I caught this movie on Saturday and the theatre was only half occupied.The movie started off with the camera focusing on an elite school in Kanpur and a child getting kidnapped, followed by a ransom call to the boys father, setting the tone for our protagonist ’Chulbul Pandey’ aka ’Kung Fu" Pandey to drive his jeep into the goons den and unleashing his by now, patented anti-gravity stunts viz. pushing over vehicles with one hand, striking a guy easily weighing over a 100kgs and sending him flying thru brick walls / doors and such.
The kid is rescued and united with his parents and CB retains the ransom amount as contribution towards the ’Chulbul Pandey Welfare Fund’ - our guys version of a modern day Robin Hood, where he donates a portion of the spoils and retains the major chunk, in this particular case, Rs.2L donated and Rs.8L retained for his own welfare!
Speaking about story, it’s at most, threadbare. CB gets a transfer to a big city viz. Kanpur where he wants to demonstrate his style of policing. The city is in the clutches of a local corporator / MLA Bachhha Singh (Prakash Raj) and his siblings, Chunni (Nikitin Dheer) and Genda (Dobriyal) run amok treating it as their personal fiefdom, doing as they please and eliminating anyone who opposes/crosses their path. In such a built up and in a time when the uniform really commands very little respect, it’s surprising that our CB gets away with so much, including ridiculing Chunni in public, as also Bachha Singh himself at his party and finally, killing Genda when he tries to drag the bride from the wedding mandap. The fight sequence in the dhaba is typical Chulbul Pandey of Dabangg vintage. The correlation between ’Gulab Jamuns’ and a personal affliction, was a hoot and only Salman can pull it off.
For Prakash Raj, this is a major climb down as his character never gets to develop. After the strong roles he had in ’Wanted’ and ’Singham’, he was completely wasted here; anybody could have filled in for him as considering the iniital built up - the havan sequence where his on screen persona is introduced as larger than life, a baddie to the core, he is shown as completely subservient to his political mentor.
The only flash of menace he came close to essaying on the lines of his intro in ’Singham’ (the scene where he is shown strangling a child whose parents refused to pay the ransom), was the scene where he pushes Sonakshi’s Rajjo down the temple stairs resulting in a miscarriage. Otherwise, he was completely wasted.
There was nothing at all to compare to the ’self tearing shirt off his back’ scene (Dabangg) here, though his belt having a life of its own and doing his ’hud, hud dabangg’ dance by itself and the transfer of his sun glasses from Rajjo’s blouse onto his shirt collar, caught the eye.
Manoj Pahwa was shown as his usual gluttonous self, hogging on ’Pisa’ (Pizza) thru the movie. His caricature of an SP (Mathur) is wasted.
Throughout the movie, Salman tantalises by wearing sleeveless vests and flashes the famous biceps, but refusing to go totally topless, a far departure from his usual willingness to exhibit his well toned upper torso. I guess it’s out of deference to the fact that age is catching up with him (he’ll be 47 this 27th) and has started showing showing definite signs of middle age, just a hint of a slight paunch, evident thru the movie. In fact, even the climactic fight sequence showed only his pectorals, with just one side view of his toned abs (photoshop or its equivalent for motion pictures). His pectoral muscles looked decidedly in need for some toning up, compared to Nikitan.
One more scene that caught my eye was the manner he repeatedly kissed his wife, Rajjo on her cheeks. A departure from his usual no intimacy scenes on camera.
I found the song settings in plush 5 star environs, somewhat jarring as the songs were all with a rustic background. Personally, didn’t like a single song, yeah, not even the much touted, adhesive one!
A credible first attempt at direction by Arbaaz Khan. Maybe the next time, he’ll have a script to support him.
Overall, I would recommend it for Salman fans (my family members are amonst them).
Rating: 1/2 (Definitely better than Ek Tha Tiger, but thats not really saying much)