CAST: Salman Khan, Pooja Hegde, Venkatesh, Bhumika Chawla, Shehnaaz Gill, Jagapathi Babu, Palak Tiwari
DIRECTOR: Farhad Samji
Lets start this review by reminding you folks that this movie is from Farhad Samji – the creator of all the Housefulls. Now getting that out of the way, watching a movie with no remote control to FF the hell out of it for 143 minutes in the theaters is torture.
Now, the entry scene of Sallu Bhai is terrific in a bollywood way. A crowd descends upon a nondescript Delhi square. They are looking for Bhaijaan (Salman), protector of people, manager of gyms. As the larger than life Bhaijaan leaps off a terrace in slow-motion, coolly slipping into his black leather jacket mid-jump, the assembled population starts to whistle and hoot.
Epic. Right? You have never seen this scene before. Only Bhai fans will clap.
Like in real life, Bhaijaan refuses to marry. But unlike IRL, in Samji universe will not let his three adoptive brothers — Love (Siddharth Nigam), Ishq (Raghav Juyal) and Moh (Jassie Gill) — get married. “Women ruin families,” he explains, a worldview oddly never out of place in a Bollywood ‘family entertainer’.
To allay his fears, his brothers (who are secretly dating) try setting him up with Bhagyalaxmi (Pooja Hegde), their new tenant from Hyderabad. She is an antique restorer; a near-perfect professional profile for a Salman heroine.
Once they hit it off, Bhagyalaxmi narrates her backstory, yeah the woman who debuted with Salman Bhai. Her brother, Annaya/Balakrishna (Venkatesh), detests violence and rowdyism — a dilemma for Bhaijaan, who discovers his would-be in-laws are under threat from a local don. Reaching Hyderabad with his brothers (the setting was rural Tamil Nadu in the original 2014 film Veeram), he tries brokering a truce but fails. This leads to the clumsiest stealth fight ever attempted in a Hindi film—Salman is the noisiest action star there is, and Samji’s staging and fight choreography are, well, not subtle.
The movie is Salmanist. It is meant for Bhai fans and only Bhai fans will understand the dialogues and jokes. If Salman Khan was a country- it would be inhabited by all the characters of his movies from Bodyguard to Ananya and all you need to do is connect the dots between all the characters and their stories to really figure out if the jokes or euphemisms land for you. Depends how deep a Salmanist you are though.
How deep is your love is the song Samji sang while writing the plot. GO figure.
There is also a child named ‘Munni’, as in Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Bhagyashree, Salman’s heroine from Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), and Bhumika Chawla, his co-star from Tere Naam (2003), in cameos which are meant to drive home the joke that these once-famous actresses are now married, while our handsome Bhai, at 57, is roaming free.
His prolonged bachelorhood is a boast, their marriages a misfortune.
Salman Khan seems to be switched off throughout. He does not even try. He has done this before. Pooja Hegde, tasked with romancing a man 25 years her senior seems to have buried her coming timing in that gap.
We get an extended fight sequence in a Delhi metro. which unfortunately does not hold even a birthday candle to Pathan’s fight sequences.
You will find it difficult to unsee. Pathan is fresh in our heads.
The detour to Hyderabad doesn’t add much to the film, whether visually or culturally. “Try our south Indian delicacies,” a character says all-too specifically. Salman and Venkatesh team up for a lungi dance, dragging poor Ram Charan into the mix. What an eRRRor for the poor guy.
All else in the film. Non-people.
As Bhaijaan is told that he is amazing, it reminds us of his brief amazing days as a heartthrob. We wish those days could remain his most recent memories to us.
