VAMAN how did the movie go according to the true incident? Did it keep it in respect, or totally different?

Revisiting 'shootout' locale
27 May, 2007 l 0025 hrs ISTlBella Jaisinghani/TIMES NEWS NETWORK

MUMBAI: A conscientious security guard is wary of allowing unknown faces into Svati building. The modest four-storey building has turned into a tourist attraction for shoppers who throng Lokhandwala Complex in Andheri looking for a cheap bargain.

More than 16 years after the infamous shootout in which Maya Dolas and six other gangsters were killed, Mumbaikars are hunting out the spot where it all happened. But the film that has refreshed the incident in public memory is reviving unpleasant memories for its residents.

Shootout at Lokhandwala is a picture that not many residents of Svati and the surrounding societies in Apna Ghar are keen to watch. Despite producer Sanjay Gupta's submission that his movie is based on "true rumours", locals find it hard to dissociate it from their own traumatic experience of November 1991. They had even turned away the film crew when they came to ask if they could shoot in the actual spot where the encounter had occurred.

Building secretary Liladhar Latye says most residents see Shootout... as a commercial venture that has shown scant regard for their feelings. "Svati comprises small one room-kitchen flats. The residents are mostly middle-class Maharashtrians whose concerns are centred around livelihood and security. Just as they are recovering from the trauma, they see passersby wanting to tour Svati where the encounter occurred."

"The fact that the film has been named 'Shootout at Lokhandwala' is enough to revive memories that were suppressed for so long," says video film maker Anil Ahuja. "I am selective about the kind of films I watch, and I am not keen on this one right now." Ahuja occupies the ground floor apartment A-002 which the gangsters had rented a few months before the incident.

Interestingly, neighbours report that the gangsters lived ordinary lives, chatting with youngsters, indulging the kids and fighting over parking space so that nobody ever singled them out for attention. It is this that they find hard to live down, along with the fact that the gangsters knocked on their doors for shelter as they fled to the terrace to escape the police.

One of the women residents was so traumatised by a stray bullet that pierced her wardrobe that she was hospitalised for a few days.

Her neighbour, dental surgeon Ashish Gandhi recalls that he was in his clinic in neighbouring Aditi when he heard what he thought was a burst of firecrackers. "It was a little after Diwali, so I thought the kids were putting a Saturday afternoon to good use. I peered out from a broken window pane to see plainclothes ATS officers screaming to residents to dial the police control room. Within minutes, the area was taken over by the police who used the megaphone to warn us to stay indoors," he says.

As silence descended a little after 5 pm that day, residents saw bodies of the slain gangsters laid out in the compound.

^ Yes I agree with you I found the movie average. But the action scenes are not copies of any Hollywood movie the Hollywood doesn't have patent over the action scenes comon