Box Office: Akki’s Holiday A Blockbuster; Filmistaan Falters In Spite Of Accolades

Now that the poll fever has waned and the IPL is done with, Bollywood is back with a bang as the biggest entertainer of all. The first Friday of June has already witnessed a blockbuster in the making as Akshay Kumar-Sonakshi Sinha-starrer Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty has raked in the crores in the first four days and is fast nearing the Rs 50 crore mark.

The power-packed action thriller, written and directed by A.R. Murugadoss (he made his Hindi debut with Aamir Khan-starrer Ghajini), netted Rs 41.32 crore at the domestic box office after the first three days (trade figure stands at 40.23 crore) while first Monday collections amounted to Rs 8.02 crore, as per producer figure. The film also had a decent collection abroad during the debut weekend, grossing around Rs 10.61 crore. Holiday was released in more than 41 countries and has already surpassed the lifetime collections of Ragini MMS 2 (Rs 47 crore) and Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Bhoothnath Returns (Rs 39 crore).

Holiday netted Rs 12.18 crore on the opening Friday, making it the fourth highest opening day grosser of 2014, behind Salman Khan’s Jai Ho (Rs 17.55 crore), Ranveer Singh-Arjun Kapoor starrer Gunday (Rs 16.12 crore) and Arjun Kapoor’s 2 States (Rs 12.42 crore). The movie also witnessed the third highest opening weekend of the current year – behind Jai Ho (Rs 58.07 crore) and Gunday (Rs 40.26 crore).

Other two releases of the week include Nitin Kakkar’s critically acclaimed movie Filmistaan and Nisha Pahuja’s award-winning documentary The World Before Her. In spite of good reviews, Filmistaan fared poorly due to lack of promotion and star value, netting Rs 3.19 crore at home after Day IV. However, the movie netted better on first Monday, earning around Rs 54 lakh, compared to Rs 51 lakh on the opening Friday. We don’t have the numbers yet for Pahuja’s documentary.

Coming back to Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty, the Akshay-Sonakshi starrer has many a surprise in store, thanks to the twists and turns of a complex plot that interweaves some slick action and offbeat romance with serious issues like brutal terrorism and deep-rooted corruption. This one is a remake of the Tamil action thriller Thuppakki (starring Vijay and Kajal Aggarwal) that won both critical acclaim and box office success. The Hindi remake is equally enthralling, if not more, and Akki (Captain Virat Bakshy) rules the flick till the end. While the soldier on leave springs into action to save Mumbai from the clutches of the terrorists, his lady love Saiba (Sonakshi Sinha) turns out to be a professional boxer and not the traditional Indian girl he has assumed her to be. Overall, an enjoyable movie in spite of some logical fault lines in the story.



In sharp contrast, Nitin Kakkar’s directorial debut Filmistaan once again harks back to the untold realities of Indo-Pak relations, seen through the eyes of Sunny (Sharib Hashmi), a small-time-actor-turned-documentary-director. His journey through ‘enemy’ territory and the days spent there in captivity gradually unveil the human and cultural bonding that never fails to exist in spite of the political divide.

Finally, we come to Nisha Pahuja’s The World Before Her – a 90-minute documentary that follows the contrasting lifestyles of two women in search of empowerment. And in doing so, Pahuja reveals some disturbing questions that are bound to haunt today’s women. As critic Shubhra Gupta so rightly points out: There are not just two Indias... There are many more. What choices do the girls who live in those other Indias have? Do they have any at all?

Images: Indiatimes