects and gadgets of a Bond action film.
But then Agent Vinod was apparently put together on a budget of $11.97 million. Remember, a Bond film costs around $200 million to make these days.
From Afghanistan to Russia to Riga (Latvia) to Morocco to London to India to Trincomalee (Sri Lanka) to Karachi, Agent Vinod takes us on one helluva ride.
The 42-year-old Saif Ali Khan, who also co-produced the film, is the eponymous Indian spy Agent Vinod.
He’s paired opposite his real-life girlfriend Kareena Kapoor, who plays a Pakistani doctor drawn willy-nilly into this sordid, deadly spy game.
Considering his age and short stature, Saif is pretty good in the action scenes.
If it’s a 2012 spy thriller set in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Russia, odds are there must be some rogues playing around with nuclear weapons for nefarious purposes.
And that’s what Agent Vinod is all about.
The race, first to find out what’s happening and then to stop the deadly blast in India.
The usual action movie stuff like car chases, shooting, beating, fighting, running, killing and showing girls in dimly-lit nightclubs wearing little and flaunting their wares are done well.
Hollywood has refined this action model through the lucrative Bond, Bourne and Mission Impossible franchises.
But try as they may, Bollywood has struggled to put out even a remotely comparable product. That is until now.
Bumpy only occasionally (the romance angle wasn’t great, for instance), Agent Vinod is mostly an enjoyable experience.
We didn’t think much of the music but then who goes to an action thriller for the musik.
At first, we thought we were imagining it.
Quickly, we realized that we were indeed hearing what we thought we were hearing.
A famous Tamil song.
Tamil movie fans are sure to enjoy the song Adi Rakamma Kaiya Thattu from the Rajinikanth film Thalapathi playing in the background as Saif’s character smashes a LTTE operative to pulp.
Even finicky, querulous, serial whiner types like SI enjoyed Agent Vinod.
Since y’all have far lower standards, you’re bound to lap up this Indian action spy thriller.
Your favorite blog SearchIndia.com enthusiastically recommends Agent Vinod.
The movie is playing across the U.S. including in several Regal and AMC theatres.
Say what you will about desis in America.
They have some class compared to the chutiyas in India with their mouths wrapped around the schlongs of the Khans, Rajinis, Bachchans and the Roshans.
U.S. desis have provided a decent start to Vidya Balan’s latest Bollywood outing Kahaani propelling it to a per screen average of $6,385 at the box office.
Amid the endless trash put out by Bollywood every week, Kahaani is that rare gem.
Here’s how Kahaani fared at the U.S. box office compared to a few prominent Bollywood films:
Related Stories:
Kahaani Review – Superb
Time and again during our viewing of the new Hindi film Kahaani (Vidya Balan et al), we rubbed our eyes in disbelief.
Disturbing questions continued to nag us over the course of the two-hour-long film.
Were we in the right hall?
Has this superb thriller really been made by those amateurish, thieving Indian filmmakers who week after week churn out unwatchable garbage filched from decades-old Hollywood plots?
And finally, did we win the Lotto today?
As is our wont when we head out to see a Bollywood film, we entered the hall showing Kahaani with low expectations.
But mere minutes into the movie we realized that we were watching a Bollywood aberration.
Kahaani is not one of those atrocities that the shaitan Khans, bumbling Bachchans, thieving Devgns and the mindless Kumars routinely inflict on you.
Au contraire, this is a meticulously crafted thriller that has you engrossed with the extraordinary drama unfolding on the screen.
Our bladders were close to bursting but despite the agony we dared not step out during the brief interval for fear of missing anything should the movie re-start in our absence.
Such was the powerful spell Kahaani cast on us.
That Vidya Balan is among the finest actresses in India today needs no elaboration.
An outsider in an incestuous industry, the young lady has won encomiums and awards for her performances in Parineeta, Ishqiya, No One Killed Jessica and Dirty Picture.
Kahaani’s great merit is to juxtapose Vidya Balan’s remarkable acting with the trifecta of a gripping story, fine photography and overall brilliant execution by director Sujoy Ghosh.
Just when you settle down into the upholstery in the sure belief that the story is headed down a certain path, Ghosh yanks you out of your comfort zone with some remarkable twists.
Ghosh also shares credit for the story (with Advaita Kala). And the writing is, oh, so stellar.
The central focus of the film, at least in the beginning, is on a pregnant NRI woman’s relentless search for her missing husband.
Vidya Balan plays Vidya Venkateshan Bagchi, a pregnant woman and software engineer from London, who comes to Kolkata in search of her missing spouse Arnab Bagchi.
Every turn Vidya takes in Kolkata, she runs into a wall.
Is Arnab alive? Is Arnab dead?
Did Arnab really come to Kolkata? Has Arnab abandoned Vidya?
Answers are few and resistance to Vidya’s search high.
Kahaani is not one of those juvenile Bollywood romcoms with item numbers featuring skimpily clad babes.
A richly layered Hindi film, Kahaani has few Bollywood parallels in recent years. And not merely in the thriller genre.
Sujoy Ghosh and his co-writers weave into Vidya’s search for Arnab today’s hot subject – the terrorism angle.
The movie is on steroids now.
Guns are fired.
Contract killers are on the prowl.
Key people start dying.
Computers are hacked in a desperate search for evidence.
And there’s insistent talk of a mole high up in the Indian Intelligence Bureau ranks working with the enemy.
Of course, Vidya’s life is in danger.
The tension mounts.
To our great joy, Kahaani is not a predictable story.
Compared to the Kahaani screenplay, SRK’s Don 2 with its Junglee Billee and assorted nonsense looks amateurish and downright silly.
Kudos to the entire Kahaani team for a delightful outing at the movies.
None but Vidya Balan could have done justice to this demanding role.
To even contemplate an alternative like Kareena Kapoor, Katrina Kaif or that jonah Priyanka Chopra makes us want to throw up our lunch in disgust.
But to credit Vidya Balan alone would be a grave injustice to the rest of Kahaani’s talented cast and crew.
Her co-stars, particularly Parambrata Chatterjee as the rookie policeman Rana, Nawazuddin Siddiqui as the harried Intelligence Bureau officer Khan, Saswata Chatterjee as as the ‘LIC Agent’ Bob Biswas turn in equally compelling performances.
Man, these tired old eyes haven’t feasted on a fine Bollywood thriller like Kahaani in years, if ever.
Your favorite blog SearchIndia.com strongly recommends Kahaani.
Kahaani is playing at several Regal and AMC theaters on the East Coast in the U.S.
By Naveen
When I walked into the 2:50pm show of London Paris New York at the local Regal Cinemas I expected another exclusive Indian movie watching experience.
My expectation was fair considering the movie boasts of no stars and except for pinheads no one was exactly stroking for this movie to cum! 
Who would have thought that Pakistani actor Ali Zafar and the pretty lass Aditi Rao Hydari have fans abroad!
To my utter dismay and shock five people, all Americans, were already there.
First I thought they walked in by mistake due to the English title but when three out of the five persisted till the very end, it is a telling tale of how deeply Bollywood has wounded the American culture.
Anu Menon takes the Story, Screenplay and Direction credit for London Paris New York, yet another saccharine love story from the hackneyed stables of Bollywood.
As the movie unfolded I felt as if Tyrannosaurus Rex came out of hiding.
No No!! I am not talking about Ali Zafar’s looks but the era to which the story belongs.
The screenplay although amateurish was bearable unlike the rotten Ekk Deewana Tha.
The movie unfolds in the form of events on three days spread across six years, from 2005 to 2011.
Yes Yes!! They meet each other only on those three days in all of six years and half the time they spend being pissed off with each other.
The idea was to show the “angst” of youth to which I say “what a tragedy of life!”
Nikhil (Ali Zafar) is the rich son of a film producer.
“Maha-Tam-Bram” Lalitha (Aditi Rao) is the daughter of a middle class Maharashtrian Brahmin mother and a Tamil Brahmin father.
That she is a Maha-Tam-Bram has absolutely no relevance to the story.
Nikhil and Lalitha bump into each other in London’s Heathrow Airport as they arrive on the same flight from India.
Nikhil’s destination is London, to study Cinema and make movies.
Lalitha claims to be a feminist and her destination is New York, to study Political Science.
So, the two opposites get an excuse to spend a day and night together when Lalitha misses her flight to New York. The next 25 minutes is about how the two are drawn to each other during the London Darshan. They consummate their relationship with a kiss….and she is a feminist.
The reason Lalitha does not just check in to a hotel instead of spending the day with a stranger is “Main kabhi akeli hotel mein nahi rahi. To thoda sleazy lagta hai”. She also thinks full bodied wine is Silk Smitha! :-S
Nikhil has lost track of Lalitha after he breaks his promise of visiting her in New York. He also sends her three letters but she doesn’t reply.
Yes Yes!! In 2005, communicating via letters was still the in thing! 
Continue reading »
South Indian fatso Madhavan and the worst actor in the Milky Way galaxy aka Ritesh Deshmukh have as much box office appeal as a cockroach.
Signing these two buffoons for a movie without other star-power is a sure sign that the producer is a retard. A complete retard.
The Madhavan-Bipasha Basu starrer Jodi Breakers and the Ritesh Deshmukh-Genelia film Tere Naal Love Ho Gaya released this Friday.
And not surprisingly, both kissed the dust immediately.
Media reports indicate the two movies opened to a poor response in India.
In the U.S. too, desis have raised their middle finger to both movies.
To describe the U.S. box office performance of these two films as pitiful would be charitable.
Here’s how badly Jodi Breakers and Tere Naal Love Ho Gaya fared at the U.S. box office compared to a few prominent Bollywood films:
(For SI Blog commenter Hari)
To all the schmucks who cry out loud that Indians just don’t have it in them to make good movies, we ask, have you putzheads watched Khosla Ka Ghosla.
Have you?
Speak up, bozos.
Helmed by a competent director (Dibakar Banerjee), supported by a fine cast of actors (Anupam Kher, Ranvir Shorey, Vinay Pathak, Boman Irani, Navin Nischol, Tara Sharma, Parvin Dabas, Nitesh Pandey) and solidly scripted by a talented writer (Jaideep Sahni), Khosla Ka Ghosla is an excellent entertainer.
It’s been a long time since a Hindi film gave us so much pleasure.
After watching this fine movie the other day (at the repeated urging of a SI commenter), we greatly regretted not seeing it earlier.
Well, as the cliche goes, better late than never.
As anyone of Indian origin can tell you, middle-class folks from that benighted land have three grand ambitions in life – Ensure their son turns out an engineer or doctor, get their daughter married to an engineer or doctor and build a house before retiring from their job.
Each goal is a herculean endeavor and few middle class Indians manage to pull off all three tasks successfully.
Khosla Ka Ghosla centers around the efforts of a middle-class Delhi native on the threshold of retirement to accomplish the third goal – buying a plot, the first step toward building a house.
Buy buying a plot and building a house is easier said than done in Mera Bharat Mahaan.
And that’s where our ‘uncle’ Kamal Kishore Khosla (Anupam Kher) gets trapped in the quicksands of corruption that bedevils the land. Continue reading »
South Indian director Gautham Menon’s Bollywood (mis)adventure Ekk Deewana Tha appears to have set a new low for Hindi films at the U.S. box office.
The sucker did, oh, how can we even tell you such a miserably low number, a mere $16,799 in the opening weekend.
The average per screen was a pitiful $646.
Folks, we can’t recollect any other Bollywood film faring so poorly at the U.S. box office.
Here’s how Ekk Deewana Tha fared at the U.S. box office compared to some prominent Bollywood films (scroll all the way down for Ekk Deewana Tha figures):
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Ekk Deewana Tha – Gautham Menon’s Folly
Indian Reviewers Empty Their Bladders on Gautam Menon’s Ekk Deewana Tha
By Naveen
Once upon a time a new director graced the Tamil film industry.
He soon gained name and fame with some very successful films.
The simpletons from Tamil Nadu started taking him seriously as a director and that’s when this fellow realized these fools will lap up anything he throws their way.
First he pissed on them, then he farted in their faces and after seeing that they took it all willingly he moved North to try the same at the national level.
This fellow has now turned his ass towards the audience, spread his butt cheeks with his hands and let go a delousing dump on movie screens worldwide.
The jackass is none other than Gautham Vasudev Menon.
Ekk Deewana Tha is Written, Produced and Directed by Gautham Menon.
It is the remake of his Tamil movie Vinnaithaandi Varuvaya.
Prateik Babbar and Amy Jackson play the lead roles in this utterly boring movie which will most likely do no good to their nascent careers.
For the 3:15 pm Matinee show the number of people who saw the movie was 1 – yours truly. An old man walked in just as the movie started but before I could take the first sip of the soda he walked out and on his way out he stopped and stared at me for a couple of seconds.
When the movie was about to end the cleaning lady came with her broom. She waited for a bit to see if I would walk out and then gave up. Such was the response to GVM’s Ekk Deewana Tha.
From the fossils, Gautham Menon’s has unearthed this story and unleashed it on the unsuspecting Valentine’s weekend audience.
The story and characters are as old as dinosaurs.
The shoddy treatment and sluggish screenplay makes this already pathetic movie rank among the worst mainstream films ever released in Bollywood. It gives close competition to Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag. Continue reading »
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