sowvendra Review of Dishoom

Dishoom (2016)

Not a strong enough Dishoom, Akshaye Khanna's part disappointed me

[6/10 · 4 August 2016]

The only hope I had with Dishoom was Akshaye Khanna. This was supposed to be his comeback film and I was looking forward to the kind of presence he had in some of his previous films, especially Humraaz, as he had a negative role in that one. Alas! All my hopes were deflated. Except a few mildly strong one-liners, Khanna has nothing substantial to do in Dishoom despite being the film's main antagonist. He has no action or fight scenes with the film's two main leads, John Abraham and Varun Dhawan, maybe because two brawny hulks like Abraham and Dhawan beating up an actor like Khanna (who, I think, still has some credibility because of some of his films in the past) would have been terribly unwatchable. Dishoom, I felt, was saved by just two people: Varun Dhawan, and Akshay Kumar in a special appearance. Varun Dhawan repeats his cute-and-naughty-boy-next-door act from Main Tera Hero and Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania and, trust me, he just excels in it. The entire film is tolerable only because of Varun Dhawan. His cherubic smile, his comic timing, everything added up to create an endearing character that made me smile even as I walked out of the multiplex thinking of Dhawan's character while everyone else had vanished from my mind. As for Akshay Kumar's special appearance, I wonder if his playing a gay character is a progressive step for Bollywood. Whatever, Akshay Kumar just charmed me. I wonder if Dishoom intends to be a gay-friendly film, because there are enough eye candies on offer: John Abraham, Varun Dhawan, Saqib Saleem, Rahul Dev, Tarun Khanna, Akshaye Khanna (if one seeks intellectual/mature-looking studs), and Akshay Kumar and his all-male harem as well. As for the rest of the film, the story is, obviously, forgettable and does not demand much thinking or logic. I hope this is not a spoiler: A bulldog plays an important role in the film. There are few good action and chase sequences (but nothing that we have not seen before) coupled with a thumping background score which also includes portions from that catchy song "Sau tarah ke rog le loon", and a Houdini-like act involving dislocation of one's shoulder. Other than that, there is a loud jingoism of the cricket kind. And other than that, and other than Varun Dhawan, there is Satish Kaushik doing a terrific cameo as a voice on phone (the kind of cameo that Bharati Acharekar did in Ritesh Batra's The Lunchbox➖and she too was fabulous in it). Check that out.