Zinda

Software engineer Balajeet Bala Roy (Sanjay Dutt), is happily married to Nisha Roy (Celina Jaitly), with whom he is having a baby. Bala is suddenly captured by unseen assailants and imprisoned in a cell. He is kept in total isolation for 14 years without knowing who imprisoned him or why. While in captivity, he practices martial arts which he learns from watching T.V.

, with the intention of using it against the people who captured him. He is finally released, again without explanation, and sets out for revenge.He befriends a taxi driver named Jenny (Lara Dutta), who helps him track his kidnappers. Bala tracks down the restaurant that had served his food during his entire captivity and follows a delivery moped to his captors. Bala discovers that he was held in a private prison where people can pay to have others incarcerated.

Bala tortures the owner Wong Foo (Rajendranath Zutshi) for answers by plucking out his teeth with a claw hammer; he then finds out he was imprisoned for talking too much, and fights his way out of the building. Bala is injured during the fight, but a mysterious hooded man saves him and takes him to a taxi. The hooded man turns out to be Rohit Chopra (John Abraham). Soon Wong Foo kidnaps Jenny and tortures her. He threatens to remove Balas teeth with his own clawhammer, but is interrupted by Rohit.

Bala takes refuge with Jenny, and they have sex. Bala is informed that his daughter is alive. Balas friend Joy (Mahesh Manjrekar) is killed, and Bala learns his kidnapper which is none other than Rohit.Rohit reveals his reason of kidnapping Bala: they went to high school together, where Bala had lusted after Rohits elder sister Reema. After Reema rejected him, Bala spreads a false rumour that she was a whore.

She became the laughing stock of their school, and committed suicide by setting herself on fire. Rohit blamed Bala for her death, and engineered his imprisonment as revenge. Rohit tells Bala that he killed Nisha, and sent his daughter, who is now 14, to a brothel. Bala beats Rohit up and knocks him off of a balcony, but grabs his hand and pleads with him to tell him where his daughter is. Defiantly, Rohit lets go of Balas hand and falls to his death.

Bala then kills Rohits goons and Wong Foo. In the end, Bala learns that his daughter is safe; Rohit had lied to him about selling her to a brothel to torment him. He finds her sitting on a river bank, and goes to meet her.The film received mixed reviews from critics, although John Abraham and Sanjay Dutt were singled out for praise.Bollywood Mantra praised the film saying, Zinda is a film that appears to be darkest movie ever by Sanjay Gupta.

A hard hitting flick shot in Bangkok, it tells you a story never told before on Indian screen. And to make Sanjay Guptas imagination come alive, who else but Sanjay Dutt is roped in to play the lead role. One of the most challenging roles ever by the deadly Dutt, it is sure to haunt you long after the screening is over. Narbir Gosal of PlanetBollywood.com gave the film a rating of 7.

5/10, praising the performances by Sanjay Dutt and John Abraham, while criticising the fact that much of the dialogue and story was copied from Oldboy.Futuremovies.com gave the film 6/10 and said, Technically and style-wise Zinda is flawless, and praised Dutts performance, saying it is probably the pinnacle of his career. Subhash K Jha gave it 2.5/5 and stated that the film belongs to Sanjay Dutt.

If the adventure-action genre in Hindi cinema needed a wake-up call, this is it. Nikhil Kumar of Apunkachoice.com gave the film 0.5/5 stars, saying Sanjay Guptas movie Zinda works primarily because of its gripping, although unoriginal, story and a noteworthy acting performance by its frontman Sanjay Dutt.