Karisma begs Amitabh to help her beau in 'Zamaanat'

Mumbai, June 14 (IANS) After delivering two consecutive flops - "Darna Zaroori Hai" and "Family" - Amitabh Bachchan returns with "Zamaanat" this Friday.

Director S. Ramanathan launched the movie in 1996, but it had been put on hold for years for various reasons. It took Ramanathan almost a decade to clear all the hurdles and completed the project.

In "Zamaanat", Amitabh is paired with Vijayashanti, popularly known as 'lady Amitabh' in Telugu filmdom. Karisma Kapoor, who stopped signing films with the Bachchans after her break-up with Abhishek, is also in the movie. She plays Arshad Warsi's love interest.

"Zamaanat" is an unfulfilled love story of a top lawyer, Shiv Shankar (Amitabh Bachchan), who loses his vision in an accident and is forced to live a secluded life. He also loses contact with his beloved (Vijayashanti), a doctor by profession.

After the accident Shankar starts leading the life of a recluse. Years later, college girl Kajol (Karisma Kapoor) knocks at his door seeking his help to rescue her engineer beau Suraj (Arshad Warsi) who is falsely implicated in his own mother's murder case and put behind bars.

At first Shankar refuses to take the case saying he had quit practice but later takes it up because the young lovers remind him of his youth.

In the climax, Shankar makes a key witness confess the truth before the judge. The trial is carried out in public as the case snowballs into a major public issue.

Ramanathan thought of changing the title of the movie to "Godfather" but later decided to stick to "Zamaanat" as the other name might have given the impression that it is an underworld story.

The film, which appears similar to Rajkumar Santoshi's super hit "Damini", has been shot in Film City Madras and various other locations in the south.

In the last 10 years, Bollywood has come a long way and hence the film's chances of striking gold are minimum.

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Zamaanat