NO ONE KILLED JESSICA (2011)

No One Killed Jessica is a 2011 Bollywood film starring Rani Mukerji and Vidya Balan, produced by UTV Spotboy and directed by Raj Kumar Gupta, who had earlier directed the acclaimed film Aamir (2008).


The film has music by Amit Trivedi, who also composed the soundtrack for Dev D (2009). Vidya Balan plays the character of Jessica’s elder sister, Sabrina Lal, Rani is set to play a reporter.Upon release, the film met with positive critical and box office reception.


The political thriller, set in New Delhi, is based on the media coverage of the controversial Jessica Lal murder case. The director clarified that the title and the script are actually inspired by a headline carried out by The Times of India in 2006, when the accused in the infamous murder case were acquitted by the lower courts, leading to nationwide protests, reopening of the case and subsequent sentencing of the accused, and not the case per se.


The film, No One Killed Jessica is based on the true story of Jessica Lall, a Delhi-based model, who was shot in 1999 at a New Delhi restaurant by Manish Bhardwaj, alias Manu, the son of an influential Haryana politician.

Jessica, along with actor and model Vikram Jai Singh, was closing the restaurant's bar for the evening when approached by Manu and two friends. Infuriated by Jessica's refusal to serve them drinks after the bar closed, Manu fatally shoots Jessica. The powerful family connections of the accused intimidated witnesses. It then became an uneven battle between Jessica’s family, especially her sister Sabrina and the politically-backed and influential family of the accused.

In February 2006, the court acquitted Manu and other accused due to lack of sufficient evidence setting off a public outcry and widespread protests. The backlash from the initial acquittal forced the re-opening of the investigation. In December 2006, Manu was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The film was released on 7 January 2011. It received positive reviews from critics. No One Killed Jessica opened quite well and got positive feedback from audience.The film recovered its cost before release through satellite and music rights.

No One Killed Jessica received a number of positive reviews. Nikhat Kazmi of the Times of India gave the movie four stars out of five stating, "No One Killed Jessica is a film that unleashes a myriad emotions in you. The hard facts of modern India's most written about case are well known by almost everybody but the director Rajkumar Gupta's (he'd already displayed his talent in Aamir) dramatic handling of the crime, the criminals, the crusaders and the victim creates a storm, once again."Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama also rated the film 4/5 and described it as "a remarkable blend of facts and fiction inspired by a series of real-life episodes, which has thankfully not been presented as a tedious biography or in a mind-numbing docu-drama format." Anupama Chopra of NDTV while rating the film three stars out of five wrote, "No One Killed Jessica is several notches ahead of the tripe we’ve been subjected to in theatres lately." Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN gave the film two and a half stars out of five and wrote, "With the exception of a few powerful scenes that leave you with a genuine lump in your throat, Gupta goes for full-on melodrama that doesn't always ring true." Mayank Shekhar of the Hindustan Times gave it three stars and argues, "Can a feature film, in a couple of hours flat, ever detail an entire truth about anything? Possibly not. But it can entertainingly dramatise it. That’s what the fine director-writer and a consummate raconteur here (Rajkumar Gupta) manages to do." Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan wrote that this film is a "pertinent, media friendly and brave effort by the makers. The performances living up to the title and story of the film." 

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THE NEXT THREE DAYS (2010)

The Next Three Days is a 2010 thriller film directed by Paul Haggis and starring Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks.

It was released in the United States on November 19, 2010. It was filmed on location in Pittsburgh. It is a remake of the 2008 French film Pour Elle (Anything for Her) by Fred Cavayé and Guillaume Lemans.

Plot summary

Lara Brennan (Banks) is convicted of murdering her boss after an altercation at work. Following the failure of her appeal, Lara's husband John Brennan (Crowe), a professor at a community college, becomes obsessed with the idea of breaking her out of jail, while their son Luke ceases to acknowledge her during their prison visits.

John consults Damon Pennington (Liam Neeson), a former convict who successfully escaped from prison seven times. Damon advises John to study the prison, saying "every prison has a key". Damon also warns him that the initial escape from the prison will be easy compared with avoiding capture after the escape. To that end, John must obtain false passports, new social security numbers, and a "truckload of cash" to have a chance of success. Damon also suggests going to an unpopular foreign destination for Americans. John learns Pittsburgh's time to lock-down the city's exits after a call is made to do so: 15 minutes for the city center and 35 minutes for all interstates, secondary roads, and stations or airports.

John contemplates several ideas that don't pan out and is defeated more than once, but latches onto a solid plan and the necessary paperwork after some painful efforts. John falsifies and plants blood work results indicating that his wife is in a state of hyperkalemia, and she is transferred to the hospital. He follows the ambulance and helps her to escape although she is doubtful and reluctant, motivated only by the idea of her son being without either parent.

With the police getting some lucky breaks, they are hot on John and Lara's trail through a series of chases. Throughout the film, John is shown assembling maps, photographs, notes, and other papers on a wall of his house. He tears them down and stuffs them into several garbage bags before leaving to rescue Lara, leaving one bag in the trash outside his home, and the rest in a dumpster some blocks away. As it turns out he did this selectively to misguide the detectives regarding their final destination. They have an uncomfortable moment at passport control, as a Canadian officer examines their passports and glances at the page of photographs showing people to stop. He allows them to pass. The shift changes, and as they walk down the hall, their photos are added to the list. An international flight is delayed, but the police were after the wrong destination.

At the end of the film, the family ends up safe in Caracas, Venezuela in a comfortable country house. Back in the United States, a detective who had attempted to catch Brennan returns to the scene of the crime although it had been some years since the crime occurred. Using his forensic skills, he manages to put together what really happened. It turns out that the killer of Lara's boss was really a hooded young woman after money, and a series of coincidences led to Lara's conviction. He remembers Lara saying a button popped off as she was leaving, and notices that it is raining just as it had been the night of the murder. He tosses a piece of paper in the current where the button would've fallen off, and finds it leads into a gutter. He searches the gutter but is unable to find the button. "You really thought you were gonna find it?" his assistant asks. But it turns out the button was there, buried under grime and dust, and the detectives miss it by seconds.

Cast

Russell Crowe as John Brennan

Elizabeth Banks as Lara Brennan

Brian Dennehy as George Brennan

Olivia Wilde as Nicole

Lennie James as Lieutenant Nabulsi

Aisha Hinds as Detective Collero

Daniel Stern as Meyer Fisk

RZA as Mouss

Jason Beghe as Detective Quinnan

Kevin Corrigan as Alex

Liam Neeson as Damon Pennington

Allan Steele as Sergeant Harris

BOX OFFICE :

The film earned $21,148,651 at the box office in the United States. Internationally it earned $41 million, for a worldwide total of $62 million