Director: Tigmanshu Dhulia
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Sonakshi Sinha, Jimmy Shergill, Vidyut Jamwal, Gulshan Grover and Raj Babbar
Bullett Raja is director Tigmanshu Dhulia’s most commercial film as yet... and his weakest. There is no semblance to the screenplay, the characters are shoddily drawn, the editing could have been better as well. Technically, the only aspect which isn’t glaring is the cinematography by PS Vinod which captures the essence of small town UP beautifully.
It felt like Tigmanshu was making two films. One one hand, he was broadly commenting on the criminal-political nexus in UP. So we see criminals enjoying VIP treatment in jail and even running the show, both on the mafia and the political level from jail. We see politicians openly growing opium in their fields.
It would have been better if he had stuck to this story and not go into the Sholay and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid territory. So we have two common men Raja (Saif ) and Rudr (Jimmy), meeting up during the wedding of a political honcho and striking instant friendship and then saving the other guests and their host from being killed by his rival’s gang. The way they handle the guns expertly makes us believe that a) they are either ex army or b) they are policemen in disguise or c) they are goons themselves. The answer is d) none of the above. Saif is unemployed while Jimmy works in a courier company. Soon they develop a Jai and Veeru kind of a bro code and are ready to die for each other. They form a gang and become Robin Hoods of sorts, rescue Sonakshi Sinha’s character from casting couch and merrily lead their lives.
Tigmanshu then shifts gears and turns it from an action comedy to a brooding tale of revenge and retribution. Vidyut’s character is introduced in the second half and impresses with his commando tactics. Your interest perks up at this point but the movie turns boringly predictable even after that.
The director did write some interesting characters on paper. Like Ravi Kissen’s character, a dangerous assassin who crossdresses to fool the police or Vipin Sharma’s power broker character who runs a virtual empire from jail. However, they are hastily abandoned and not properly fleshed out.
Jimmy looks natural in the best friend’s role but Saif struggles as the title character. He had done a far better work in his portrayal of Langda Tyagi from Omkara. A rewatch would have done the trick. Sonakshi Sinha is totally wasted in the sense that she’s got nothing to do and looks out of place in this bromance.
Tigmanshu shouldn’t try to copy Prabhudeva but make straight-from-the-heart films that he’s famous for. We missed the comic punches and the black humour of his earlier efforts. He doesn’t deserve this and neither do we.
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