Cast: Arjun Kapoor, Parineeti Chopra, Gauhar Khan, Anil Rastogi, Pravin Chandra
Rating:  ***
Direction: Habib Faisal

Fancy Romeo as a smalltown dada. Juliet is a strongwilled girl with a passion for politics. Just when you thought Will Shakespeare's ode to love in the time of clan wars had been exhausted as a formula in Bollywood, Ishaqzaade sets out to reorganise the basics.

That could be a cracker of a USP actually, if it was tapped the right way. With some imagination, Habib Faisal's new film would have actually rewritten the script on the filmy love story the same way Bobby and Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak did for their respective generations. Like these films too, Ishaqzaade tries setting a new template for romance without moving away from every cliché in the book.

The newness here is the politically volatile backdrop where the love story unfolds. For producers Yash Raj Films, forever associated with peddling romance as a commodity draped in the heroine's chiffon saris and on Alpine crests, Ishaqzaade's gritty milieu is a drastic departure indeed.

Writer-director Habib Faisal, returning after the brilliant Do Dooni Chaar, sets off with characters you have seen before, if you have lived in a Hindi heartland smalltown. Arjun Kapoor's cocky Parma is a local bully who unapologetically wears his badaa khandaan tag on his colourfully striped sleeves. Parineeti Chopra is the feisty Zoya, who belongs to a powerful political family Parma and his folks hate.

The violence that will form the backbone of their story is triggered off when Parma and his gang gatecrash a jashn at Zoya's mansion and take off with the mujra girl. Zoya avenges the shame with a tight slap on Arjun's face outside their college, leaving scope in the screenplay for an explosive chain of events.

Twist in the tale comes with the bond that the Muslim girl and the Hindu boy develop. Now, they find themselves on the run from their enraged families. Ishaqzaade tends to become politically incorrect in parts. The treatment meted out by the scriptwriters while portraying Parma's attitude towards Zoya, for instance, is grossly chauvinistic. But then, justly consider Faisal's bid to capture realism. When has the Hindi heartland ever been politically correct towards women? The pitfall for the film lies elsewhere. Bursting with drama quotient as the story idea is, the film never really comes alive. You get the odd moments that promise a crackling turn in the plot every now and then, but things never take off.

The overt thrust on violence doesn't leave much scope for chemistry but the greenhorn cast must be applauded. Arjun Kapoor's scoundrel Parma is believable. The scenestealer, however, is Parineeti. The prop actress of Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl gets to sink her teeth in her first fullfledged heroine's role here. Watch her go, you won't dismiss her as the 'other Chopra girl' anymore.