Bang Bang!

<p>After a treaty between and to expedite of Omar Zafar, a notorious terrorist, to India is passed, Viren Nanda gets killed and is burnt alive by Omar in during his escape from prison. Omar gets escorted by his trusted Hamid Gul and declares 5 million reward for an Indian thief to steal the . Rajveer Nanda, a mysterious person, steals the Koh-i-Noor and demands 20 million when Zafar and Gul aim to retrieve it. After a subsequent brawl with Gul’s men at a local restaurant in , Rajveer visits a restaurant and meets Harleen Sahni, a bank receptionist who dreams of finding true love and adventure in life. Harleen is waiting for her blind internet date Vickie Kapoor. Rajveer assumes the date and the pair fall for each other, but is forced to abandon her after being found by Gul’s men. Harleen leaves upon learning the truth and seeing the real Vickie who admits to his car and phone failing him, but on her way back home, she bumps into Rajveer again, and he seeks her help to remove a bullet. Before leaving, Rajveer drugs her with sedative water and informs her of scare tactics that some officials will try and coerce her into working against him. Rajveer’s prediction comes true as two government agents Zorawar Kalra and his informer, Bhola implore Harleen to travel with them to the , but instead head for a safe place. Taking note of Rajveer’s instructions, Harleen finds a pistol and holds them at gunpoint. Rajveer arrives and the pair escapes, but they meet Harleen’s manager Karan Saxena, who is shot in the leg by Rajveer. Harleen demands that she return home and tells that she made a huge mistake by trusting Rajveer, which leads to an argument over their loyalties, but Harleen eventually decides to stay upon realizing that he truly intends to protect her and proceeds to accompany him. During a visit to a outlet, Rajveer reveals that he stole the Koh-i-Noor, much to Harleen’s surprise, and the pair are immediately confronted by Zorawar and his team. Rajveer Harleen and escapes with her. Harleen wakes up at a beach after an unknown period on the run. When Harleen takes Rajveer’s phone to call her grandmother, the government officials and Gul’s men, led by Gul’s lieutenant Robert, tracks them down and a shootout ensues, which forces the duo to escape again after eliminating the officials and Robert’s henchmen. Harleen wakes up the following morning in , where she regains her faith in Rajveer after recognising his efforts in leading the escape. Later, they track Gul to a casino and after a plot involving Harleen, Rajveer ultimately kills Gul. Harleen is taken to the , where she meets Zorawar and his boss, Internal Secret Services Chief Narayanan as he gives her a tracking device to pinpoint Rajveer’s location and retrieve the Koh-i-Noor. After another argument on a bridge as they try to escape, Rajveer activates the tracking device and gives the Koh-i-Noor to Harleen, where he gets shot while jumping off the bridge. Harleen returns home and reunites with her grandmother, but begins to miss Rajveer; in a moment of epiphany, Harleen locates his house and meets Rajveer’s father Pankaj and his mother Shikha by posing as a for Pankaj’s book order. A tense moment results in Harleen trying to leave suddenly when she soon bumps into photographs of Rajveer, who is revealed by Shikha to be Jaiwant “Jai” Nanda, Viren’s brother; while Viren’s murder is confirmed, Pankaj refuses to accept the army’s version of the story behind Jai’s death as he pinpoints to a swimming championship trophy he had won in his young days, being the only person who was able to cross the lake in just one breath. Immediately outside her home, Harleen is kidnapped and taken to the interior of a , where she meets Zafar, who reveals that the surrendered diamond is a fake, while Zorawar turns out to be Zafar’s informer. Zorawar gives Harleen a in an attempt to find the location of the real diamond, but she deduces that Rajveer is alive and is arriving to kill Zafar and his men. At the same time, Rajveer, who was assumed dead, plants time bombs and silently eliminates Zafar’s henchmen, who have been posted outside the castle. Inside the castle, Rajveer confronts Zafar, revealing that the Koh-i-Noor was not stolen at all and that it was a joint operation between the and the ISS to apprehend Zafar. Rajveer reveals that he intends to avenge Viren’s death by killing Zafar. As the time bombs destroying the castle start going off, Zafar escapes with his remaining men while Rajveer escapes with Harleen, saving her all along. However, Zafar later blocks the duo, where he takes Harleen hostage and leaves with her on a . Enraged, Rajveer eventually catches up, shooting down the seaplane to the ground and ultimately Zorawar in the process. Following an intense confrontation, Rajveer kills Zafar after pushing Harleen out of the burning aircraft and jumps out of the seaplane, which explodes seconds after Zafar’s death. Rajveer loses consciousness and starts to drown, but is saved by Harleen as army officers airlift the duo. Rajveer wakes up in a hospital and is informed by Narayanan, revealed to be his real boss, that he will not be allowed to see Harleen or his own family. Posing as a nurse, Harleen administers a sedative, knocking Rajveer out, and the pair escapes. After an unknown period on the run, Rajveer reunites with his parents and finally introduces Harleen to them. Earlier reports had suggested that , who had made , , and in the past, planned to make his next film with , but Shahid Kapoor wanted to avoid comparisons with and did not have availability of his dates for the film as he had signed onto . rumouredly was also on board, but she eventually turned down the film. Soon news came that Siddharth Anand was planning a film with . In September 2012, Hrithik Roshan was confirmed to play the lead role, with playing the female lead. Hrithik Roshan started working on the film immediately after wrapping up and charged a fee for his performance in the film, which until then was the most any actor in had charged up front. The film was soon revealed to be the official adaptation of . In June 2014, the group known as the Cine Costume Make-Up Artist & Hair Dressers’ Association (CCMAA) authorized an official protest on the movie set of in protest of foreign make-up artist working on the movie for its lead actress, . The CCMAA and 15 of its members protested on the movie set as Daniel Bauer was not registered with the Union, despite the Union banning foreign artists working in Bollywood. The issue was resolved with the CCMAA granting Daniel Bauer full membership. In December 2012, it was confirmed that the official remake of would be titled . In March 2013, the film’s Kashmir schedule was cancelled. Shooting for the film began on 1 May 2013, with the film scheduled for release on 1 May 2014. Unique water action sequences were shot in and . In an interview with , Roshan spoke about the action sequences in the film stating, “I have pushed myself to the extreme for this stunt. This sequence called for mental and physical tenacity. The rush that I experienced while training and executing the sequence was out of the world. I was hooked to a sea plane while I did the stunt. I had trained non-stop to even attempt the sequence”. Roshan refused to use any body double to perform the stunts. Talking about another water action sequences, the film’s director revealed, “We can control the action we shoot on land, but while shooting at sea, you’re at the mercy of the tide. Three days before the shoot, Hrithik started practicing the stunts for five-six hours daily. It took us eight days to shoot the sequences in water. For another water action sequence, Hrithik trained for four days, before the shooting. He learnt to jetski with a speed boat pulling him along first. Then, an antiquated plane was brought in with an experienced pilot at the controls, so that it could be slowed down and speeded up at will.” In July 2013, one of the songs of the film, “Meherbaan” was shot in the city of in Greece and choreographed by . In , Roshan performed a stunt where he had to use a water jetpack called a and go 45 feet high in the sky and then dive down in the water. Roshan thus became the first actor in Hollywood or Bollywood to do a flyboarding stunt in a film. He was injured during this schedule and subsequently had to undergo a brain surgery for removal of a . Also, the Kashmir schedule of the film was delayed because of unrest in the valley. The delays caused the film’s release date to be postponed to 2 October 2014. There were reports that the film had overshot its budget to from a planned budget of around 80–90 crore. Anand denied such reports, saying “It’s funny! Yes, is a big-ticket film but its budget is as per the scale of the film. There’s no question of exceeding it.” The shooting resumed in January 2014, in , , , , and . The shooting schedule in Shimla went on for straight six weeks. The Manali bridge where the majority of scenes were shot, has become a grand tourist attraction and it was renamed as . Just before the Abu Dhabi segment of the film, a song shoot was completed at an open-cafeteria in , on 19 April 2014. Shimla was created in Film City, Mumbai to shoot a song and few action sequences for the film. The film was shot for 20 days in Film City with the lead pair. After wrapping up the Mumbai schedule, the filming team left for Abu Dhabi. The schedule of shooting was intense and action-packed. In Abu Dhabi, filming started early May, and took place at various locations in Abu Dhabi including the Corniche, Liwa oasis, Hyatt Capital Gate Hotel, Qasr al Sarab, Emirates Palace and Yas Island. In one of the chase sequences in the film, 120 cars were involved. The film also had used cars. Even after the brain surgery, all the stunts were performed by Roshan himself. The stunts were designed by Andy Armstrong and shot in Abu Dhabi. The Abu Dhabi segment of shooting was completed on 20 May in collaboration with . It is the first Bollywood film to be shot and co-produced in Abu Dhabi. The last leg of the film was scheduled in . One stunt in which Roshan is on water skis while being pulled along by a sky plane was shot in a lake in Prague. He trained for four days to shoot this scene. Shooting wrapped on 15 July 2014. While filming in Thailand, Roshan suffered a head injury from a stunt accident and underwent at the , done by to relieve . On the lines of the popular – one of the biggest trends of the year, the dare on social media, Roshan came up with the dare-to-do game to Bollywood co-stars , , , , , , , , , and on Twitter asking them to post videos of themselves doing a particular task and adding the hashtag #bangbangdare to it. Roshan even dared the smokers asking them not to smoke for 3 days. One of the companies challenged Roshan himself, where he was asked to buy bed sheets from their store and if he did, ₹500,000 would be donated to city hospitals. He took up the dare sportingly. While most stars take to television shows to generate buzz about their films, Roshan refrained from promoting his movie through reality TV shows. To protect the film from piracy, the makers of the film approached the Court of Piracy with the plea that the film should not be viewed on any device or broadcast on any platform through the Internet without their permission and submitted a list of 90 websites. The Court responded positively on that and restrained them all from making the film available on the Internet. A promotional based on the film was developed by and released the same year. The songs of the film were composed by , while the background score has been composed by in their final collaboration with director . The digital album rights of the film were acquired by . The album was preceded with three singles: “Tu Meri”, ” ” and “Bang Bang”. The soundtrack was released on 11 September 2014. All the songs were well received by audiences. The film released worldwide on 2 October 2014. received mixed to positive reviews from critics. gave 3.5/5 stars and wrote “If you are looking high-octane action scenes, sleek visuals, melodious music, should definitely be your pick for this extended weekend.” Meena Iyer of gave 3/5 stars and wrote “Bang Bang makes more noise and little sense. This desi adaptation of has charm in abundance because of its effervescent lead pair, but it lacks coherence.” Rajeev Masand on gave 2/5 stars and commented that “the film isn’t unwatchable, but certainly tests your patience.” Paloma Sharma of gave 1.5/5 stars and wrote “A worse official remake of an already bad original, Bang Bang is more noise and less sound.” Raja Sen from the same website agreed with Sharma and wrote that the film is “a stupid, stupid film trying to be slick, a B-grade film made on an A-list budget.”. rated it 1.5/5, calling Roshan “the eye candy of the film”. Worldwide, grossed ( ), becoming one of the highest-grossing . (Hindi) had a theatrical run for 5 weeks with a final domestic nett of around . The Tamil and Telugu versions of the film grossed around nett. earned $4.89 million overseas in its opening weekend. The biggest debut came from the UAE ($1.8 million), North America ($3.35 million), United Kingdom ($922,000). At the end of its theatrical run overseas, the film earned $13.97 million. The highest revenue came from Gulf ($4.46 million), US/Canada ($2.62 million), UK (£1.165 million) and Australia (Aus $457,000).</p>