Bullett Raja: My Review
Director: Tigmanshu Dhulia
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Sonakshi Sinha, Jimmy Sheirgill
Runtime: 140 Minutes
The best part about a Tigmanshu Dhulia movie is its characterization and perfectly detailed casting, where definite roles are attached to characters, with added intensity. This has remained the backdrop on which Dhulia has based his movies upon. Sadly, bullet raja, even with a strong ensemble of Dhulia’s regulars fails to achieve the same. Add to that the loose plot, where it swings to-and-fro quite predictably, without anything interesting. There are of course some good scenes, but are far and few scattered across the 140 minute ride of this Bullet. Sadly, that only lands the viewer on already explored ending.
The plot, like many of the most recent movies is based in the Hindi heartland of the politically-violent Uttar Pradesh, where two strangers (Saif Ali Khan as Raja and Jimmy sheirgill as Rudra) bump into each other at a wedding, hit it off , fire around lots of bullets (Unfortunately, not at each other so as to prevent us the misery), become the best of buddies and make some enemies right there too. Power, politics and Gangsters come hand in hand, and that is the underlying plot running through the movie. Put in certain clichés for a masala-entertainer like revenge for a friends’ death, Item number, Desi tamancha (Not to forget the song, which inspires you to fire them in a disco for the sake of dancing) and of course the heartthrob of directors these days for a masala flick, Sonakshi Sinha as the female lead.
Saif shows conviction, but there are only a few scenes where he justifies as to why he was chosen for this role, Sheirgill overdoes his cool gangster appearance, while Sonakshi fills up as just another female lead, where she just eats up the screen space (and yes, I’m not commenting on her size), which could have been used for so much more. The seasoned actors like Raj Babbar, Vipin Sharma, Ravi kishan and even Vidyut Jamwal brighten up the scenes with their small yet pivotal roles, and it is in these scenes where things look a bit smooth. Besides these, there is hardly anything which can hold things together, until the end where the suspense is predictable enough for you to guess it right from the climax.
The things that go for the movie is the pace, some cheeky dialogues, raw action scenes especially the ones involving Vidyut Jamwal, where he is believed to have designed and performed his own stunts and one off chase sequence involving our Bullet raja. It lacks intensity, stuffy and fails to increase the heat, as it’s tagline promises.
Bullet raja is not bad, but fails to fit into the over-viewed and saturated plots based around UP, with lots of violence and where the bad guy is the “hero”. Watch it, if you don’t have anything else to do, just by keeping the expectation levels to the minimum.
I’m going with 1.5 for Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Bullet Raja, which is just another UP-centric movie without any intensity. A bullet’s ride which is worth missing.
