How bad can a movie get? Read on and you will figure out.

Bad guy no 1 has his face toasted on a pav bhaji tava [pan]. He roars and throws a stove at the hero. With his back on fire, the hero walks to the nearest bucket of cold water, douses himself, and pokes a few holes into the bad guy with a knife.

The super cool hero then pokes holes into bad guy no 2's eyes, crucifies his cronies by pinning them to the wall with a deftly thrown blade, and chops a third's hands with a long sword.

With an overdose of gleaming knives that stick out of bad boys and an unoriginal plot, Om is a disastrous attempt to cater to the 'masses'.

The fig leaf of a story has Om (debutante hero, Attin) in love with Sandali Dhariwal (Sandali Sinha), the heiress with a wicked father (Pankaj Dheer). The father, stepmother, Celina, (Rakhi Sawant), and some supporting baddies do not want them to get married.

So our hero bashes up the baddies, kills some, maims the rest, and claims his prize. Simple, isn't it?

Except all this is so tiresome that you wonder why a director would want to remake such a plot for the umpteenth time.

For a film that seems to count on the number of bodies and body parts littering the screen to keep the tellers ringing, the action is barely passable.

The shots of the hero fighting with his back on fire or jumping over a local train with his bike or chasing the villain along the tracks of Mumbai fail to make any impact.

More effective than the action sequences directed by Bhiku Verma is the war between Sandali and Rakhi Sawant, who vie furiously with each other to appear in costumes that get skimpier with each scene.

Newcomer Attin Bhalla doesn't make an impact either. Though the film has been designed to showcase his talent, Bhalla barely passes muster in the action sequences and needs to work really hard on the emotional scenes.

Om is a debacle that is best forgotten. If the attendance on a Saturday afternoon show is anything to go by, the 'masses' are definitely taking this advice seriously.