Zinda (English: Alive) is a 2006 Indian Hindi-language action film[2] starring Sanjay Dutt, John Abraham, Lara Dutta and Celina Jaitly.[3] written and directed by Sanjay Gupta, who co-wrote the film with Suresh Nair. It stars Sanjay Dutt, John Abraham, Lara Dutta and Celina Jaitly.[4]Vishal–Shekhar composed the film's thematic music, while the background score was composed by Sanjoy Chowdhury. Dutt suggested the script to Gupta post the release of their previous film Musafir, following which the film went into production.[5] Set in Thailand,[6] the plot centers on Balajeet "Bala" Roy, who gets kidnapped and held hostage in a cell. After getting released without any explanation, Bala sets out to find his captor and the reason behind his captivity.
Zinda was released on 13 January 2006, and has been identified as an unauthorized adaptation of the South Korean film Oldboy, which itself is an official adaptation of the Japanese mangaof the same name.[7][8][9] Show East, the producers of Oldboy, who had already sold the remake rights to DreamWorks in 2004 had initially expressed legal concerns, but no legal action was taken as the studio had shut down.[10][11][12] The film was a box-office flop, grossing ₹17.6 crore worldwide against a budget of ₹13 crore.[13]
Plot
Software engineer Balajeet "Bala" Roy, is happily married to Nisha Roy, with whom he is going to have a baby. But before Nisha let Bala know about her pregnancy, he is captured by unseen assailants and imprisoned in a cell, After one year, Bala finds out that she was brutally murdered. Bala is kept in total isolation for 14 years without knowing who imprisoned him and why. While in captivity, he practices martial arts which he learns after watching it on the television, with the intention of using it against the people who captured him. He is finally released, again without explanation, and sets out for revenge.
He befriends a Bangkok taxi driver named Jenny, who helps him track his kidnappers. Bala tracks down the restaurant that served him food during his entire captivity and follows a delivery moped to his captors. Bala discovers that he was held in a private prison where people can pay to have others incarcerated. Bala tortures the owner Wong Foo for answers by plucking out his teeth with a claw hammer; he then finds out he was imprisoned for "talking too much", and fights his way out of the building. Bala is injured during the fight, but a mysterious hooded man saves him and takes him to a taxi. The hooded man turns out to be Rohit Chopra. Soon Wong Foo kidnaps Jenny and tortures her. He threatens to remove Bala's teeth with his own claw hammer but is interrupted by Rohit. Bala takes refuge with Jenny, and they have sex. Bala is informed that his daughter is alive. Bala's friend Joy is killed, and Bala learns that his kidnapper is none other than Rohit.
Rohit reveals his reason for kidnapping Bala. They went to high school together, where Bala had lusted after Rohit's elder sister Reema. After Reema rejected him, Bala spreads a false rumour that she was a whore. She became the laughing stock of their school and committed suicide by setting herself on fire. Rohit blamed Bala for her death and engineered his imprisonment as revenge. Rohit tells Bala that he killed Nisha, and sent his daughter, who is now 14, to a brothel. Bala beats Rohit up and knocks him off of a balcony, but grabs his hand and pleads with him to tell him where his daughter is. Defiantly, Rohit lets go of Bala's hand and falls to his death. Bala then kills Rohit's goons and Wong Foo. In the end, Bala learns that his daughter is safe; and Rohit had lied to him about selling her to a brothel to torment him. He finds her sitting on a riverbank, and goes to meet her. He happily lives with his daughter.
The film received mixed reviews from critics, although John Abraham and Sanjay Dutt were singled out for praise.
Bollywood Mantra praised the film saying, "Zinda is a film that appears to be the darkest movie ever by Sanjay Gupta. A hard-hitting flick shot in Bangkok, it tells you a story never told before on the Indian screen. And to make Sanjay Gupta's imagination come alive, who else but Sanjay Dutt is roped in to play the lead role. One of the most challenging roles ever by the deadly Dutt, it is sure to haunt you long after the screening is over".[14]
Narbir Gosal of PlanetBollywood.com gave the film a rating of 7.5/10, praising the performances by Sanjay Dutt and John Abraham, while criticising the fact that much of the dialogue and story was copied from Oldboy.
Futuremovies.com gave the film 6/10 and said, "Technically and style-wise Zinda is flawless", and praised Dutt's performance, saying "it is probably the pinnacle of his career".[15]
Subhash K Jha gave it 2.5/5 and stated that "the film belongs to Sanjay Dutt.... If the adventure-action genre in Hindi cinema needed a wake-up call, this is it".[16]
Nikhil Kumar of Apunkachoice.com gave the film 0.5/5 stars, saying "Sanjay Gupta's movie Zinda works primarily because of its gripping, although unoriginal, story and a noteworthy acting performance by its frontman Sanjay Dutt".[17]
At a November 2005 press conference, representatives of Show East, the production company that released Oldboy, expressed concern Zinda was similar to their film, and said they were investigating the similarities. They noted that at the time, they did not have the final version of Zinda available to compare Oldboy with. They stated that if they found there was "strong similarity between the two [films]", they would be contacting their lawyers."[12]
The Hindu reviewer Sudhish Kamath and Planet Bollywood reviewer Narbir Gosal both note in their reviews of Zinda that they found the two films to be very similar in terms of plot, as well as in the depiction of specific scenes.[19][20][21]Rediff.com reviewer Raja Sen wrote an open letter to Gupta, declaring he would not watch the film due to the plagiarism, and further revealed Gupta plagiarized the whole film in spite of categorically telling him he had lifted one scene from Oldboy and claiming the rest was original.[22] Another critic Rajeev Masand labeled it a "shameless rip-off" of Oldboy where Gupta "steals not only the plot and characters but entire sequences, and pretty much the whole treatment of the original film."[23]CNN-News18 refused to term it a remake since no rights were officially purchased, and went on to criticize its performances, storytelling and the blue tint. The website pointed out that while the film could be notable to the Indian audience for its experimental storyline around that time, this has not been the case over the years.[24]
Gupta continued to deny any of this when questioned during an interview.[25] He later claimed it was not entirely inspired by Oldboy, and mentioned how the latter was also inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo instead.[26]
