Knock Out (2010 film)

Knock Out is a 2010 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film directed by Mani Shankar. The film stars Sanjay Dutt, Irrfan Khan and Kangana Ranaut, and is an unauthorized remake of Phone Booth. In October 2010, the Bombay High Court ordered the film's producers to pay a portion of their revenues to 20th Century Fox, who own the rights to Phone Booth. Released on 15 October 2010, the film was a commercial failure.

Plot
Bachubhai (Irrfan Khan) has come to a phone booth to make a call. He is interrupted by a man who interrupts him again. Bachubhai tells him to stop interrupting. While moving out of the phone booth after the call, the phone rings. Bachubhai picks up the call only to get surprised by an unknown caller who ensures that Bachubhai does not leave the phone booth until his motive of calling is achieved. Another man interrupts who is shot dead by that unknown person from a far away building. After seeing the incident, police, public, and news reporter Nidhi Srivastav (Kangana Ranaut) arrive. Everyone is seeing everything as Bachubhai has been told to do what the person on the phone call says or he will shoot him. Later, Police officer Sushant Singh is transferred, and another encounter specialist has been called. Meanwhile, Bachubhai, who is working for a corrupt politician who has 320 billion black money, has been told to transfer the money on a government account to give back the money to the public. Bachubhai does everything as the phone caller says. At the end of the movie, the money has been transferred to the public account, and it is revealed that Veer Vijay Singh (Sanjay Dutt) is a Chief of Investigation Bureau. Bachubhai, after transferring the money, nothing happens to him.

Cast

 * Sanjay Dutt as Veer Vijay Singh, Chief of Ops, IB/Colonel Gill
 * Irrfan Khan as Bachchoo Bhai / Tony Khosla
 * Kangana Ranaut as Nidhi Srivastava, India TV reporter
 * Gulshan Grover as Bapuji
 * Rukhsar Rehman as Lakshmi Khosla, Tony's wife
 * Sushant Singh as Inspector Vikram
 * Asif Basra as Raghav
 * Bikramjeet Kanwarpal as editor, Nidhi's boss
 * Kurush Deboo as Sandwichwala
 * Abhay Shukla as Prithvi
 * Shankar Sachdeva as Mishra
 * Shriya Sharma as Sweety Khosla, Tony's daughter
 * Naseer Abdullah as Bhalla
 * Namrata Thapa as Roshni
 * Apoorva Lakhia as Ranvir Singh
 * Ashraful Haque as Junkie
 * Shreya Narayan as Jesse
 * Aparna as Bharti
 * Silvio Simac as fighter on terrace
 * Rajendra Jadhav as Gundurao
 * Vinay Verma as Commissioner
 * M D Pasha as Suvarna
 * Hussain Shaikh as Party President
 * Gary Warren D'souza as Swiss Bank Manager
 * Randheer Nahar as Pandey
 * Shivraj as RBI Officer

Controversy
The film was initially rumored to be a remake of the American film Phone Booth, which the producer Sohail Maklai denied. 20th Century Studios filed a complaint against the makers of Knock Out before the film's release. The Bombay High Court had initially passed an injunction against the film's release after watching both the films. However, the producers were allowed to release the film on appeal, and deposited INR 1.5 crore to the court.

The matter was reheard in March 2013, with the court decreeing the case and awarding INR 1.25 crore to Fox, further telling the producers of Phone Booth to not exploit their film in any manner whatsoever from 5 March 2013 onwards.

Reception
Nikhat Kazmi of The Times of India gave the film 3 stars out of 5 stars, noting "all the action transpiring around the phone booth" to be the only similarity with Phone Booth. Taran Adarsh from Bollywood Hungama gave the film 2.5 stars out of 5, similarly pointing out that "what follows after a point bears no resemblance to that film (Phone Booth)", and also found it similar to A Wednesday in spite of their different storylines. He praised the focused plot and the finale, while criticizing the film's occasional repetitiveness. Patcy N. from Rediff.com gave the film 1.5 stars out of 5, praising Irrfan Khan's performance, while criticizing the climax and the overall execution.

Soundtrack
The film's music was given by Gourov Dasgupta, with a background score by Atul Raninga and Sanjay Wandrekar. The soundtrack has five original tunes, one remix, and an alternate version of one song.