Tagline: The first ever Bollywood Kung Fu comedy.
Chandni Chowk to China focuses on the epic heroic journey of Sidhu (Akshay Kumar), a simple cook from Chandni Chowk who longs to escape his dreary existence and looks for shortcuts with everything from astrologers and tarot readers to a magic potato, believing in anything and everything except himself. His fate changes when two strangers claim him to be a reincarnation of a war hero from the past and enlist him to come back with them to their village in China.
His opportunistic translator, Chopstick (Ranvir Shorey), tells Sidhu of the women, wine and princely existence that await him in foreign lands; what Chopstick doesn’t tell him is that he has become the village’s best hope to take on the vicious gangster Hojo (Gordon Liu), who has been terrorizing them.
Along the way, Sidhu meets Sakhi, played by Deepika Padukone (“Om Shanti Om”), a stunning TV model who has embarked on her own adventure to pay homage to the land of her birth, her dead father and twin. Padukone also portrays Sakhi’s long-lost twin sister, Meow. Soon, Sidhu realizes he is in way over his head and faces imminent defeat without a miracle. Only at his lowest point does he meet a Kung Fu master who can help Sidhu find his inner hero, set the village free, and pursue the love of his life.
About the Story
Sidhu (Akshay Kumar) is a lowly vegetable cutter at a roadside food stall in the Chandni Chowk section of Delhi, who consults astrologers, tarot card readers, and fake fakirs despite his foster father Dada’s (Mithun Chakraborty) exhortations. When two strangers from China claim him as a reincarnation of war hero ‘Liu Shen’ and take him to China, Sidhu, encouraged by trickster Chopstick (Ranvir Shorey), believes he will be feted as a hero, unaware of his own recruitment to assassinate the smuggler Hojo (Gordon Liu).
Sidhu travels to China with Chopstick. Along the way he meets Sakhi (Deepika Padukone), the Indian-Chinese spokesmodel known as Ms. Tele Shoppers Media, or Ms. TSM, who also appears in China. Her twin sister Suzy, known as the femme fatale Meow Meow, works for Hojo, not knowing Hojo tried to kill her father, Inspector Chiang (Roger Yuan). Sidhu, through a series of accidents, initially eludes Hojo, but Hojo eventually exposes him as a fraud.
Thereupon Hojo kills Dada, and Sidhu is beaten and urinated by Hojo. Injured and disgraced Sidhu vows revenge. He thereafter encounters an amnesiac vagrant, whom he later identifies to Sakhi as Inspector Chiang. Chiang later recovers his memory and trains Sidhu in kung fu. When Hojo again meets with Sidhu, Suzy injures Chiang; but upon seeing Sakhi, betrays Hojo.
Sidhu thereafter fights Hojo in single combat, eventually using a modified vegetable-cutting technique to overwhelm him. In the aftermath, Sidhu opens a vegetable stall in China, but is recruited to fight for some African pygmies. The film thereupon concludes with the announcement “To be Continued – Chandni Chowk to Africa”.
Chandni Chowk to China (2009)
Directed by: Nikhil Advani
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Chia Hui Liu, Mithun Chakraborty, Ranvir Shorey, Conan Stevens, Gauravv K. Chawla, Chang En Lu, Ina Vohra, Ranvir Shorey
Screenplay by: Rajat Arora, Shridhar Raghavan
Cinematography by: Himman Dhamija, Manikandan
Film Editing by: Aarif Sheikh
Costume Design by: Jaimal Odedra
Art Direction by: Kiran Khanna, Sandeep Suvarna
Music by: Bohemia, Shankar Mahadevan, Loy Mendonsa, Ehsaan Noorani
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence and martial arts action.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: January 16, 2009
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