BOY, did I make a mistake!! I read the reviews on IMDb regarding "Torbaaz" and I thought "oh, that sounds pretty good". I could have watched it on Netflix for next to nothing but I decided most unwisely to buy a Blu-Ray disc before watching it there. Well, friends, Torbaaz may not be the worst movie I've ever seen but, if it isn't, it's bloody close!
There is only one aspect of Torbaaz that saves it from a score close to zero from me and that is the occasional views of the scenery in the locales where it was filmed and much of the cinematography in the rest of the movie. I'm guessing that it was actually filmed in India since, unusually, IMDb doesn't show filming locations for this one. Apart from the cinematography, the rest of the movie was, in my opinion, just woefully awful.
Clearly, it was trying hard to cash in on the success of the wonderful "Lagaan" from 2001. The basic plot was all but identical, the music could almost have been lifted from Lagaan and the final scene involving the game was a carbon copy.
Now, for the problems with Torbaaz. The acting was dire, especially from all of the kids involved as well as from the main character Naseer (Sanjay Dutt), the script was terrible, the plot was absolutely predictable and the direction pathetically bad. It's only the cinematography by Hiroo Keswani that prevents me from giving Torbaaz a real drubbing.
After I finished watching this lot of rubbish, I looked at the user reviews on IMDB and it became apparent very quickly that something rather strange has happened here. I have never before on IMDb seen so many one line (or possibly as much as two line) reviews for any movie, all of them giving ratings of 7, 8 and 9 out of 10. Then I looked at the reviews that rated the movie 2 out of 10 from what I believe were real people rather than Bots, and there was the answer. Others have also concluded that the overall score for this movie was deliberately inflated in some way, probably involving software, to give the impression that it's actually worth watching.
The fact is that very, very few people bother to review a movie at all without putting some thought and more than just a few words into the review. Some other reviewers also noticed the obviously fake reviews for this movie.
With the very greatest respect for what it is that you do IMDb, you have been spammed here with what I suspect are many hundreds of computer generated reviews praising this movie Torbaaz when I think few real people who bother to write reviews would rate this lot of trash well at all. IMDb, you really need to improve your anti-spamming, anti-botting software and your moderators need to pay much closer attention to the reviews that are submitted.
I will never, ever bother to sit through this again, even though the cinematography was quite lovely. This is definitely a movie for avoiding.
Generously, 3 out of 10
JMV.
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