The Korean Oldboy was OK but IMHO this version is much better. There is more atmosphere and it really holds your attention from start to finish. Whoever prefers the original is entitles to their opinion, but songs are always remade by sometimes better singers, so why not films? How amazing 14 years of hatred and desire for revenge can change when the victim realises finally why he was locked up for so long. My only criticism of this film is where justice for the suicide of a school girl is metered out by making sure the victim's undiscovered daughter is to lose her virginity. Perhaps in Indian custom the latter is as bad as losing a daughter i don't know. Acting by Sanjay Dutt and the rest of the cast was amazing and i hope to see more films from India like this one soon.

Many people have said it. I feel it bears saying again. I am an Indian, and I am ashamed of Zinda. I don't care whether the cinematography is brilliant or not, whether the acting (acting? john abraham? really?) is great or not.... i say gimme enough money, and even i can cut, copy, paste from any classic, 'indianize' it, and make myself the newest hotshot director on the block. To those who say that Sanjay Gupta has done a good thing by bringing this kind of cinema to Indian audiences I have only one thing to say:If that sorry excuse for a human being (a.k.a Sanjay Gupta) really wanted Indian audiences to have access to good movies, he should have bought - BOUGHT Mr. Gupta, not stolen - the rights to make an official remake.What you have done is plain and simple stealing, and you ought to be treated like any ordinary thief.Oh, and in case you're wondering: Zinda as a stand alone movie is also crap. In Oldboy, one is never left feeling as if any threads are loose, that any part of the story is not explained. In Zinda, one is never convinced by any explanation given to cover up the gutless Gupta's substituting the incest storyline with his ham effort.

OK there is no point in shouting that Zinda is frame-to-frame copy of "Oldboy", a lot of keyboard skills have been put to test already.Zinda - it is dark and it is gory to its Bollywood best. And its apparent that Sanjay Gupta has put in his best efforts. You will cringe when you look at hammer after watching the movie.Sanjay Dutt attempted hard but a couple of things did not fall into place. Only the suave John Abraham could have carried off the role. Lara Dutta was a misfit as taxi driver and so was her unbelievable character. I think she attempted Hema Malini of Sholay. And I almost forgot about Mahesh Manjarekar. I know that you guys run a mutual admiration society but is it absolutely necessary to make appearances in all of your buddies films? Cut it out. And oops I forgot about Celina Jetley as well – apologies. Why the movie is based abroad? It could have been in any part of India so that the audience can easily relate to. Even the lookout for the taste of food (some South-East Asian) was hard to relate. It appears that the brainstorming sessions are a mere farce and are akin to Dilberts comic strip. Finally, though the movie is dark – there are a few things which have been intentionally left out from the original especially when the main protagonist has been living in isolation for 14-years. Possibly because it has never been attempted on Bollywood yet, Indian audience is not yet ready, censorship rules or Sanjay Dutt's public image. Anyways, it wont be long enough.... the face of Bollywood is rapidly changing. A very different movie catering to only a section of audience.

Even as I am writing this, I can just imagine self proclaimed intellectuals salivating over the thought of ripping this comment to shreds. Well, to all you wonderfully smart people, I hope this comment gives you ample opportunity for this kind of mental masturbation.To start off, YES, I HAVE SEEN OLDBOY. So I know that for all its disturbing thematic elements (incest, torture, mutilation, to name a few), it is a brilliant, visceral film that leaves you staring at the screen for a good 10 minutes after the credits have rolled. But to compare a Bollywood film like Zinda to a work of art like Oldboy is like comparing a 4 year old kid's essay to Shakespeare. There is no way Sanjay Gupta could have matched up to the original, given not just the fact that he just isn't as good as Chan Wook Park, but also that quite a few of the film's themes cannot be digested by the Indian audience. Context! Context, people! On its own, when not submitted to comparative scrutiny (oh I can see you film buffs getting worked up now!), the film is, from a technical perspective, quite a polished product. Acting is just fine, and quite realistic, though the supporting characters, especially Mahesh Manjrekar and Lara Dutta, make the ride a bit bumpy. Technically, the film is brilliant (again, I'm treating this as a stand alone product), and I personally enjoyed the one shot corridor scene equally in both movies (guilty of comparison here). What really lets the film down is the writing. After building up the audience's curiosity, the film completely blows it when it comes to revealing John Abraham's motives for doing what he does. The flashback is handled in a very ham-handed fashion, the motive, when revealed, just doesn't seem convincing enough, and we seriously need good child actors! The writing fails again when we get to the end, where it seems like the writers just looked at their watches and decided that it was time the movie ended.In essence, yes, the film is a complete ripoff of Oldboy, and the nothing, not the acting, not the direction, nothing at all, matches up to Oldboy, but if you must have a bad analogy, think of this as something similar to what 'The Departed' did to 'Infernal Affairs' (and if anyone thought Departed was a good film, make sure you never run into me or I will morph into a finger wielding, hateful comment writing SOB sooner than you can say 'plagiaristic, over-hyped crap'!) Coming back to the point, Zinda exposes the common Indian audience to a kind of cinema that they have never seen before. It's like 'art cinema for dummies', and we need it. So all you smug self-proclaimed cinema PhDs out there, stop the madness and get some perspective!