Gabbar Is Back
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Shruti Haasan, Suman Talwar, Jaideep Ahlawat, Sunil Grover
Director: Krish
Two stars
You would think that a film that is a remake of a film that has already been remade twice must be something worth watching. You would be wrong.
The action caper Gabbar is Back – a remake of A R Murugadoss's 2002 Tamil blockbuster Ramanaa, which was remade in 2003 as Tagore in Telugu, and in 2005 as Vishnu Sena in Kannada – turns out to be mediocre at best.
A dated premise, weak plot and abysmal characterisation are only partially made up for by the star power of Akshay Kumar, who plays a “college professor by day/vigilante by night” and takes it upon himself to rid the world of various kinds of evil, including corrupt bureaucrats, inefficient policemen and the medical mafia.
His vigilante name in the film is a throwback to one of Bollywood's most popular villains, Gabbar Singh – played by Amjad Khan in Ramesh Sippy's 1975 super-hit Sholay. That's where any similarity ends. Sippy's Gabbar Singh is 40 years old and still popular. Krish's Gabbar Singh will be lucky to last 40 days.
To be fair, the actors do a decent job – the problem is the job they’ve been given. The five characters that the story hinges on – the professor/vigilante, his love interest Shruti (Shruti Haasan), who happens to be a lawyer’s assistant, Gabbar’s arch nemesis and real-estate mogul Digvijay Patil (Suman Talwar), police constable Sadhuram (Sunil Grover), and special agent Kuldeep Pahwa (Jaideep Ahlawat) – are all stereotypes and pander to every cliché in the book. This is very typical of a masala film – and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. In this case, it leans towards the latter.
Thanks goodness for Akshay Kumar's intense and well-executed fight scenes, and Chitrangada Singh's sultry performance to the Yo Yo Honey Singh song Aao Raja, which provide some much-needed relief.
artslife@thenational.ae
