Tumko Na Bhool Payenge

Director: Pankaj Parasher
Music: Sajid Wajid, Daboo Malik Cast: Salman Khan, Sushmita Sen, Diya Mirza, Sharath Saxena, Inder Kumar, Mukesh Rishi

Tumko Na Bhool Payenge was readymade for success. The premise which has been borrowed from a Hollywood film, A Long Kiss Goodnight had all the ingredients straight up for Pankaj Parasher's street to give a slick, fast-paced thriller a la Jalwa and Chaalbaaz. But the onetime whizkid seemed to have lost the punch.

A Long Kiss Goodnight gets a gender-bender, with the female protagonist being replaced with a male in the desi version. Veer (Salman Khan) is doted upon by his near and dear ones. His parents Thakur Pratap Singh (Sharath Saxena) and his wife (Nishigandha Wad), girlfriend Muskaan (Diya Mirza) and his sidekick (Rajpal Yadav) think the world of him. But Veer finds something amiss in this idyllic life that he leads. He's not able to remember a single event from his past. When he asks his folks about it they come up with different versions of his 'amnesia'.

Things suddenly begin happening to him. He sees visions of a man being hunted down by an armed group. That man looks like him, and Veer feels he has something to do with what's happening to the him. When he's actually attacked by a group of people for something he's not aware of, Veer decides to take control of his life. His parents admit that he's not their son, and that he was found in a river, half-dead.

Veer decides to go the city to fill in the blind-spots in his life. On reaching the city, he realises that he is Ali, who alongwith his friend Inder (Inder Kumar) worked for the CBI in cleaning off the underworld. Ali's girlfriend (Sushmita Sen) is apprehensive of Ali's work, and her fears take shape when Ali, a sharp-shooter is asked to shoot the Chief Minister (Sadashiv Amrapurkar). Meant to be a fake drama, Ali's plans go awry when the CM is really shot. Ali is hunted down, shot at and left to die in the river. With his life beginning to make sense to him, Veer aka Ali now decides to track down Mahek and the real killer of the CM. How he does it gives the film it's share of action-packed drama.

This potential thriller is let down by its screenplay and direction. The story, screenplay and dialogues are by Rumi Jaffery who's been at his best in David Dhawan's fares. And we all know what David Dhawan's 'ande ka funda' is all about. You cannot apply the same logistics to a thriller, can you? Pankaj Parasher who makes a comeback with this film, seems to have gone to sleep during the first half of the film. The film comes alive only in the second half which has scenes moving rapidly, actions and songs to it. Though Parasher amazingly kills off all his interest factors in the film mid-way. It's only the racy second-half with action, songs and Salman-Sush combo that makes the film watchable.

Salman Khan and Sushmita Sen individually embody star-power and together they are a combustible combination. You want to see more of them together, unfortunately the Salman-Diya Mirza romance gets more footage which is boring and thanda. Known for his cheeky humour, Pankaj Parasher surprisingly fails even in the laugh department. Not even Johnny Lever is able to make you laugh here. As for Rajpal Yadav, the less said the better. Why on earth are the filmmakers perpetrating him on the audience in the name of comedy? It's so painful to watch him making us laugh. Someone actually had the gall to call him an answer to Johnny Lever. Puh-lease spare us the torture.