By Taran Adarsh, 3 Feb 2012, 14:28 hrs IST

Released On: 3 Feb 2012

Directed By: Anant Mahadevan

Starring: Anant Mahadevan, Saurabh Shukla, Chandan Sanyal, Sanjay Swaraj, Navni Parihar, Ranjana Sasa, Khan Jahangir Khan

There’s a drought of writers. Good writers. Screenwriters who bring substance and value to writing. The absence of a talented name like Sujit Sen, who wrote a number of films for Mahesh Bhatt and who penned the script of STAYING ALIVE, makes you recognize this fact all the more. STAYING ALIVE, a black comedy that borrows from real life, may not be riveting in entirety, but it makes an effort to say something novel, something inventive.

Aditya [Ananth Mahadevan], a newspaper sub-editor, suffers his third heart attack and finds himself in the ICCU of a hospital. On the bed next to him is Shaukat Ali [Saurabh Shukla], a gangster, who has suffered his first heart attack. While Shaukat is petrified of dying, Aditya scoffs at death. Gradually, Aditya ends up changing Shaukat’s outlook towards life. As Shaukat raves and rants through his stay in the ward, it gradually dawns upon him that Aditya is right and the greatest feeling was, simply, to be alive.

Shaukat decides to turn a new leaf and even becomes a police informer after his discharge from the hospital. But, ironically, gets shot by his underworld rivals for having had a change of heart.

Till a few years ago, who’d ever imagined an entire film [almost] in the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit? Besides an interesting More >