Producer: Sunny Super Sound 
Director: N. Maharajan 
Cast: Danny Denzongpa, Shilpa Shetty, Om Puri, Sunny Deol,
Music: Anand Raj Anand
Lyrics: Anand Bakshi

So the ‘Punjab the puttar’ is back once again riding high on the patriotic fervour that he unleashed in Gadar.

However Indian is pseudo patriotic and more of a one man swashbuckling ‘Death Wish’ kind of movie. You sit through the movie and the Sunny right from Arjun to Ghatak comes to haunt you. So if you have been an avid fan of Sunny you may ad one more film of the genre top his repertoire and go ahead and see it, but if you happen to be an on and off watcher of this hunks films, then watching the Indian would be a pointless exercise.

Like they say, you have seen one, you have seen them all. Only, Indian lacks story, credibility, excitement, thrill, and the most important factor -- entertainment. However there is lots of unnecessary violence and dialogues that would cater largely to the front benchers.

The film kicks off with the Lashkar-e-Jehadi group and its leader Wasim Khan (Mukesh Rishi) sulking after their fresh defeat in the Kargil war. Wasim Khan's plans to create tension in India are foiled by the fearless and dynamic DCP Rajshekhar Azad (Sunny Deol). That is how far the jehad and the jehadis get.

After nabbing Wasim Khan and putting him in a high-security cell, Azad bumps off corrupt pa-in-law, DGP Surya Pratap Singh (Raj Babbar). Now all would be fine, but wife Anjali discovers that Azad is her dearest daddy's killer, thanks to the capricious CBI officer Joginder Singh (Om Puri).

Now what? Simple! Divorce...However, grace to our director who does not waste much time on the simpering women and the divorce formalities in the film and moves on to the business to cater to the patriotic masses who have been waiting for their Sunny dearest top pack punches. Post-interval, Azad has a new enemy to deal with. As if the man did not have his platter full already. Stinking rich and influential Shankar Singhania (Danny Denzongpa) wants to buy an illegal plot. In doing so he manages to evoke the wrath of the righteous Azad. Not only does Singhania participate in shady deals, he also has contacts with terrorists like -- you guessed it! -- Wasim Khan. How innovative! Needless to say, our ever-dependable Azad aka Sunny Deol buries all the baddies in their rightful graves, saves the country's honour and proves that he is a true Indian. Phew! What a guy!

Now coming to some facts about the movie. As an aside, one observes, gone are the days when police officers used to roam in jeeps, or at best a FIAT car. Only a smashing maroon Tata Safari will do for our hero, not to mention designer shirts and jeans. Now we know why our cops have to get corrupt, they too need those designer jeans that comes with heavy price tags. So the movie shows an honest cop doing his duty, little is explained as to how he and his wife can afford designer costumes and sing songs at scenic locations within the honest pay. Sunny surely has improved over the

years. In the mid eighties when Arjun came in he needed a gang to fight the goons, Ditto for dacait and few dozen movies that followed. Then with Ghayal he went solo, there were three to four guys at a time he would beat into a pulp. By Ghatak the score of guys he could take had increased to a dozen and by the time Gadar hit the screens the rowdy jat could easily take up a battalion aka Rambo. In Indian he has once again proved that with maturity he is just getting better, wish the same could be said about his performance.

Now we just wish that this stops before he starts to take on the whole world. Hope we don’t have the next Sunny starrer taking him to beat the Afghanistani’s, and he doing it all alone. Wish the director know the power of dot, which is also known as ‘full stop’ sometimes.

Another disappointment is that unlike in Damini, Ghayal or Gadar, there are no punchy lines for Sunny to munch on. Even the action is dull, except for a stray car somersault sequence. As for other performers, Shilpa has no roles whatsoever. She is good in the designer wears she keeps popping up after long breaks only to disturb the pace of an already disturbed narration. As for the rest of the actors, the they have tried their best to slide through their part in a confused setup, less said about it, the better. Actors like Om Puri, Shakti Kapoor and Rahul Dev have all been wasted in miniscule roles.

The only relief in the movie comes from the sexy duo, veejays Malaika and Sophiya in an imaginatively well picturised dance number. But other than the foot-tapping Deewana, none of the songs are worth a mention. Same goes for the movie as a whole. Surely you can afford to miss it for now…and see it as when the idiot box shows it, a couple of years later as a ‘grand attraction’ on one of our national holidays.