Sins (2005) User Reviews

A pity

[ijzeren_jan · 4/10 · 23 May 2010]

In my experience, Sins is not half as bad as some describe it. Frankly, I don't care whether a movie is a "remake" or "based on the storyline" of another movie at all. Strangely, when Hollywood makes a remake of a European or Asiatic movie, we all should treat that as a great honor, but when the same thing happens in India, we start yelling about plagiarism or ripoffs. I don't buy that.

The problem with this movie is not that it is a remake, not that the story is bad. No, the problem is the language. Why on Earth was it made in English? To be honest, all those English dialogs spoken on the South Indian countryside have a really bad effect on the credibility of the whole story. And the worst is: it's quite obvious that Shiny Ahuja, the main protagonist of the movie, doesn't know the language well enough to perform in a relaxed manner. I generally like Shiny as an actor, but in this movie his acting is so horribly wooden and clumsy, that I can't help getting the impression that he had to waste too much energy on trying to remember his English text. All in all, it's sad to see how an otherwise great actor becomes the one who actually kills a potentially good movie.

Plagiarised

[shyamasdaughter · 4/10 · 16 March 2006]

Who's watching Mexican cinema now? First Yuva paid "homage " to Amores Perros now it looks like El Crimen de Padre Amaro (with Bernal) has been "reimagined" as Sins. Not that Mexican cinema is the only source for even critically acclaimed films - Bhansali's Black and Khamoshi were both influenced by foreign films. And there are countless other movies that do not register but may well be copied. India may make the highest number of movies every year but its also film-making at its laziest and shoddiest. But Shiny Ahuja is definitely an actor to watch for. He was wonderful in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi and one hopes he doesn't get sucked into the Bollywood assembly line.

Wildness in making Sex and Love

[marketing-xprt · 5/10 · 8 June 2011]

This movie dealt a severe blow to my enthusiasm for Shiny Ahuja. It was dull, moved at a snail's pace, and was punctuated by psychotic screaming episodes from Shiny. Set in southern India, it wasn't a Bollywood movie, having no singing/dancing and all English dialog. But with the studio dubbing and sound quality at the lowest level of pathetic, I was wishing it was subtitled.

Plot spoilers: A country priest (in Kerala) befriends a young woman, gets her pregnant, and has her get an abortion. If this sounds familiar, it's the basic plot line of the controversial Mexican film El Crimen de Padre Amaro, which starred Gael Garcia Bernal. Since I was familiar with that film, and Sins had reached that point after about an hour, I thought the end was in sight. But no, Sins digressed and ended up running 3 hours (I just checked IMDb, it was actually only 138 minutes but believe me it seemed like 3 hours).

It becomes common knowledge in town that she is the priest's woman, she has a couple more abortions while waiting for him to leave the order and marry her, and when he decides not to he has her married off to some guy for the appearance of respectability, becoming insanely jealous that she might actually have sex with her new husband. The crazier he gets, the more interested in her new husband she becomes. Her mother helps her and the husband run away, she gets pregnant, Shiny kills her mother for helping them run away and then has her killed when she comes back to town for the funeral. The cops are onto him after the first murder and he is sentenced to hang. IOW, fun factor = zero.

With a plot like that it should have at least moved quickly, but besides being generally depressing it was slooooowwww, with poor acting, and not enough of Shiny looking even normal, let alone good, to redeem it. There was so much (unerotic) sex, violence and controversial subject matter, it made me suspect it was made just for the shock and titillation value. Any moments of humor were unintentional, like the steam whistle of a teakettle sounding off during a sex scene. Hasn't that been on the Over-Abused Movie Cliché List since at least 1945? And Shiny was very stilted and unnatural in the beginning (not helped by the poor dubbing), and totally OTT when he went off the deep end. A disappointment all around.

It's so bad it's good

[clever_nickname · 17 October 2006]

Sins is a good candidate to become a cult movie - something along the lines of Plan Nine From Outer Space. It's so awful that it's actually hilarious. Bad acting made even worse by a dreadful script. I don't understand why the director felt the need to make the movie in English. Why not have Hindi dialogues or maybe Malayalam itself with English subtitles, since the story takes place in Kerala? The base story is not all that bad...it had the potential to be at least a mediocre movie. But somehow it has turned out to be a really terrible one. I would still recommend this to anyone who's looking for a good laugh as long as you don't expect anything more than that. Well, maybe couple of titillating scenes too.

A different cinema.... Controversial and Bold.....

[SumanShakya · 5/10 · 8 May 2016]

"Sins" presents the darker side of a catholic priest and is bold enough to expose a truth. Perhaps for the reason, the film also got banned. The film shows the evilness of a priest who becomes romantically involved with a lady, gets her pregnant, uses her for his sexual lust, and even commits a murder. Vinod Pande, who in '80s has given off stream movies in the '80s like "Ek Baar Phir" and "Yeh Nazdeekiyan" which both had the extra marital affairs in the centre, narrates the story with the same clarity and tautness. The dialogues are done in a simple English and feels like reading a story, without songs or dance number. Ignoring the controversy or the plagiarism the film got criticized for, the film appears a good effort in terms of its story telling which is clear, colloquial, and scorches the screen with an ugly truth, for which the film can be recommended for the mature viewers, due to its explicit content. There are also flaws in the film, like its slow pace and Shiny Ahuja's performance.

Rating: 2 stars out of 4

Love, Obsession, Treason, Murder - and a Priest

[rekha-r-nair · 7/10 · 22 July 2005]

Imagine a priest preaching about leading a virtuous life and then having a parallel existence defying all the preaching. Its no surprise that all the Christian organizations made so much noise over it!! But it is, by far, the most boldly made movie I have seen from an Indian director/producer. The story line was amazing. Its sad that people would give any amount of money to see SRK say 'K-K-K-Kiran' but no one wants to see a movie where they are portraying a priest and his conflicts between his wants and vows.

Shiny Ahuja does a brilliant performance as the priest. I could not believe that it was actually his first movie! He portrayed all the shades of the character so beautifully. The actress (did not catch her name) was not really that impressive. Nice body... but acting needs to improve a lot. The background score was good too...

I am amused as to why so much noise was made over this movie. Come on, a priest is also a human being. It is just human to slip up and make mistakes. Why do people have to generalize it and protest?? No one said that all priests are like this. It is just the story of one man who obviously was not ready for a life of celibacy. As far as the direction goes, I think Vinod Pande did a terrific job in keeping the movie from becoming just a skin flick. He concentrates on the story line and follows it to completion with amazing grace.

This film is based on "El crimen del padre Amaro" (2002)

[shamik_ghosh-1 · 17 April 2010]

If you have seen the Latin American film "The Crime of Father Amaro" you will surely going to get the similarities. The original Argentinian film is much better than this one. Shiny Ahuja is a good actor but the film was not successful. I feel you should watch the Carlos Carrera film "The Crime of Father Amaro"(2002). It is more interesting and has a more complex structure. In both the films there is a young and handsome priest. Who falls in love with a sensual girl in the parish. The girl got pregnant. The priest got confused. He wanted to get rid of it by abortion. In that process the girl got died by excessive bleeding. After watching these two films, I can only say that in this world there is no fixed set of morality. Life is painful.