Which makes Raees a mish-mash of things we’ve seen before in a plot which owes allegiance to the real life story of a liquor baron who made his pile and his name in dry Gujarat. The filmmakers have denied any similarity but anyone with half an eye can see the overlaps – the ingenuity of a man who could think on his feet(hooch-filled tomatoes!) and cart his maal under the eye of the cop(Nawazuddin Siddiqui) who swears to catch him.
In fact, amongst all the effective supporting parts which bouy SRK, it is Nawaz who shines most. His dry, wry one liners, and he has several, have a zing which SRK’s don’t. And in a film where the leading man’s dialogue baazi is meant to wow the crowd, that is telling.
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Dholakia knows his Gujarat . That was clear in his ‘Parzania ‘. There are some flashes of that insider knowledge here too, but you can see how fear of being censored has blunted the edges of this film which could have really lifted off the screen. The riots, both in Mumbai and Gujarat, have a seriously anodyne feel. And the predictable arc of the story weighs the second half down.