Vikram Bhatt's latest offering Footpath, an action thriller, is another film based on the life of underworld.

We had seen a similar film made by Mahesh Bhatt some years back, in the form of Angarey with Akshay Kumar, Nagarjuna, Pooja Bhatt and Sonali Bendre. Also, another film with a similar subject called Annarth starring Sanjay Dutt and Sunil Shetty was also released some time back.

Arjun (Aftab Shivdasani) is a dear friend of brothers Shekhar Shrivastav (Rahul Dev) and Raghu Shrivastav (newcomer Emraan Hashmi). Arjun and Raghu share a special bond; they both are 'khasamkhas yaars'. In their childhood, Raghu had stabbed the killer of Arjun's father and helped him to elope to Delhi. Years later, Arjun who now works as an estate agent is sought out by Inspector Singh (Anoop Soni) to help him in his mission to nab the two Shrivastav brothers who have now grown up into Mumbai's drug dealers. Singh feels that Arjun can infiltrate into the gang and help the cops reach the drug Kingpin, Shaikh (Irfaan Khan). Arjun takes up the offer in the hope of rehabilitating his friends. Everything goes as per plan till one day during a dealing, Singh's associate tries to do an 'encounter' of the two brothers. Raghu starts smelling foul. Shaikh in the meanwhile informs Shekhar about Arjun's hand-in-glove-with-the-cops mission. Now, it's up to Shekhar to decide how to save his own skin. He tells Raghu about Arjun's truth and asks him to bump him off. Raghu fails and so Shekhar decides to kill his own brother instead. A 'bloody' climax follows in which Shekhar too dies and Arjun despite all the battering manages to survive clutching childhood memories.

Director Vikram Bhatt has handled a few dramatic scenes with ease, with the finale being the best part of the enterprise. But he should've gone in for an out-and-out realistic fare instead of trying to strike a balance between realism and formula-ridden clichéd stuff. It would've only benefited the project had it been a songless film.

Aftab looks completely disinterested in the film, Bipasha looks very bad. Rahul Dev goes over the top. Aparna Tilak makes a fair debut. Irfan Khan in a cameo shines. Vikram Bhatt tries his best to do something, but only manages to come up with some good sequences. But fails to a larger extent.

The music composed by Nadeem Shravan and Himesh Reshammiya, have a few hummable numbers starting off with a fast Soorat Pe Teri Pyaar Aave. But the music stays at an average level and not rising to any great heights. Another noticeable point in the film are locations of the road and outdoor scenes (a film set). There seems to be little or no thought given to these locations - Shekhar's house, the police briefing room, Bipasha's house (a very wealthy salesgirl obviously), the road scenes. Some looked downright shoddy. While some locations are overused.

Overall, the film will find the sailing difficult and is a disappointment all the way.