Badshaho Movie Review: It Is A  Nightmare On Celluloid!

Starring: Ajay Devgan, Emraan Hashmi, Sanjay Mishra, Ileana d’Cruz, Esha Gupta, Vidyut Jamwal

Directed by: Milan Luthria

Rating: * ½(one and a half stars)

If you are looking for a film that is unintentionally funny  because it takes itself so seriously you would think the end-result would be a heist film on a par with Vijay Anand’s Jewel Thief or at least Milan Luthria’s Kachche Dhaage, then  look again.

This is no Oceans 11.Badshaho is a class apart. Seldom have I  come cross a screenplay so absurd and bombastic it  qualifies among the most deplorably written feasts of fatuousness in  recent times. Making it  worse are the performance.So pretentious and hammy are the actors  it would be an insult to good taste  to call them actors.

Topping the list of performing travesties is Ileana D’Cruz.Playing what looks  like a Gayatri Devi lookalike she gives what  could possibly rank among the most laughable portrayals  of royalty in recent times. Unable to speak one  Hindi line properly and housing expressions that range from  blank to dumb, Ms D’Cruz makes you wonder how she manages to survive in a business where every wrong move is on camera.

And  the camera in this Rajasthan-based is manned by  Sunita Radiawith a roaring ruggedness and  a penchant for flavourful  dusty colours which fly furiously in our faces  forever scoffing the insipid storytelling.

Not that  Badshaho  has any dearth of noise and  colour. The screen is  clogged with mindless mayhem and  a riot of blinding colours .Surely this swirl  of  synthetic drama would  have a desired impact at some  point? But no. The  absurdities abound to the extent that you wonder why Rajat Arora wrote this bombastic screenplay in the first play.

Snd  what  Ajay Devgan  is doing here? Devgan  undoubtedlty the superstar  of the show, has an ill-defined role.He  tries to get past the limitations impinged on  his character  His Rajasthani accent slips in and out like a  moody oil slick . He plays  right-hand to Rani Ileana D’Cruz who is as slippery a woman as any that God invented since Man realized that the organ in his pants is meant for more than just peeing. Rani Sahiba smooches her orderly in the open fortresses ofRajasthan with her bareback suggesting nudity.

Would any Rani worth her crown get naked and smooch her subject in full view? Ileana is not the  only one indulging in incoherent nudity. When we  first meet  Vidyut Jamwal—yes that paragon of  wooden expressions is also in the cast—he is sitting naked in a train.Probably waiting  for someone to  pull the emergency  signal.

Oh , and the aforementioned Rani Sahiba smooches Jamwal too…in a  prison cell where she is locked up during the Emergency.Wish someone had locked away this  film’s screenplay and  forgotten the key.

Why the Emergency? What is its relevance to the plot except to have a Sanjay Gandhi lookalike (Priyanshu Chatteree)make cheesy passes at the Rani. Later we see him zonked  out of his senses with semi-naked girls  lounging on the floor.

Sanjay Gandhi  is not the only one slandered by this perverse action film. Talented actors like Sanjay Mishra and Sharad Kelkar seem to be puppets  of a fate controlled by forces far beyond the precincts of coherence and logic.

Amd Emran Hashmi… dear fans , do say a prayer for his dead career.His Rajasthani character with kohl in the eye and a perpetual smirk on the lips would probably have been more bearable if he  didn’t have to romance the vacuous bimbo named Esha Gupta.

Just why the film industry tolerates the likes  of Gupta  and D’Cruz is a subject worthy of  a thesis. Or just why we  the audiences are expected to tolerate a film so steeped in self-congratulations that it can’t see how ridiculous it looks as four mercenaries played byDevgan, Hashmi, Esha Gupta and  Sanjay Mishra, set off to rescue the aforementioned Rani’s  gold collection from the Government.

It is hard to believe that Milan Luthria who once upon time gave usKachche Dhaage  and The Dirty Picture and the immortal songs ofNusrat Fateh Ali Khan would here be  reduced to reviving his comatose career with a gold-rescue plan that is harebrained and  untenable.And the songs are so forgettable you wonder which  would be obliterated  from our minds  first….the songs  or  the film?

It’s race to the finish for Milan Luthria.