With a vision of repeating the success story of his Rowdy Rathore, Akshay Kumar returns with another action comedy which unfortunately stands nowhere close to that fairly entertaining Hit. So if you considered Rowdy Rathore as an average film then this goes to an even lower level with only a single plus point in the project being its catchy soundtrack.
Therefore there is nothing to write about in details about Khiladi 786 as a movie experience to be honest. It is quite similar to Rohit Shetty kind of newly invented cinema and director Ashish R. Mohan strictly follows his mentor(Rohit), right from the first frame to the last including the punch lines, action, art direction and colours of the walls used in his sets too. But the film neither has got anything related to Akshay’s personal brand of Khiladi, nor it has something to do with the religious symbols used in it scenes vaguely.
Based on a thin storyline(written by Himesh Reshamiya), the first half does give you few moments to enjoy along with the much publicized action sequences. But the second half continues to slide downward & drags till the end resulting in an uninteresting film altogether. So despite of some good foot tapping songs, Khiladi 786 fails to keep you engaged and one easily feels like walking away even before it officially ends.
Though Akshay performs well with a great confidence but there are very few good comic sequences featuring his famous comic timing and then the simply absurd double role in the climax further ruins the whole project completely. Himesh does more than one role in the film as the producer, writer, singer, composer & also the key supporting actor filling the space and he is just OK. Asin as usual is there for adding some glamour, Mithun Chakraborty is not as impressive as he was in Housefull 2 and I couldn’t understand why Raj Babbar accepted such kind of meaningless minuscule role in this weak film.
Putting it together Khiladi 786 has only got some dancing tracks to entertain you till they last and nothing else in the name of content. Moreover it was sad to see, how they used the religious symbols(786 & Khanda – The Sikh Symbol) just to attract the viewers and to add some value to the product commercially. Thankfully it was never done in such a ridiculous manner in the past by thoughtful directors such as Manmohan Desai, Yash Chopra and Manoj Kumar.