Chandni Chowk to China

A cook in the busy Chandni Chowk market of Delhi, tired of his everyday routine, is mistaken by visiting strangers for the reincarnation of an ancient warrior. Their oppressed village in China believes he is the hero who will save them, and he travels there expecting fame, only to find a dangerous gangster waiting. A martial arts teacher, his own growing belief in himself and the affection of a young woman accompany him as he tries to live up to what the villagers see in him.

Nikkhil Advani directed this action adventure comedy, which followed Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003) in his filmography and arrived in 2009 between that film and Hero (2015). Akshay Kumar plays the cook Sidhu and also the warrior Liu Sheng, with Deepika Padukone as Sakhi and Suzy, Mithun Chakraborty as Dada, Ranvir Shorey as Chopstick, Gordon Liu Chia-hui as the gangster Hojo and Roger Yuan as Chiang Kohung. The film was made for about 12 million USD and took roughly 13 million USD worldwide, so it did not recover its cost at the box office.

Audience response was weak: on IMDb it holds 4.4/10 from around 10,000 votes, and on TMDB 4.9/10 from 92 votes. An Indian, Chinese and Thai co-production, it runs 154 minutes.