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Pics:Get ready for Acid Factory

Stills:Acid Factory

In an interview, director Suparn Verma said that it took him over a year and 55 drafts to come up with the final script for Acid Factory. Which is pretty surprising considering that Acid Factory is a faithful remake of a B-grade 2006 film called Unknown.

Like in Unknown, here too, a motley group of people wake up in a factory. Each one is suffering from temporary amnesia and cannot remember why they are in this decrepit, totally sealed space.

Verma and his producer Sanjay Gupta try and jazz up this premise with high-octane stunts and Diya Mirza in a dominatrix outfit but when the original is so mediocre, there’s only that far the copy can go.

Acid Factory runs on two parallel tracks. We see the people in the factory and we flashback to the events that led up to this situation.

Eventually, everyone’s memory starts coming back and all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

Verma, taking a cue from Gupta, works hard to make each scene and character sufficiently gritty and cool. So everyone is dressed in black leather, actors posture instead of act, slow motion is the preferred speed and the shades rarely come off – even when Fardeen Khan, who plays an undercover cop, is hanging by one hand to the back of a moving truck and shooting at his pursuers, his sunglasses stay on. There is some fun to be had here.

Verma and his action director Tinnu Verma choreograph a few high-adrenalin action sequences including one in which cars explode like popcorn – I stopped counting at 10.

But there is nothing that you haven’t seen before. Except perhaps Irrfan Khan playing a stylish villain with a sexy moll. Yes, him and Mirza even lock lips for a brief second.

The galaxy of actors strut their stuff but the material is too laden to lift. It is accomplishment enough that they manage to keep a straight face while saying dialogue such as: we have no memory, remember.

And my personal favourite: Gulshan Grover, playing a cop, looking grim and announcing: put all units on alert and get me a chopper. You could forgive the sheer silliness of the enterprise if the film delivered enough bang for the buck but Acid Factory can’t even manage that. See it if you must.