After Ajnabee, Abbas Mustaan return to the screen with another adaptation of a Hollywood thriller but indianising it to make it palatable to Bollywood audiences. They weren't quite able to convince with their tale of wife swapping in Ajnabee but manage to steer a decent course in this one.

Karan (Akshaye Khanna) and Priya (Amisha Patel) head a troupe of dancers, anxious to hit the big time, not just in terms of fame but also aspire towards the high life with lots of money to boot. Invited to apply to perform on cruise, they are scuppered at the last post by their rivals, Jo Jo Fernandez's group through foul play. Seeing his dreams go up in dust, Karan goes over to see Jo Jo Fernandez with murderous intent, throwing him off the balcony, all seen by one of his troupe. Karan and Priya are therefore invited to perform on Raj Singhania (Bobby Deol) cruise liner and off they go on a cruise to Singapore and Malaysia. Raj becomes besotted by Priya who is taken in with the grandeur and money that accompanies Raj Singhania. Raj offers marriage and Priya accepts. Here comes the first twist when you discover Karan and Priya's plan to hook Raj Singhania and then make off with his money.

Raj is oblivious to Karan and Priya's little plan or that they were even remotely romantically inclined. The plan goes smoothly with Priya warding off her Hubby's advances with a fib that she made a "mannat" that if she married him, that she would remain celibate for a month. But as fate was to have it, our Indian wife falls for her hubby and decides to do an about turn and refuses to go through with the divorce. This sends Karan into a spin and he plans his next move whereby he arranges for Raj to see Karan and Priya embracing thereby setting off a murderous rage within him. Twists and turns galore follow leading up to a violent and if somewhat prolonged climax.

Abbas Mustaan are the masters of adapting Hollywood thrillers and by and large, they have managed to do this reasonably successfully in the past barring the likes of Daraar and Ajnabee. However, Humraaz is interesting and thoroughly enjoyable fare and for this the Directors and the stars should take most of the credit.

Bobby Deol plays Raj Singhania, the head of a huge conglomerate of companies as a nice and patient, loving man, untainted by his wealth, which makes his "change of heart" later in the proceedings somewhat unbelievable. It's not a difficult role but Bobby infuses a great deal of charm into his character. I don't know what it is about Amisha Patel which is such a complete turn off. She looks better than she has done before despite her perfect lipstick and being plastered most of the time and clad in all kinds of finery..when she is clad at all! She has no charm about her in the least and comes up with a standard performance and is the least interesting of the three characters simply because she makes it so uninteresting. The character has negative shades to it and how it would have added to the film if she had continued to be a greedy go getter as opposed to being won over by her hubby's love. It would have been more convincing had she in fact realized that she could get all the booty for herself and for Karan to have blackmailed her. Akshaye Khanna, sadly with a strange wig, is wonderful and hats off to him for playing the role of a character as opposed to what was previously called, the role of the villain. Perhaps Shahrukh started the trend or made it possible for "heroes" to actually be bad but here we have a character that has nothing but aspirers for everything. This is a low life avaricious and greedy man who will stop at nothing to pursue his dream. Yet, there is something pathetic about him, something sad. No he has no final lines to give, no sermons about how he comes from the chawl and how he was abused as a child. Nope, this is pure greed representative of many today. Akshaye is understated and this is a great follow up to Dil Chahta hai. First Akshay Kumar in Ajnabee, now Akshaye in Humraaz, do we have the birth of a character as opposed to the "villain"? Shahrukh was mentally disturbed in Darr, which gave the character some sympathy whereas in both Ajnabee and Humraaz, the characters are greedy or malevolent with no justification to boot.

There are too many songs with a couple like "Bardasht nahin hota" standing out. Johnny Lever also manages not to jar and the comedy is kept at a minimum considering Abbas Mustaan erroneously believe to relieve the intensity of a thriller, comedy must be introduced (which almost took over Daraar). This is one of their more accomplished efforts and well worth a look.