Jannat: In Search of Heaven… (2008)

Jannat: In Search of Heaven…: Directed by Kunal Deshmukh. With Emraan Hashmi, Sonal Chauhan, Armen Grayg, Shakeel Khan. Arjun is a reckless young man with an obsession for making money at card games. A chance meeting with a girl in a mall, Zoya, gives him the reasons he was looking for the move out of his ordinary life. He steps up from playing small-time card games to becoming a bookie. Stuck in a triangle of sorts between the woman he loves and his addiction to make a quick buck, Arjun moves on from being a bookie to a runner for the mafia. He steps into the world of match fixing. Arjun switches on the limelight to bigger, better, faster, more, until his dizzying rise attracts the attention of the police. Arjun has to now choose between the love of his life, Zoya, and this new found success and power. As Arjun struggles to choose between the two, the Don offers the forbidden apple of limitless wealth in exchange for his soul and draws him into his core entourage of money spinners. How far will the horizon of reality stretch as Arjun and Zoya tread a fine, fast-blurring line between right and wrong to find the heaven they have been looking for?

“As it has been said in the media,this movie is not your regular hashmi-flick (which either end up being corny or/and extremely boring).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI went in to watch the movie with very low expectations but was surprised with the the first half.It had a nice and enjoyable plot and i especially liked the opening card game (me being a big time card enthusiast).The second half more or less fell apart with all the emotions flying in.It suffers from what i call u0026quot;The Soap Opera mentalityu0026quot; where every small thing is made a very big deal of.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eEmran Hashmi was extremely believable as the grey-charactered high profile match fixer. His speaking style, i felt somehow, encapsulated the apprehensiveness yet decisiveness of a fixer. I would say this performance by him was his best,second only to one in Gangster. Vipin Sharma(Arjunu0026#39;s dad) was rather flat while delivering his dialogs and so did the emotionless Sonal Chauhan. The one performance i was bowled over by in this movie was of Javed Shaikh(especially the weight in his voice).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAnother let down in the movie was for the ones among us who wanted more of insider-story from the match-fixing scenario. There, the movie lacked material.it ended up more as a love story rather than a match-fixing story(which quite a few of us were hoping for).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI would rate this movie a 8/10, a definite watch if you have got the time and can bear the second half that gets all draggy.”