Ajnabee

About the film

Ajnabee (transl. Stranger) is a 2001 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film directed by Abbas–Mustan and produced by Vijay Galani. It stars Akshay Kumar, Bobby Deol, Kareena Kapoor and Bipasha Basu in her debut, with Johnny Lever, Dalip Tahil, Narendra Bedi and Sharat Saxena in supporting roles. The film is an unofficial adaptation of the 1992 American thriller Consenting Adults. The music is composed by Anu Malik.

The film was released on 21 September 2001, Kapoor's 21st birthday. It received mixed reviews from critics with praise for the performances of Kumar and Basu. The film was a moderate success at box office, grossing ₹31 crore against a budget of ₹17 crore. Kumar won the Filmfare Award for Best Performance in a Negative Role while Basu won the award for Best Female Debut.

Plot

After chance encounters and misunderstandings, Raj and Priya Malhotra fall in love get married and move to Switzerland. They meet their neighbours Vicky and Sonia and 4 of them become best of friends.

During their vacation, Raj sees Vikram kissing another woman. A confused Raj becomes even more shocked as Sonia starts flirting and hitting on him. He rejects her which Vikram finds out. As Sonia becomes more forward in her advances, Vicky manipulates the scenario leading to Raj and Sonia getting paired while himself (Vicky) getting paired with Priya. On the last day, Vicky casually talks to Raj about wife-swapping. Vicky eagerly suggests they should also try it out and suggests that Raj has sex with Sonia. Vicky simultaneously requests Raj to let him spend the night having sex with Priya. Raj is disgusted by the offer, and an argument breaks out between the men. With Priya being unaware of the whole situation going around her, she manages to reconcile Raj and Vicky on the eve of Vicky's birthday a few days later. The two men celebrate by getting drunk together. Vicky Again suggests Raj to become Vicky and asks whether he(Vicky) could become Raj just for the night and manages to send a drunk Raj into his house. At the same time Vicky goes on to Raj's house and Priya is surprised to see Vicky instead of Raj.

The next day Raj wakes up to find a partially clothed woman in bed with him and realizes he was tricked and is in Vicky's house. He quickly runs back to his house only to see Priya happy and relaxed. He enquires if Vicky Came over last night to which Priya confirms Vicky coming over as Raj had sent him over. She states she fulfilled his request when he came over as it was his birthday and didn't want to disappoint him by refusing his request. She further states it should not be a regular occurrence and Vicky needs to control himself but won't mind if it's on special occasions. After listening to what Priya just said, Raj goes for a run. Unable to forget what Priya had said, he thinks Vicky successfully convinced Priya to continue Wife-Swapping for the night by seducing her and they romanced each other with wild passion in every corner of the house and they ended the night with Priya giving Vicky his gift by allowing him to have Sex with her in the bedroom. That same morning Sonia is found dead and Raj is accused of her murder since his fingerprints are found on the murder weapon – an alcohol bottle. Vicky claims how the idea of wife swapping came from Raj, and while Vicky just spent the night in Raj's house, Raj tried to force Sonia and later killed her. While in Jail, Vicky visits him and gloats about framing Raj and offers 1.4 million towards taking care of Priya in exchange …

Production

The climax of the film was shot in Muscat, Dubai and Bahrain on the Indian-owned cruise liner Ocean Majesty. Initially Shah Rukh Khan was offered the role of Vikram Bajaj, but he was not keen on playing a negative character.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for Ajnabee is composed by Anu Malik and the lyrics, penned by Sameer. It is released by Tips Music.

In 2011, ten years after the release of Ajnabee, Malik claimed that the song "Character Dheela" from the film Ready is an unauthorised copy of the song "Mohabbat Naam Hai" while informing the media that he will likely sue composer Pritam for plagiarism. According to the Indian trade website Box Office India, with around 2.2 million units sold, this film's soundtrack album was the year's sixth highest-selling. "Meri Zindagi Mein Ajnabee" marked the first slow romantic song rendered by Sunidhi Chauhan who later thanked Anu Malik who convinced the producers to use her voice for the title track. Whereas the biggest hit of the album "Mehbooba Mehbooba" kicked of Adnan Sami's career in Bollywood who already had found success in Indian Pop music industry.

Reception

Taran Adarsh of IndiaFM gave the film 1.5 stars out of 5, writing, ″On the whole, AJNABEE tackles an audacious theme that the Indian audience will find hard to absorb and identify with. The film, which boasts of impressive names on and off the screen, will attract the audiences for the first few days, but its fall is imminent after the initial euphoria settles. A heavy price tag will also prove a deterrent for its investors.″ Sarita Tanwar of Rediff.com wrote, ″It has been shot at exotic locations, but the film has a shoddy feel to it. The camerawork jars; the filmmakers lose control of the script at the climax, when vague scenes are pieced together. The comic relief, spearheaded by Johny Lever, is loud and the insipid humour goes overboard. Sadly, this bold attempt is in vain. Ajnabee could have been the precursor of the new niche thriller. But its makers haven't displayed enough bravado. Watch Ajnabee once. Not for what it is. But for what it could have been.

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