Shot in Bombay

(No Cert)
3 out of 5 3
  1. Shot In Bombay
  2. Production year: 2007
  3. Countries: India, UK
  4. Runtime: 99 mins
  5. Directors: Liz Mermin
  6. More on this film

Liz Mermin's documentary takes a look at fraught scenes on location while a Bollywood action movie was being shot last summer: a deafening cops'n'terrorists extravaganza called Shootout at Lokhandwala, based on a true-life story of villains getting plugged in 1991 by a legendary tough-guy police officer. But there's a problem for the gung-ho director, Apoorva Lakhia. His leading man, the great Sanjay Dutt, playing the cop, keeps having to take days off to attend court. He's under investigation for keeping automatic weaponry at his house - a case going back to 1993. And as the documentary progresses, it becomes worryingly clear that there may be an overlap between the criminal network in which Dutt was implicated, and the one being dramatised in the movie. At any rate, Dutt's legal woes mean that Lakhia has only about three weeks to shoot a film for which he had reckoned on four months. It means he is always happy with the first take: "Cut! Super! Mind-blowing! Moving on!" is what he cheerfully shouts after every set-up. This documentary could easily have lost 15 minutes, and needed some clearer focus on the ironies of Dutt's position, but it's an intriguing glimpse into the bustling, if sometimes dodgy, world of Bollywood.

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