Supari

<p>Aryan Pandit lives a middle-class lifestyle with his family in , India, where the entire family depends on his salesman father’s earnings. He relocates to Mumbai’s St. Andrews College with big dreams of being wealthy and driving a red . He befriends three other middle-class youths: Papad, Mushy, and Chicken. He borrows money from Matka Rajan, gambles it, loses everything, and is unable to repay. As a result, Rajan sets his goons on him. Aryan goes to a man named Baba for help, who in turn takes him to Mamta Sekhari. Sekhari offers to hire him as a hitman, agreeing to pay him 20,000 for every killing so that he can repay his gambling loan. Aryan reluctantly accepts, is trained by Baba to shoot a gun, and kills his first target, none other than Rajan himself. He tells his friends about his good fortune, and they join forces with him. In all killing contracts, they are provided with a photograph and the location and are instructed to look at the photo just 15 minutes before killing the person. In this manner, the friends enjoy their newfound wealth. When Aryan’s , Dilnawaaz, finds out, she wants him to quit. He does, but his friends refuse to let go of this easy money and luxurious life. Shortly after that, the trio are given a contract; before the killing, they look at the photograph of Aryan. The trio knows that it is too late to back out of this ‘supari’ ( ). Soon events take a worse turn as one by one they get killed. Chicken commits suicide, and a gun battle ensues where Papad and Mushy are killed by Sekhari’s men. Aryan puts everything to an end by killing Mamta Sekhari and Baba once and for all. Director Padam Kumar originally signed for the lead role in the film but replaced him with Uday Chopra after Rampal became a huge star and had a certain image following the release of the latter’s debut film (2001). The music was composed by , with lyrics written by and . received generally mixed reviews from critics. Shahid Khan from gave the film a 7/10 rating and praised the direction, editing and performances, especially that of Nandita Das, while criticizing Chopra’s performance in a few scenes, the background score and the ending. Mithun Verma from similarly gave a 7/10, praising the characterizations, performances and shootout sequences, while criticizing the performances of Chopra and Das, and the editing. On the other hand, from gave the film a 1/5 rating, feeling the screenplay and characterizations were “faulty” and found the action sequences ordinary. However, he praised the dialogues, songs and performances. from also gave it a 1/5 rating and criticized the performances, dialogue and overabundance of characters, while praising Dev’s performance and the cinematography. Saibal Chatterjee from similarly gave it 1 star and felt Chopra was “terribly miscast” for the role. opened with 0.45 crore on the first day of release. It grossed 1.25 crore in its first weekend, and 1.85 crore in its first week. The film’s closing collections amounted to 2.65 crore. It was one of the biggest of 2003.</p>