Cast: Akshay Kumar, Kriti Sanon, Arshad Warsi, Pankaj Tripathi, Seema Biswas, Sanjay Mishra, Mohan Agashe, Jacqueline Fernandez

Director: Farhad Samji

BLUF

An aspiring filmmaker Myra (Kriti Sanon) sets out to make her first directorial based on the life of a dreadful gangster Bachchhan Paandey (Akshay Kumar). To know Paandey well, Myra travels to his hometown and conducts close research on the outlaw. Soon, Paandey gets to know about Myra, and their world collide. 

In a Hindi remake of Karthick Subbaraj’s ‘Jigarthanda’, a dreaded gangster Bachchan Pandey ( Akshay Kumar)  thrives on letting the world feels his wrath. When he kills, he displays it big time so he can let the world know how ferocious he is.

A debutant film maker Myra ( Kriti Sanon) from Mumbai looking for a story makes her way into the interiors of India to Bhagwa to make a movie about Bachchan Pandey. Pandey agrees to get the movie made only to propagate his terror, he decides he needs to be the star of his own movie.

How will this play out ?

THE MEAT AND THE POTATOES

Bachchan Pandey  is the uncrowned mafia lord of Bhagwa. So bad that his mother ( Seema Biswas) also does not talk to him.  . His team of goons are Kandi (Saharsh Kumar Shukla), Bufferiya(Sanjay Mishra), Pendulum (Abhimanyu Singh), Virgin (Prateik Babbar) and Snehal Dabbi. 

When Mumbai boho chic Myra (Kriti Sanon), and her failed actor friend Vishu (Arshad Warsi) come to make a movie on him, he thinks of it as a PR move to improve his terror ratings.

The moral of the story is that if people revere you because they fear you that is not respect. Respect comes from being respectable and relatable.

IN THE KNOW

 Saharsh and the eager Abhimanyu add momentum to the narrative. Prateik tries hard. Sanjay Mishra, Mohan Agashe and Seema Biswas are squandered. Akshay Kumar as Pandey masters his comic timing with his one-liners but the delivery feels generally over the top and often exasperating. Arshad Warsi reiterates his authority on comedy and is perfect foil to the fit Kriti Sanon, who does a great job balancing the chemistry part of the equation.

What was Jackie F doing in the middle, we have no clue?

This is a movie for the masses and for most part of the 2 hours and 26 minutes of the movie, you could almost loop back on  a level 5 hike  and not miss anything spectacular.

Until Pankaj Tripathi walks into the screen for those few electric minutes and you think – is he going to rescue my time?

He almost does but the Naidadwala house of entertainment has never had any pretentions about its school of cinema.

You are almost sorry that the whole movie was not an extended Pankaj Tripathi cameo.