the last prabhu dheva outing, r rajkumar, was so unbearable that i thought i would be scarred for life. action jackson is almost as vile: the only reason i stuck around was to see if ajay devgn would start making like prabhu dheva by the end. no, he doesn’t.
that’s not the deal-breaker, though, because ajay devgn’s never been much of a one to shake a leg. and that’s perfectly okay because not all men have to be able to dance to prove their macho-ness. it’s that he has agreed to star in a film that is so gratingly awful, whose women are either dumb dodos, or doped-out vixens and who submit to being dumped on all the time, and whose comedy track consists of a guy (kunaal roy kapur) getting slapped, one, two.
i can’t tell you more because there is nothing more. ajay devgn appears in a double role, the good-hearted gali ka goonda vishy, and his look-alike, the sword-wielder aj, whose chief ability is to slice and dice humans. vishy’s girl is the wide-eyed khushi (sonakshi sinha); aj is made to swing between two women, the goody-two-shoes gautam, and the wild-eyed, coke-snorting mamgai, and face off with a villain who has, get this, a glass eye.
this could have been an entertainingly retro comic-book revenge saga, especially because it has a dashing bad girl who has more screen time, and much more neon-lit presence, than everyone else in the flick.
but prabhu dheva doesn’t have the skill sets to instill that knowing edge into his material; he shows no awareness, in fact, that it is risible. he wants to do kill bill part 4, but he is, at heart, a contortionist-cum-choreographer with a tiresome, jaded appetite for blood. this is pb trying for qt and falling flat on his nimble toes.
i’m seriously tired of watching sonakshi sinha making faces which her directors are content passing off as acting. and ajay devgn doesn’t need to stoop this low: so what if he can’t dance, he can keep a straight face while delivering a joke. and he can waggle a sword. even rohit shetty’s brand of brainlessness is better than this straight-up disgusting fare.
if prabhu dheva had the smarts, he would have given manasvi mamgai a more filled-out part, and gone full leather-and-kink. but clearly that is not what the director is after: his idea of entertainment is to have his leading lady gaze at the leading man’s nether equipment and pass out.
i wish i had, while watching.
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