Bollywood's latest heart-throb Vivek Oberoi walked into Bollywood and stole a million hearts. His unconventional debut of an aggressive gangster in Ram Gopal Varma's underworld drama, 'Company', found favour with critics and masses. Then came a thriller, 'Road', and the romantic, 'Saathiya'. And it is now a role of Uday, a police inspector that he is playing in E Niwas's 'Dum'.

          Inspired by the Manoj Bajpai starrer Ghaath, Dum features a determined and moralistic cop who believing in his values clashes with the evils that exsist in the police force. "It's not a film that was made to teach people or revolutionise the country or change the way things are. It's not path-breaking, ground-breaking ... nothing like that. It's a simple entertainment film that when you go inside the theatre we want you to have so much fun watching it as much fun we had making it," said Vivek during the world premier of the film in Ahmedabad. And romancing the actor is former Miss Asia Pacific, Diya Mirza.

           The young man, Uday Shinde (Vivek Oberoi), who aspires to be a cop, takes on a local cop, Shankar (Atul Kulkarni). Uday beats up Shankar over Kaveri (Diya Mirza). Another inspector (Mukesh Rishi) who wants to settle scores with Shankar helps Uday in his battle while politician Govind Namdeo backs Shanker.

           Yana Gupta's raunchy number in the film has given the required outlook to the movie. Performances from Vivek Oberoi, Atul Kulkarni, Sushant Singh and Diya Mirza prop up the film. A spell-binding narrative of the grit and will power of a commonman Uday, Dum reveals his travails as he overcomes all the barriers that come in the way of achieving his goals of fighting the injustice and evil that blacken society

           Director E Niwas, speaking to ANI during the world premier of the film in Ahemdabad, was full of praise for Vivek. "He (Vivek) is a very good actor ... .intelligent actor who can understand the character ... who can understand the screenplay very well. And he has got incredible sense of characterisation. It all helps the director," he said.

           Same views were echoed by beauty queen Diya Mirza playing the character of Kaveri, a TV host who is willing to give up her life in order to gain Uday's heart. "Vivek is a superb performer. We all know that and he is a very easy person to work with, very comfortable to work with. I have learnt a lot from him. When I had started working on this film, no one knew of him. Now he is a super-star," said Diya.

           The music is by Sandeep Chowta of 'Mast' fame. Cine-goers from across the country lauded Vivek's spontaneous performance in the action flick. "Vivek Oberoi is really good. His actions are good. His role is also good and he has performed really well. The movie is also very good," said Kamna Mathur, a cine-goer in New Delhi. Now it remains to be seen whether the movie with a good opening manages to hold the audience's interest.

January 24,  2003