Wanted is a movie which takes the audience back to the good ol’ 80’s, and entertains you throughout the journey.
The backdrop is this – the city of Mumbai is reeling under the tyranny of the underworld, the big fish here being Gani bhai(Prakash Raj) who is based somewhere in the Far East now. His henchman Golden runs the business in the city and there’s Datta Pawle, who has parted ways from Gani Bhai and is running his own extortion business in a small way. The main henchman for Datta is Radhey(Salman Khan) who beats up and kills 10 to 20 people at any given point of time, without as much as a scratch on himself.
The movie begins with Golden getting killed, and Gani Bhai deciding to come to Mumbai to set matters right. The city of Mumbai has recently got a new police commissioner Ashraf Khan(Govind Namdeo) who is hell-bent on getting the city clean of crime, political pressure be damned. As the movie progresses, Radhey changes sides from one to another, purely driven by money. He is also falling in love with middle class girl Jahnvi(Ayesha Takia Azmi), who works for a call center. We also have Inspector Talpade(Mahesh Manjrekar), who is disgustingly lecherous and corrupt.
Prakash Raj, who essentially is present in the second half, is brilliant as the villain. His ability to be comic, without losing any of his nastiness as the villain, is amazing. Mahesh Manjrekar has done an incredible job as the corrupt and lecherous cop; this is another actor who we would love to see more of(I loved him in 99 and many years back, in Kaante). But above all is Salman Khan, in a role which I believe is his best so far. Salman, as Radhey, exudes arrogance and attitude effortlessly throughout the movie, and we love him for it. Salman has tremendous screen presence in this movie and while the action is somewhat Ghajini-style, with Radhey beating everyone to pulp, and also killing many of them, Salman makes it all believable. Dialogues, especially for Salman, Prakash Raj and Mahesh Manjrekar(in that order) are brilliant, and keep us entertained throughout the movie. Sample this – Gani bhai to Radhey “You don’t look like a criminal, more like a romantic movie hero”, to which Radhey responds crisply “And you like a B-grade movie villain”. Even the plot, which seems quite average, suddenly turns very interesting, though not exactly original. Vinod Khanna is almost entirely wasted.
The movie borrows liberally from earlier movies i.e. the godown action sequence from Deewaar, an innovative killing from Sarfarosh(the way Aamir kills Makrand Deshpande) and in general ruthless bashing up of all things evil, which reminds us of Ghajini.
But all said and done, I found the movie thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining, and credit goes first to Salman and also to Mahesh Manjrekar and Prakash Raj.