Ultimately, however, Bachna is a well-made rom-com, and will serve you allright as the afternoon break on a weekend. Embracing the formula as it does, it has a certain joie de vivre that pervades through. It may get silly as it progresses, but that only brings it down from instant classic to good timepass, and if that could have been said about half the films this year, I wouldn’t be as curmudgeonly with this one.

Though Lakhia tries to infuse all the tricks in the last great shootout in the film, there are still moments that are strikingly resonant, mostly because the actors themselves leave their entire hammy dialog and the bad posturing for some real life brutality. It appears to me that they trusted their action choreographer more than their director.