Director Rensil D’Silva’s film says nothing new about the terror element, which is fast becoming the new vengeance formula in our films. Earlier heroes used to justify taking arms because their family was annihilated by the villain. Today as Bollywood gets global, the villain is in the US and the hero is seeking revenge for the unjustified annihilation of Iraq and Afghanistan. We had it in Fanaa, New York unfolded on similar lines. Now Kurbaan is expecting the audience to sacrifice a share of wallet at the box office. The premise takes the film beyond the realm of features to hard news, much needed to bring in the audience flooded with options. But when the lights turn off, the director expects the viewer to be the same old unsuspecting fellow, who will be buoyed by a love story and songs so much that he doesn’t mind a script sinking under the weight of inconsistencies.

After a smart build up, here D’ Silva leaves plenty of whys and hows unanswered. And the pace of the film is not such that you breeze through the flaws.

When Ehsaan, a professor, who teaches Islamic Studies sweeps fellow professor Avantika off her feet, we fondly take the journey that takes off from scenic Delhi. With Salim Sulaiman in the background, Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor, at their stylish best, ooze their real life chemistry on screen. The unsaid part, which makes couples click, is very much in place.

Soon the scene shifts to New York, and Avantika discovers the real Ehsaan. He is a dreaded terrorist who is planning another 9/11 with his extended family led by ‘bhaaijaan’ (Om Puri) and that he has used her -- very much like Katrina Kaif in New York and Kajol in Fanaa – to get into the US through a legal channel. Cut to Riyaaz (Vivek Oberoi), a moderate Muslim journalist, who loses his girlfriend (Dia Mirza) in a terror plot hatched by the family. The dedicated Ehsaan drives with a rotting dead body through the city. Riyaaz gets to know what the family is up to quite early but he stays on to know the complete plan for no real reason apart from perhaps allowing the director to stretch the film over two hours and forty minutes and of course giving Saif and Kareena a chance to shoot their elaborate love-making sequences which has got the film its adult certificate.

The director takes no pains to give us at least some details of the planning of the suicide attack. FBI behaves like our Bollywood police which always reach late. It is as sketchy as the liberty to spell Qurbaan with ‘K’.

ANUJ KUMAR

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