Producer: Kalaippuli S. Thannu 
Director: Suresh Krishna 
Cast: Milind Gunaji, Manisha Koirala, Raveena Tandon, Kamal Hassan
Music: Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy

It is Kamal Hasaan’s baby all the way. The very concept of the movie was conceived from a story that Kamal Hasaan had contributed to a Telugu daily some 15 years ago. The story was serialised by the publication and the readers had loved it. Being close to his heart ever since, Kamal could not avoid but attempt to make it into a movie. But like the saying goes ‘The book was better than the movie’ so is the case of Abhay where reading the serialized story would have been more engrossing than the movie.

The movie Abhay is the story of twins Vijay (Kamal Hasaan) and Abhay (Kamal again). While Vijay grows up to become a Major Vijay Kumar, with Tejaswani (Raveena), a news-caster for girl-friend Abhay grows up as an inmate of few mental asylums because of a traumatic childhood that had him driven him into a storm of illusions. Though a very intelligent human being, Abhay hates women and believes that they are out to ruin men. He often goes out of control very easily and when that happens, he does not bat an eyelid before he vents his anger with lethal attacks on people around him. In short he has turned a psychopath.

Over the years, the concerned authorities stating that his mental state could be dangerous turn down all the approaches of the family to release him from the mental asylum. However, all that comes to change when Vijay goes to meet Abhay at the asylum. Worst still when he announces to Abhay his plans of marrying Tejaswani. Abhay does not take kindly to this news. He takes it upon himself to kill Tejaswani. Abhay escapes from the asylum and unleashes his terror. He leaves his a trail of blood everywhere that he goes. He stalks the couple and tries upteem number of times to kill Tejaswani, even when they are married. Ultimately after a very long chase, Abhay cathes up with Vijay and even tries to kill him (Vijay), as he won’t allow him to kill his wife.

The movie ends in a grand finale when the two twins cross arms and Vijay proves to Abhay that he can do every thing that Abhay can, even better. Ultimately the good wins over the evil and all is well that ends well. True, the film does have its moments, but they are more like its '15 seconds of fame'. With a double role, Kamal should have delivered a double whammy. In an ironic twist of fate he manages to deliver it, but it hits you where it hurts the most: your innate logic and sensibilities.

Throughout the film, Abhay manages to get hold of jazzy costumes, paints and all though he has escaped from an asylum and is supposed to be evading police and his twin brother Major Vijay Kumar. There are many such scenes, which place incredulity at a major discount. At the end of it all you are left with the sick feeling of having been sold lemons -- extremely polished ones, but lemons nevertheless. The scene that takes the cake is the final fight sequence, where Abhay, after a murderous but a vain attack on Tejaswini (Raveena Tandon), jumps out of the hotel room, flies through the air, and lo and behold! lands miraculously on an advertising balloon in the air, which carries him, of course all coincidentally, to the next building and safety.

You are yet to recover from the shock of such absurdity in a Kamal movie when you see his twin brother Vijay follow him in the same path. Phew! The story of good over evil and twins in particular has been told over and over again and now it seems to have lost its novelty. Secondly as told earlier it would be more entertaining as a book but making it into a movie has spoiled everything. Since the trend of making books on movies is the ‘in thing’ let me tell that all movies can be made into interesting books thanks to creative writing, but all books cannot be made into films, thanks again to creative writing.

Abhay is an exemplary display of how to stretch a four-line story into a three-hour film. Kamal comes up with a screenplay liberally embellished with inane songs, tech-laden but completely out of sync delusional sequences, and extra-strong fight sequences. Kamla, who is one of the best actor we have this side of the Atlantic however fails to raise the movie. Even his approach as an actor suffers, you can see that Kamal mark but the expected spark in his performance is just missing. Those little noticeable elements that Kamal usually defines in the character he plays are just missing in Abhay’s character. All you have is a certain walk and twitching of head which looks too mechanical.

As for the rest of the cast, except for Raveena Tandon, who is Major Vijay Kumar's better half -- literally so -- they add nothing more than ornamental value to the film. Raveena holds her own against Kamal, and at least once comes out on top when she 'out-acts' Kamal in a post-nuptials scene. Manisha Koirala (Sharmilee) and her strip tease seen, little said about it is better. Wondering why she was needed in the first place, it was the kind of role that any Southern starlet would have done willingly, even for free. But, Kamal, for all the brickbats thrown at him, deserves wholehearted credit for having had the guts to break out of the usual cinematic routine of the 'sati savitri, no premarital sex' girlfriend/wife characterisations. Major Vijay Kumar's girlfriend Tejaswini is a no-holds-barred mediaperson who has no qualms admitting that she enjoyed having sex with her boyfriend. Neither does the major have any problems getting his girlfriend pregnant before marriage and voluntarily taking full responsibility for it.

In a major departure from the Bollywoodian script, neither do Tejaswini's parents (Navin Nischol and Smita Jayakar) react with 'oh the world's all but crashed' attitude, nor does Vijay's uncle (Vikram Gokhale) raise any moralistic ruckus about the issue. The film's saving graces are the excellent cinematography (Thirru) and the stunning visual effects (George Merkert, Scott, Ian Johnson and Krishnakant Mishra). Both put together manage to push it to the higher reaches of filmdom, which very few Indian films have touched.

So, is the movie worth a dekho? I would not advice against it. The film is worth every rupee spent for the sheer technical wizardry of the backroom boys. The other reason to see the movie is to know that no man is perfect, everybody fails sometime, even the best of them sometimes have a bad day. Abhay is Kamal’s bad day, and you would not like to miss on this one for you may never get to see such a bad film from Kamal again.