''Knock Out'' is a 2010 Indian

Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

-language

action thriller film Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist is thrust into a series of events that typically involve violence and physical feats. The genre tends to feature a mostly resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life ...

directed by

Mani Shankar Mani Shankar is a Bollywood film director, holographic technology expert, writer and speaker. He is best known for introducing computer-generated imagery to India, and for designing the world's first holographic political campaign, which he ...

. The film stars

Sanjay Dutt Sanjay Balraj Dutt (born 29 July 1959) is an Indian actor who primarily works in Hindi cinema. In a career spanning over four decades, Dutt has won several accolades and acted in over 100 films, ranging from romance to comedy genres, though u ...

Irrfan Khan Irrfan Khan () (born Sahabzade Irfan Ali Khan; 7 January 196729 April 2020), also known simply as Irrfan, was an Indian actor who worked in Indian cinema as well as British and American films. Widely regarded as one of the finest actors in In ...

and

Kangana Ranaut Kangna Amardeep Ranaut (; born 23 March 1987) is an Indian actress and filmmaker who works in Hindi films. Known for her work in female-led films, she is the recipient of several awards, including four National Film Awards and five Filmfar ...

, and is an unauthorized remake of ''

Phone Booth A telephone booth, telephone kiosk, telephone call box, telephone box or public call box is a tiny structure furnished with a payphone and designed for a telephone user's convenience; usually the user steps into the booth and closes the booth ...

''. In October 2010, the Bombay High Court ordered the film's producers to pay a portion of their revenues to

20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...

, who own the rights to ''Phone Booth''. Released on 15 October 2010, the film was a

commercial failure Failure is the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of success. The criteria for failure depends on context, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. One ...

Plot

Bachubhai (

) has come to a phone booth to make a call. He is interrupted by a man who interrupts him again. Bachubhai tells him to stop interrupting. While moving out of the phone booth after the call, the phone rings. Bachubhai picks up the call only to get surprised by an unknown caller who ensures that Bachubhai does not leave the phone booth until his motive of calling is achieved. Another man interrupts who is shot dead by that unknown person from a far away building. As seeing the incident, police, public, and news reporter Nidhi Srivastav

arrive. Everyone is seeing everything as Bachubhai has been told to do what the person on the phone call says or he will shoot him. Later, Police officer Sushant Singh is transferred, and another encounter specialist has been called. Meanwhile, Bachubhai, who is working for a corrupt politician who has 320 billion black money, has been told to transfer the money on a government account to give back the money to the public. Bachubhai does everything as the phone caller says. At the end of the movie, the money has been transferred to the public account, and it is revealed that Veer Vijay Singh (

) is a Chief of Investigation Bureau. Bachubhai, after transferring the money, nothing happens to him.

Cast

as Veer Vijay Singh, Chief of Ops, IB/Colonel Gill *

as Bachchoo Bhai / Tony Khosla *

as Nidhi Srivastava, India TV reporter *

Gulshan Grover Gulshan Grover (born 21 September 1955) is an Indian actor and producer who has appeared in over 100 films. He is popularly known as the "Bad Man" of Bollywood because of his ability to create an impact with his negative roles in films. Early ...

as Bapuji *

Rukhsar Rehman Rukhsar Rehman (born 29 October 1975) is an Indian film & television actress and model in Bollywood. Rehman made her film debut in 1992 at the age of 17 with a lead role in Deepak Anand's ''Yaad Rakhegi Duniya'' opposite Aditya Pancholi and als ...

as Lakshmi Khosla, Tony's wife * Sushant Singh as Inspector Vikram *

Asif Basra Asif Basra (27 July 196712 November 2020) was an Indian actor who worked in Bollywood films and TV serials. He is best known to Western audiences for his role in '' Outsourced''. He also appeared in many other films. Basra died of suicide by h ...

as Raghav * Bikramjeet Kanwarpal as editor, Nidhi's boss *

Kurush Deboo Kurush Deboo (born 12 September 1963) is an Indian actor who has acted in many supporting roles in Hindi films and television series. He was first noticed as Shah Rukh Khan's character's loyal friend in '' Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa''. He is known f ...

as Sandwichwala *

Abhay Shukla Abhay Shukla is an Indian actor known for his role as Inspector Nikhil in the TV series ''C.I.D. (India TV series), C.I.D.'' Filmography * 2010 - ''Knock Out (2010 film), Knock Out'' * 2014 - ''Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty'' * TBA - ' ...

as Prithvi *Shankar Sachdeva as Mishra *

Shriya Sharma Shriya Sharma (born 9 April 1997) is an Indian actress, model and advocate who has worked in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu films. She is known for playing the role of Sneha Bajaj in the television series ''Kasautti Zindagi Kay'' which won her the ...

as Sweety Khosla, Tony's daughter *Naseer Abdullah as Bhalla * Namrata Thapa as Roshni *

Apoorva Lakhia Apoorva Lakhia is an Indian film director. Early life Lakhia was born and brought up in Ahmedabad, India. He was educated at the Lawrence School, Sanawar. He dropped out of a filmmaking course in New York University to assist Mira Nair on ''T ...

as Ranvir Singh *

Ashraful Haque Syed Ashraful Haq is a former Bangladeshi cricketer. He was the architect of Bangladesh's first ever ICC Trophy victory, over Fiji in May 1979. His 7/23 from 9.2 overs completely destroyed the Fiji middle order, leading Bangladesh to a 22 r ...

as Junkie *

Shreya Narayan Shreya Narayan (born 22 February 1985) is an Indian film and television actress and a writer. Early life and education Shreya Narayan belongs to the family of Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first president of India. She was born in Muzaffarpur, Bi ...

as Jesse *Aparna as Bharti *Silvio Simac as fighter on terrace *Rajendra Jadhav as Gundurao *Vinay Verma as Commissioner *M D Pasha as Suvarna *Hussain Shaikh as Party President *Gary Warren D'souza as Swiss Bank Manager *Randheer Nahar as Pandey *Shivraj as RBI Officer

Controversy

The film was initially rumored to be a remake of the American film ''

'', which the producer Sohail Maklai denied. 20th Century Studios filed a complaint against the makers of ''Knock Out'' before the film's release. The Bombay High Court had initially passed an injunction against the film's release after watching both the films. However, the producers were allowed to release the film on appeal, and deposited INR 1.5 crore to the court. The matter was reheard in March 2013, with the court decreeing the case and awarding INR 1.25 crore to Fox, further telling the producers of ''Phone Booth'' to not exploit their film in any manner whatsoever from 5 March 2013 onwards.

Reception

Nikhat Kazmi of ''

The Times of India ''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest ...

'' gave the film 3 stars out of 5 stars, noting "all the action transpiring around the phone booth" to be the only similarity with ''

''.

Taran Adarsh Taran Adarsh (born 13 June 1965) is an Indian film critic and trade analyst. He is best known for giving trade figures and box office updates on social media. Career Taran Adarsh started his journalism career at the age of 15 with ''Trade Gui ...

from ''

Bollywood Hungama Bollywood Hungama (lit. "Bollywood Madness" in Hindi), previously known as IndiaFM (or IndiaFM.com), is a Bollywood entertainment website, owned by Hungama Digital Media Entertainment, which acquired the website in 2000. The website provide ...

'' gave the film 2.5 stars out of 5, similarly pointing out that "what follows after a point bears no resemblance to that film (''Phone Booth'')", and also found it similar to ''

A Wednesday ''A Wednesday!'' is a 2008 Indian Hindi-language thriller film written and directed by Neeraj Pandey and produced by Ronnie Screwvala, Anjum Rizvi and Shital Bhatia under UTV Motion Pictures and Friday Filmworks. Though a work of fiction, the s ...

'' in spite of their different storylines. He praised the focused plot and the finale, while criticizing the film's occasional repetitiveness. Patcy N. from ''

Rediff.com Rediff.com (stylized as ''rediff.com'') is an Indian news, information, entertainment and shopping web portal. It was founded in 1996. It is headquartered in Mumbai, with offices in Bangalore, New Delhi and New York City. , it had more than 300 e ...

'' gave the film 1.5 stars out of 5, praising Irrfan Khan's performance, while criticizing the climax and the overall execution.

Soundtrack

The film's music was given by Gourov Dasgupta, with a background score by Atul Raninga and Sanjay Wandrekar. The soundtrack has five original tunes, one remix, and an alternate version of one song.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Knock Out 2010 action thriller films 2010 crime action films 2010 crime thriller films 2010 psychological thriller films 2010 films 2010s Hindi-language films Indian remakes of American films Indian action thriller films Indian crime action films Indian crime thriller films Indian psychological thriller films Films about snipers Films about telephony Films directed by Mani Shankar