Rock solid..what a movie. Review on Zinda

It all begins when software engineer Sanjay Dutt is suddenly abducted. Later finding himself imprisoned in a locked, windowless hotel room, he demands to know how long his sentence is, what he's supposed to have done to deserve this, and the identity of his imprisoners.

After a year or so, he learns (via the TV set provided in his cell) that his wife is dead, and that he has been framed for her murder, and is the subject of a manhunt. Six years into his sentence, he starts tattooing a line into his wrist for every year he's been imprisoned, and begins building up his mental and physical strength in preparation for vengeance on his release. He fills notebooks with his thoughts and his ideas about who might be to blame for his situation: who had he pissed off prior to being locked up? A rogue third chopstick with his dinner one night gives him a way out; keeping the chopstick for himself, he can use it to tunnel his way out of his cell.

But just as his tunnel is nearing completion, 14 years to the day after his abduction, he is released - again without explanation - and so can begin the detective work needed to track down and ultimately kill his tormentors. And yet within minutes of his release it seems that he is no more free in the outside world than he was in the makeshift prison, with his every step tracked by his captor, and hordes of thugs waiting at every corner to stop him in his tracks.

Throughout the course of the film, Sanjay Dutt gives a running monologue that leads us every step of the way. His rationalization is quirky and has a childlike profundity to it, serving him both well and poorly in his actions. The monologues are so naturally and realistically executed that it immediately conjures a somber atmosphere and mood that he navigates in. This adds so much to the characterization because we are immediately sympathetic to his rationalized evils. For the sake of the film, he may be on the positive side of the revenge spectrum, but it ends up becoming much grayer as the story builds on.For him, getting mad and getting even amount to virtually the same thing. The sequence where he rearranges some low-life’s dental work will doubtless attract over-excited attention, much like the jaw-dropping one-take hammer-wielding . But the upfront mayhem shouldn’t be allowed to distract from the film’s emotional depth or indeed its brilliant lead performance. For the protagonist, vengeance is a voyage of discovery, yet his newfound propensity towards violence troubles him, and his burning desire to confront his secretive nemesis may be fuelled by lingering self-doubt that he deserved his fate. Whatever happens, he’ll never be the same man again.

John is first class , running the gamut from terrifying rage to abject degradation. The implausibilities in the plot melt away because we’re living the experience with him, thanks also in part to the bravura expressiveness of Sanjay Gupta’s direction.

Slightly disappointing are some of the action scenes. While the two scenes of forced tooth extraction caused many in the audience I was with to gasp and avert their eyes from the horror, if they'd kept watching they wouldn't have witnessed anything explicit..

Full of visual and auditory pleasures, it is a dense, carefully structured film, an enigma laid bare with merciless inevitability and moments of lyrical beauty. Some of its patterns and repetitions are apparent on a first encounter, but its intricacies need more than one viewing. It is, in the most disconcerting and disorienting of ways, an exhilarating movie.