Raees
Director-Rahul-did-he-really-direct-Parzania-Dholakia?
Starring- Shah Rukh Khan and Mahira Khan
Rating- Please read 🙂
A kid helps bootleggers in their deals and his mother doesn’t even know about it. Because she is busy mouthing Mother India kind of dialogues to an ophthalmologist, “Main ise udhar ka nazariya nahi dena chahti…” as she refuses to buy her son a pair of glasses with borrowed money.
And why glasses? Arey hero ka look hain bhai. So what if we can’t create depths in the character, we sure can create depths in his look. Kohl eyes, swag in his walk, an extended goatee are a few things we focus on, in name of characterization.
And oh by the way, Mamma India continues with her gyan… “Koi bhi dhanda chota ya bada nahi hota” as long you don’t hurt anyone. But our Raees has selective hearing and conveniently forgets about the latter half. In his first attempt at his dhanda he steals a swanky car, trades it for some goats and singlehandedly whacks a bunch of hot headed men, all of which you see, shouldn’t be much of a problem, because these are side characters. They are meant to be hurt in a Hindi film anyway.
With mom’s weirdly misinterpreted approval (Ammi jaan kaha karti thi) and Raees’s even more weird sense of narcissism (Baniye ka dimaag aur Miya Bhai ki daring), writers justify everything illegal in his world.
And if that is not enough, we still need to humanize him and bring in a bit of Rahul in Raees. Hence our hero stands up for mill workers, empowers local ladies, cooks for his wife, breaks into a Garba, becomes a politician, a builder, a Ted Talk speaker where he hopes for a world, devoid of bhook ka darr and garibi ki maar. Oh ho such pain in these lines that I badly wanted to pop in a Panadol.
Wait there is even a Hindu Muslim bhai bhai episode. See apna Raees is so secular.
Even the climax is so melodramatic; violins start playing abruptly on montages of Raees’s wife, mother and kid, trying hard to cajole manipulatively the last bit of sympathy out of me that I never felt!!
Sadly there is nothing heroic, tragic or even comic about our protagonist that could get me invested in his story. The hunter and hunted chase sequences between Raees and his cop are so lazily written that they hardly establish the much required edge-on-the-seat tension or drama. When the cops block the roads, Raees smuggles liquor through the waters. Wow. Amaze balls, Captain Obvious. It is this simplistic writing that robs our hero of quick thinking, ruthlessness and a larger than life appeal.
Even the dialogues seem forced and juvenile. Raees holds a microphone and says ‘mai ka laal’ (geddit? As in ‘Mic’ ka laal) and then repeats the joke fearing if we missed it.
Nawazuddin plays the menacing cop rather well.
Mahira Khan, as most supporting cast, is sadly wasted in the movie. In a scene Raees tells her not to ‘use her brains’ and that pretty much sums up the sad roles of our female parts in most Hindi films. But she is amazing. She is the first pregnant lady ever who doesn’t show any pregnancy bulge and suddenly delivers a baby one fine day.
And then there is a Sunny Leone too without much purpose. It could be anyone else: a Sunny Deol for all you care and it wouldn’t matter much. Or wait, maybe it would. I mean a Sunny Deol dancing to Laila oh Laila would be at least entertaining.
Watch Raees only if you are a big Shah Rukh Khan fan.
fByLokesh 