By Subhash K Jha

The shooting of Priyadarshan's train-top thriller Tezz is far from over, thanks to the slow progress of the 45-day shooting schedule in Britain.

Everyone who has returned from the shooting of Tezz in the UK is depleted and recovering from bouts of fever and incapacitation.

Reason? Harsh winter conditions in the UK proved exceedingly difficult for the cast and crew who are still smarting under the blow to their numbed lungs. To top it all, Devgn, Anil Kapoor, Zayed Khan, Sameera Reddy and Mohanlal were all shooting on a speeding train causing the near-frozen Indian cast and crew to get further challenged by the severe weather conditions.

While producer Ratan Jain dismisses all the panic attacks that the Indian crew went through in England as "just routine hiccups" the director Priyadarshan is more forthright.

Says Priyan, "This has been by far the most difficult film I've ever shot. I've done action films before. But not a thriller. The whole film is set on a speeding train. We shot in Birmingham. Thanks to visa delays we got to the UK when winter conditions had set in. It was terrible. "

Apparently the temperature was so low that even the video monitor couldn't be kept out in the open.

Says Priyan, "I've never experienced such extreme cold. Thankfully I had a video monitor with a remote control. I'd huddle into a room nearest to the shooting spot. But I felt sorry for my Indian cast and crew. Fortunately there weren't that many Indians in the team. Most of the crew was British and they seemed just fine with the cold. "

The Indians fell ill one by one thereby slackening the speed of Tezz. Now there is one more schedule in March in Birmingham.

Pledges Priyan, "We're not going back until the cold wave is over. The film involves a lot of action sequences. Mohanlal who is known for his stunts in the South also performs some very complicated action sequences for the first time in a Hindi film. "