Shahrukh Khan is once said to have remarked in an interview, "I will drop anything for Mani, including my pants".

He didn't need to drop anything, except maybe a project or two, while teaming up with the director on the second of his love-weds-terrorism trilogy.

A commentary on the insurgency-torn nineties in North-eastern India, Dil Se follows journalist Amar Verma (Khan) from Assam to Ladakh to Delhi as he pursues the mysterious Meghna (Manisha Koirala), whom he met in a deserted railway station at the beginning of the movie, and turns out to be not quite the coy girl next door he thought she was.

Dil Se, however, is a film that can never take its topic seriously. It has its share of memorable moments, but they are overshadowed by Shah Rukh Khan's over-the-top acting of an obsessed lover. In Mani's defence, maybe he was playing to SRK's strengths, but the story never really becomes anything more than a 'been there, done that' exercise, its scenic locations and hallucinatory song sequences being the only redeeming factor.