uHollywood

Aitraaz tackled something new for Hindi films – namely sexual harassment in the workplace by a woman. The film deals with how it can potentially affect a man, his career, his marriage, his reputation and his whole life.

~*~ CAST/CREW ~*~

Aitraaz stars Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra with Paresh Rawal and Amrish Puri in strong supporting roles. The film is directed by Abbas & Mustan Burmawalla and produced by Subash Ghai and was released in September 2004. It’s classification is a 12 but some parents might not want children of that age to watch due to the steamy nature of some scenes. The film is 2 hours and 40 minutes long which some people might find a bit lengthy for their liking.

~*~ PLOT TEASER ~*~

Raj Malhotra (Kumar) meets Priya (Kapoor) by a bizarre accident when she comes to work for him as a legal assistant (he thinks she’s a cleaner). Raj quite swiftly falls head over heels in love with Priya and vice versa. The woman who was supposed to be his cleaner actually goes to his neighbour’s house who is a lawyer (Rawal) and ends up working for him, falling for her and marrying him too.

Now, happily married to Priya and very successful at his job, Raj goes to work one fine day[ expecting to receive a senior promotion. On arrival at the office he finds that his much older boss (Puri) has married a much younger woman Sonia (Chopra) who happens to be his very passionate and money-hungry ex girlfriend. You see flashback scenes of how their relationship developed and then broke down, ending with her aborting his baby against his wishes and much to his distress.

With one thing and another Raj is tricked into going to his bosses house in his absence to discuss work related matters with Sonia and she attempts to seduce him, initially he’s very turned on but he stops himself before it goes too far and she threatens him furiously for leaving her unsatisfied. Things turn nasty at work the following day when she accuses him of attempted rape and then it is turned around when he accuses her of wielding her power over him sexually as a junior employee.

The rest of the story is about how things escalate very swiftly to look really bad for Raj and how friends[ he’s known for years turn against him and how his wife Priya reacts initially, then gradually how they fight the very manipulative Sonia together against all odds.

~*~ ACTING ~*~

Priyanka plays her part with real fervour in this film. She plays the part of the vampy