19 years of Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena: When Feroz Khan and Fardeen Khan got together for rip-off of 14 con films

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Suparn Verma directed the 2005 crime thriller Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena, and it's been 19 years since the film hit the big screen. The film draws inspiration from 14 different con films, including the American productions Confidence and House of Games. Fardeen Khan, Feroz Khan, Koena Mitra, and Kay Kay Menon are the stars. Upon its release on November 18, 2005, the film bombed at the box office.

Plot summary

As the title suggests, Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena follows con artists Arjun Verma (Fardeen Khan) and Rohit Kapoor (Rohit Roy) as they go about their jobs. They steal millions of rupees from the wealthy accountant of a don named Sikander (Gulshan Grover) on their most recent adventure. After Kharbu's soldiers kill Rohit, Arjun flees to another city. After locating him, Kharbu demands that he repay the stolen amount plus interest or risk Sikander's retirement savings.

In order to get the millions, Arjun forms a special squad to assist him in carrying out the scheme. The crew also includes psychiatrist Natasha Kapoor (Koena Mitra), who falls for the group's scam but gets her vengeance in the end. In this scenario, we also encounter Jehangir Khan (Feroz Khan), who impedes Arjun's attempts to obtain the funds.

The police arrest Sikander on a drug charge, but it turns out that Arjun had planned to get revenge for Rohit's death all along. At the end of the film, Arjun departs with the Jahangir funds, accompanied by his friends and lover Natasha.

Director's vision and influences

The film is "a remake of every con film ever made, every real con you've ever read about," says Verma. It has absorbed all that I have ever witnessed.

The opening sequence of the film was a nod to Memento. In it, the coin goes into the palm. In the film, Amin Hajee's character pays tribute to Harpo Marx by not speaking but instead whistling. He dubbed Fardeen Khan the modern-day Amitabh Bachchan and drew parallels between the character and the work of French actor Alain Delon in Le Cercle Rouge and Le Samourai by Jean-Pierre Melville.

Numerous critics have raised the question of whether the film is a knockoff of the American film Confidence. In response, Verma stated that, although he acknowledged that the film had elements borrowed from Confidence, The Sting, and even Criminal, he simply felt that many other films had ideas. Although he did concede that the second half was comparable, he insisted the film was not a knockoff but rather a homage to several of his favourite films.