Bholaa movie review: Ajay Devgn's Kaithi remake is slower and louder than the original-Entertainment News
Milli
). One film stands out from this crowd as an intelligent adaptation, not a Xerox: Abhishek Pathaks Drishyam 2 starring Ajay Devgn and Tabu. Since the new Hindi film in theatres this week Bholaa, a revisitation of writer-director Lokesh Kanagarajs Tamil blockbuster Kaithi stars and is directed by Devgn, it is natural to be hopeful. The happy news is that Devgn and the writers of the adapted screenplay (Ankush Singh, Aamil Keeyan Khan, Shriidhar Rajyash Dubey and Sandeep Kewlani) have indeed made some interesting changes to their version of Kaithi. The unfortunate news is that its just not enough.
The story remains the same. In Bholaa, the UP Police capture a large cache of cocaine and thus become the target of dangerous gangsters. Soon after, all the police personnel present at a party, except SP Diana Joseph (Tabu), consume alcohol. As the men around herare knocked out one by one, Diana realises their drinks contained a drug. She is injured from an encounter with criminals and needs help to get her colleagues to a hospital apart from protecting the distant police station where she had hidden the seized contraband. For this she turns to a recently released convict who is on the premises, a mysterious man called Bholaa (Ajay Devgn). He agrees, after some bullying and emotional blackmail, to drive a truck carrying the unconscious men through the night, navigated by a chap called Kadchi (Amir Khan).
All we know about Bholaa at that point is that the first thing he intended to do with his freedom was visit his little daughter who, unaware that she has a father, has been living in an orphanage all these years. Diana and Bholaas truck is intercepted along the way by several raging outlaws who have been alerted by Ashwathama a.k.a. Ashu (Deepak Dobriyal), a leader of the gang whose cocaine was taken by the police.
The most noticeable change wrought by Team Bholaa in their version of Kaithi is the inclusion of Diana in the script. Kaithi was suspenseful when it was focused purely on the primary characters and their allies fighting off ruthless villains, but it took the marginalisation of women to a shocking extreme by featuring not a single primary or even secondary female character in its storyline. Diana in that film was a man. By consciously correcting this aspect of the script, the writers of Bholaa reveal themselves to be more thoughtful than the entirety of the film might suggest. The fact that this woman additionally has a Christian name, and her religious identity is normalised instead of being underlined, is also noteworthy in a Hindi film industry that has for long scored poorly in the matter of minority representation.
Bholaa comes in a decade when a slew of Hindi films have sought to stereotype and villainise Muslims, while the Christian minority, long ignored by Hindi cinema after decades of stereotyping, has been unexpectedly revived in a trickle of recent films, most prominently in the person of a terrorist (Jim from
Monica, O My Darling
). Diana is among a handful of interesting surprises in the area of diversity and cultural heterogeneity that Bholaa throws up during the course of the narrative.
Having done certain things so right, Devgn and his crew get so much else so wrong that they completely mess up the film.
Kaithi was OTT to the extent that commercial cinema, especially mainstream Indian cinema, tends to be when it serves up an omnipotent hero, but its main plot nevertheless stayed engaging till the end. Bholaa is so over-the-top, its volume so high and music so manipulative, that by the second half its loudness becomes unbearable. Kaithis portrayal of the protagonists longing for his daughter was maudlin, Bholaa stretches the heartstrings to breaking point.
The death knell for this films appeal though is the slowing down of the pace, particularly in the first half, and the use of 3D, which serves as a distraction instead of elevating the experience. Even where the visuals have potential, they are drowned out by the deafening, overwhelming sound post-interval.
(A long version of this review will be up shortly)
Rating: 2 (out of 5 stars)
Bholaa is in theatres
Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial
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Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 4:56 am