BOLLYWOOD

The deluge of July 26, 2005 is just an aberration; it's not the crux of the story. The romance began some six years ago and due to irrevocable differences between Akshay (Emraan Hashmi) and Sanjana (Soha Ali Khan), the two part ways, although intensely in love. Commitment was something Akshay was not familiar with; rather, he was wary of it.

So you have the two main leads meeting somewhere in South Africa. Cupid strikes and its love at first sight. Akshay is a struggling artist while Sanjana is a little princess, living in a palatial home and working for a magazine. The two move in to 'live in' and there in creep the differences

Akshay is fed up because he is not going anywhere with his paintings, while Sanjana is only too happy to be able to support the two. Akshay finally gets an offer as a creative head of a team and asks Sanjana to join him. She refuses and asks him to marry her. He is not ready. They part ways.

All this is told in flashback and the meeting point is the flight back to Mumbai at Heathrow Airport. They meet after six years, exchange pleasantries and when they land in Mumbai, are caught up in the storm. Here their romance is rekindled.

Soha Ali Khan is confident from frame one. This girl seduces the camera with her confident body language and easy dialogue delivery. She makes the right move at every turn adding that air of credibility to the fragility of her romance with Emraan. The 'kiss man' gets his mandatory smooch and is quite convincing as the 'desperate to make it big', loser boyfriend.

Mantra, Emraan's buddy is another actor who catches the eye. This lad has talent and essays his role with panache.

The lyrics melt with the mood and the music blends with the scenes. The story, like all Bhatt films is heavy on romance and the uneasy pain of loving and leaving. Given the backdrop of the deluge, director Kunal Deshmukh makes a valiant attempt of recreating the last moments of TITANIC. The scenes showing the floods are close to real and take you back in time when the streets became one big sea and the message at the end is 'Stay indoors when it rains.'

Though the film does manage to tug at your heart the length is a big bother, a little snip here and a big cut there would have done wonders for this film. The lead pair of Emraan and Soha is fantastic.