Dumb perhaps is a better title for this fairly dire effort by E Niwas, a film that smells of old wine being packaged in a glossy new bottle. Except that the packaging is so utterly dire, you really begin to question why the film had to be made at all. Its supposedly about police corruption and meant to be good cop Vs bad cop..didnt we just have the same scenario in Gunaah?

Uday Shinde (Vivek Oberoi) and his friend (Sushant Singh) plan to join the police force. He gets to be selected for the course by good cop (Mukesh Rishi) who has a dark tale to tell. We then cut to swanky MTV song of hero throwing his guitar in the desert, jiving a la Jacko to what is obviously nothing more than a video insert in the film. “Dum” shouts the song and boy, you are going to load of that to endure this one.

In the meantime, we see the other protagonist of the film “Encounter Shankar (Atul Kulkarni), a corrupt police officer setting the scene by murdering some “Anna” so that the audience knows that this is not a man to be taken lightly. On fine day, Encounter Shankar arrives drunkenly to the sea front and decides to relieve himself in front of Uday’s lady love Kaveri (Dia Mirza). Kaveri decides that its more prudent to take on the drunken lout instead of walking away and in fact calls him 'badtameez!' Wounded by this stinging rebuke, Maniac is about to strike Kaveri when our man with Dum Uday arrives and gives him the bashing of his life.

News of this filters back to Mukesh Rishi who spills his dark and unbelievable tale. His wife had witnessed the death of a politician and Maniac cop, mixed in with the bad lot, came to the house to murder her but ended up murdering their child instead. Pacifist as he is and wanting to work within the law, Mr Good cop lauds Uday’s efforts and wanting to be a good cop but tells him to work within the framework of the law.

Maniac cop is now rabidly in pursuit of Uday. Yes, we know, they have to face each other and what better way than to have him sacrifice himself to the cop so that his sister can get married. Ho hum, yawn yawn. Mercilessly thrashed and left on a railway track to die, Uday survives. Now its his time to strike back at the maniac cop.

I never had the displeasure of seeing Shool which sounded to me like another one of those good cop bad cop movies. I was told that it was unimpressive. Hence, I cannot compare the director’s efforts but can say that on the evidence of this product, E Niwas has learnt nothing from Ram Gopal Verma. The film lacks a decent script and the direction is so lax that the film hardly holds your interest. There is no proper character development and there is no zip in any of the action scenes. Unnecessary violence, images of Russian roulette and an utterly mundane and cliched plot leads to utter predictability. The utterly despicable and sensationalist use of Babu ji zara dheere chalo just after a deeply intense scene lead you to believe that the director has no control over the medium and has no vision. That’s right, there is simply no vision in E Niwas and he really makes a dog’s dinner of this one.

To a great extent, the script is to blame. The proceedings are utterly unbelievable. Shankar is meant to be this utterly crazed cop who will defile, destroy, murder at random. But he comes across as this measly and rather ineffective man, comic rather than menacing. The plot hinges on the fact that he got beaten up by Uday and how this is an all consuming urge within him, to eliminate the person who has so humiliated him. If that had come across and had been cleverly done, you may have had some depth to the film...but its not like that at all. The attempts by the police to find Uday are ridiculous and when in fact they feel they have found him, Shankar even plants a kiss on Uday’s helmet, not knowing the identity of the man under the helmet. Crass to the extreme. Then you have the unbelievable Mukesh Rishi character, who despite the murder of his daughter, the maiming of his wife, decides that he cannot do anything but within the law.. Uday comes along, decides on a shooting spree and Mr Rishi seems to go along with that!!! What happened to “within the law”? Makes no sense.

Vivek Oberoi has a very powerful and raw presence. He has the same kind of intensity that Amitabh showed in films like Deewaar. Without doubt, he has made a mark for himself and if the film was watchable at all, it was because of Vivek Oberoi. Atul Kulkarni is simply atrocious. He brings no menace to the role and its possibly one of the most embarrassingly awful performances of recent times. Dia (please note change of spelling) looks pretty in parts, very in others but her hideously whiny voice and her totally insipid persona lend the film very little charm. Oh dear, what will she do. Merely decorative, wish she had been dumb as well..she may have made more of an impression. Mukesh Rishi would have made a more menacing Shanker but playing against type, he is actually pretty good and its good to see him continue to get semi-decent roles. Cinematography is OK, the dialogues ordinary and apart from a couple of songs, Sandeep Chowtha’s music sounds ominously like Road’s music..which was pretty poor. His background score for once is dreadful. Dum has no Dum at all and even for die hard Vivek fans, this is a difficult one to endure.