When a seething Aamir Khan rams an iron pipe through a man’s stomach in the first few minutes of the film, you get an idea of what’s coming (in the original Tamil version, there’s apparently a tap attached to the pipe and when hero Surya turns it on blood comes dripping out) in the next three hours.

It seems only fitting that 2008’s biggest film will likely be a violent one. Yet, it’s an oddly comforting violence. Nobody wants to blow up the big city, religion doesn’t matter here and nobody’s heard of suicide bombers. It’s the violence of a time before terrorism. It’s a world where villains wear gold chains, kidnap little girls, bribe the police and kill innocent people who get in their way.