Aatank (1996)

Director: Prem Lalwani

Writer: Sachin Bhowmick

Composers: Laxmikant Shantaram Kudalkar, Rameshwer, Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma, Kamal Singh

Starring: Nafisa Ali, Dharmendra, Girish Karnad, Amjad Khan, Kader Khan, Padma Khanna, Ravi Kishan, Hema Malini, Vinod Mehra, Ranjeet, Disco Shanti, Shamsher Singh

More info: IMDb

Plot: Jesu and Peter are childhood friends who live in a coastal village in India and depend on fishing as their livelihood. The community is oppressed by a powerful gangster named Alphonso. Jesu is an orphan, while Peter is brought up by his aunt and uncle, after the passing away of his mom. The community is all thrilled when Phillips finds black pearls off the coast. But then so does Alphonso, who asks his divers to get all the pearls, thus disturbing the ocean. Peter meets with Suzy D'Silva and they fall in love with each other, and get married. While enjoying a quiet swim on the sea-shore, Suzy disappears. A search is carried out, and a number of human body parts are recovered. With shock and horror this community finds that their livelihood is being threatened by a gigantic, virtually indestructible man-eating shark.

My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

JAWS (1975) is one of my favorite movies and I LOVE international cinema so when I heard there was a Bollywood Jaws rip-off I just had to jump on it.  It turns out I've been deceived.  It's not really a Jaws clone but it does have a giant shark.  The first half of the picture doesn't have dick to do with the shark.  It's a bunch of romance and fighting.  And as will all Bollywood films you get lots of great song and dance routines.  I love that stuff.

By Bollywood standards it's a short film at about two hours long.  It's only in the second half that we get any shark action and it's ridiculously awful - so bad that it's tons of fun.  Unfortunately most of it is relegated to the last 15 minutes so you're better off skipping ahead to that spot and ride that wave until the end.

The film is really amateurish from start to finish and it's really bad (I mean good) when it comes to the special effects.  If it weren't for the great songs, dancing and horrendously awful shark effects this picture would be unwatchable.  I did not have the luxury of an English option so I had to do my best to figure out what was going on.  Don't waste your time and watch the shark moments on YouTube.  It's six minutes of laughs.