Kaante

Kaante
Theatrical release poster
Directed bySanjay Gupta
Written byMilap Zaveri
(dialogue)
Screenplay bySanjay Gupta
Yash-Vinay
Produced byPritish Nandy
Film Club Limited
Larry Mortoff
Sanjay Sippy
StarringAmitabh Bachchan
Sanjay Dutt
Sunil Shetty
Lucky Ali
Mahesh Manjrekar
Kumar Gaurav
CinematographyKurt Brabbee
Edited byBunty Nagi
Music byAnand Raj Anand
Vishal–Shekhar
Lucky Ali
Gregor Narholz
Production
companies
Pritish Nandy Communications
The Film Club
White Feather Films
Release date
  • 20 December 2002 (2002-12-20)
Running time
145 minutes
CountryIndia
LanguageHindi
Budget300 million ($6 million)
Box office20.8 crore (equivalent to 79 crore or US$9.4 million in 2023)  million ($9 million)

Kaante (lit.'Thorns') is a 2002 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film directed by Sanjay Gupta, written by Milap Zaveri, and starring an ensemble cast including Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Sunil Shetty, Lucky Ali, Mahesh Manjrekar, Kumar Gaurav, Namrata Singh Gujral, Rati Agnihotri, Rohit Roy, Isha Koppikar and Malaika Arora.

Set in Los Angeles, the film follows six Indian men who are detained without evidence by the police. Feeling wronged and vengeful, they team up to plot a bank heist that would leave the Los Angeles Police Department penniless. However, once things go out of hand, they start suspecting each other's identities, resulting in violence and chaos.

Kaante was heavily inspired by Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) as well as the film that inspired it, Ringo Lam's City on Fire (1987). According to Tarantino, Kaante is his favorite among the many films that were heavily inspired by his work.

Kaante was released theatrically on 20 December 2002. The film was a success at the box office despite clashing with Saathiya, another box office success, with first-week earnings of £1.8 million in India, nearly $1 million in the United States, and £268,507 in Britain. The film's final worldwide gross was 208 million ($9 million).