Actor Salman Khan is back in action with the trailer of his new movie “Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai” which was released yesterday. Eyeing the coveted Eid release which has become a ritual of sorts for Salman, the movie is expected to release in theatres as well as OTT platforms on May 13. However, safe to say, the reaction to the trailer has been lukewarm at best and for obvious reasons.
The rehashed storyline of an undercover cop as the hero who takes on the big-broody villain and in this case Randeep Hooda (who surprisingly is still carrying the hairstyle from the movie ‘Extraction’) and his gang of thugs in a ‘one man army’ style and ultimately defeats him is the basic gist of the plot that can be inferred from the trailer. The execution might be different but there are only so many ways one can skin a cat of this genre and honestly, it is one of the most boring, doleful, unimaginative and incoherent movie plotlines to have emerged from the Bollywood tropes of the cop-villain saga.
Such plot has been adapted a million and one times on the big screen and it has reached a saturation point where even the ardent fans of Salman would rather give a hard pass to the movie, than waste their time watching stone-faced actors regurgitate cinematic diarrhoea.
As usual, the dialogues are as weird and cringe-inducing as one could have expected them to be. A movie is destined for doom when it starts to pick hit dialogues from a star’s previous movies to bank on the nostalgia factor to drive the audience to the theatres. However, some are saying Radhe is the backdoor sequel of Wanted, so for a hot second, we might let it slide but ‘Wanted’ released some 12 summers ago and surely none of us had asked for a sequel of it, did we? Especially in the current climate when a pandemic is raging around.
The action scenes of Salman’s movies have always baffled the fans and detractors alike for their absurdity and yet an unassuming ability to churn out a giggly, childish response from the viewers.
However, Salman has taken his love for action a notch above this time. Added with the mind-numbing physics-defying action is the fatal concoction of some biology lessons that Salman has espoused confidently with his poker face, bland delivery that most certainly will become an urban slang amongst his followers. Twitterati surely had a field day taking a dig at Radhe’s riveting dialogue writing.
https://twitter.com/rishabh_memes/status/1385134470836019202
https://twitter.com/FaizanS62954190/status/1385144313085009921
Selmon Bhai supremacy 🔥😩 pic.twitter.com/u6GntingFL
— Neeshantt🎭 (@thenishantrana) April 22, 2021
Salman Khan and his movies were never strong on logic and lucidity but his masala flicks still attracted the audience, and to be fair sometimes a brain-dead non-stop action movie is all one needs in today’s climate where every other director/actor is a Social Justice Warrior and looks to preach and guide the audience on a social issue despite having less knowledge about the subject than my niece currently taking online kindergarten classes.
We enjoyed Kong vs Godzilla not because it was heavy on the script but because it had two CGI giant monsters fighting against a giant lizard for two hours straight. What’s not to like? However, Salman has milked this genre for far too long now. Pick up the script of Wanted, Dabbang trilogy and Jai Ho and you will find uncanny similarities. At this point, it appears that the writers of the movie just gave up, watched a few of Salman’s aforementioned movies, copy and pasted the script, changed the names of characters, the movie and collected their hefty paychecks and enjoyed the ‘absorbing’ creative process of it.
https://twitter.com/Okprabhat/status/1385143892987695106
If adhering to clichés is the upshot then it neatly brings us along with the formula of introducing a young actor opposite a ‘not-so-young’ Salman. Disha Patani, whose claim to fame was ‘MS Dhoni: The Untold Story’ with late Sushant Singh Rajput seems like another eye candy actress used in the plot to bring the eyeballs only. Her character might not have any major influence on the plot but she’ll hang around till the last second of the movie to provide it with a heroic yet generic ending.
Ultimately, Radhe is the quintessential Bhai movie where you need to stop your brain cells from fighting each other and trying to find any logic as to what you just saw. We are well versed with the reality that the movie might do decent business as Salman still has a cultish following amongst his supporters, who are quite benign in his criticism but the movie has all the necessary ingredients to be called a trainwreck of a disaster. Stay home fellas, stay safe, avoid the movie altogether, for we will do the honours for you and register for the vaccine as soon as the registration opens.