Khiladi is back, but the plot is not worth him. Review on Khiladi 786

A cop, a beautiful lass, some weird people , some mindless dialogues and raunchy songs. Put them all together and you will get into the 100 crore club. This seems to be the success mantra in bollywood for most of the directors, which a sad reality. And this movie is no different either. But the Khiladi we have longing to see has returned.

Plot -

We have mansukh lal, the son of champak lal who runs a marriage bureau. Mansukh shows keen interest in his father’s business but has failed miserably in it. None of his shots at being a cupid has resulted in a successful marriage, many of which did not even reach the stage of marriage. To prove himself a worthy inheritor of his father’s business Mansukh lal decides to take up a challenging task.  The task is to arrange a suitable alliance for Indu, who happens to be a whaccko with an equally psyched brother TT Bhai who is one of Mumbai’s most wanted criminals. In the meanwhile Indu is also in love with a regular criminal Azad who is, at most of times, behind bars.  But TT Bhai wishes to get Indu married to a man from a cultured family.

Now let us go to the other side of the story- here we have the ‘Singhs’. Start counting … we have a Sattar singh, an Ikhattar singh and a Bahattar singh (our Khiladi). The singhs family is as weird as their names sound. This father-son-uncle duo considers policing to be social service or rather their moral responsibility. And for this task they don a police uniform an help the real police department to keep the law and order in place. So they are the good con men in our story. But what our Khiladi lacks is a love in his life and that’s where Mansukh comes into picture. The rest of the story deals with how mansukh tries to form an alliance between two polar opposite families.

Cast and Performances –

Akshay kumar plays Bahattar singh, the Khiladi 786. He returns to don this avatar after a period of 12 years and he yet again proves that he is versatile and is capable of doing both comedy and action with equal flair. His body language and style in the movie is apt for a Khiladi and his comic timing has been immaculate. Our Khiladi steals the show from the rest of the cast by his mere presence and charisma.  But the character seems to be quite similar to the one’s in his Rowdy act. He has restricted himself to such roles anyways. But I would like to see something different from him in the future. Nonetheless, he entertains like always.  In short the Khiladi has returned with a bang.

Asin who I consider a better an average actress comes out with a less than average performance.She looks pretty but seemingly tries hard to portray the whacked out Marathi mulgi but I felt that there were some places where she could have done better. And a major disappointment is that the script itself leaves the lead actress handicapped. So I can’t blame her completely.

Himesh Reshammiya seriously needs to take some acting lessons or restrict himself to his music. His portrayal of Mansukh though hilarious seems immature. He should start concentrating on things he is talented in.

Mithunda as TT Bhai is good as always. But as in the case with Asin, his role leaves us unsatisfied. He should have been given much more freedom in the script. But anyways he is good enough. Better than Asin’s performance I should say.

Raj babbar and Sanjay mishra has played their roles brilliantly but its Mukesh Tiwari who shines but unfortunately had little to do in the movie. I’m really disappointed in the way the script was written. Others have been good too, not anything great to say there. And yeah! We see Johny lever too, just see, period.

Music -

Himesh Reshamiya does a better job in this department than he has done in his acting. All the songs songs in the movie are good if not great and numbers like ‘Balma’ and ‘Hookah Bar' sure to send some feets tapping. The title track seems apt for the Khiladi’s comeback movie.  Some songs I felt were misplaced and it was irritating to find some songs springing up when things just started to get interesting. The dance sequences including the Item number ‘Balma’ reminded me of the Bollywood of the 90’s. Anyways it seems that some directors these days are going back to that era, which is a bad sign for Indian cinema. But it refreshing to have such tracks from Himesh after a long time.

Direction, Script and Screenplay -

This is where the otherwise good movie is badly hit. The direction is really amateurish. The debutant director Ashish Mohan’s direction seems eerily similar to Rohit shetty’s style who he had assisted in many ventures including Singham, from which the movie takes various elements. The action scenes though entertaining is extremely unrealistic as if being shot in another world itself. They are gravity defying and it seems that, like the guru , the student also lacks the knowledge of physics. The camera work of this movie is quite shaky which makes the watching experience extremely irritating at times. The screenplay too is nothing to be really proud of. The script as I had mentioned earlier has underplayed almost all the characters expect ‘the Khiladi’ which is very disappointing. The actors surprising performs well with such an under performing script. The script makes the movie fall behind many other movies in the same league. It’s a routine plot and some the quality of one liners that swings in the range of infantile to hilarious to irritating and some of them are mawkishly sentimental. Zero marks for such a poorly written script.

Verdict  -

Except some gravity defying stunts, some mindless but entertaining comedy and the much anticipated return of the Khiladi, there is not much to describe in this movie. If you are a huge fan of akshay then this movie sould be on your must watch list otherwise I would say that you can skip it and wait for Dabbanng2 instead. Sadly, even though I was entertained by the actors, I would not recommend this movie as the script lacks both in substance and in common sense. If you have some extra cash and some time then go for it. Otherwise don’t.

Thanks and regards,

SlightlyDrunk