Bholaa comes across as a wannabe entertainer, and fails to rise beyond mediocre. A lot of conscious choices across departments are to blame.
A promotional image for "Bholaa". (ADFFilms/Twitter)
Bholaa (Hindi)
“Sar se paaon talak hai dil Bholaa.” That’s what the theme for the lead in Bholaa — a remake of Kaithi — says about Ajay Devgn’s character in the film. Loose translation: From head to toe, Bholaa is all heart.
And that is probably one of the biggest untruths about this Ajay Devgn-directorial. Yes, he helmed the film.
Bholaa comes across as a wannabe entertainer: It fails to rise beyond mediocre. And a lot of conscious choices across a number of departments are to blame.
The trailer made it look like the story was taking a slightly different direction than the original.
However, what this movie took was a detour, and refused to unlearn what has been the bane of most flop films — especially remakes — in Bollywood, which has led to their box office doom.
Anyone who has watched the 2019 Karthi-starrer already knows the story: A recently-released prison inmate — on his way to see his daughter, whom he has never met — is drawn into saving a number of policemen who have been drugged, and might die in the absence of timely medical intervention.
Pursuing them are henchmen of the gang whose narcotics one of the police officers — who happens to be the one enlisting the help of the recently-freed man — captured recently, along with some of the members of the captured gang.
The story — in both cases — is about how the police are brought to safety, and the protagonists get their due.
There can be two reviews of Bholaa. The first is the film on its own. The second is a comparative review with Kaithi. Let’s do both, but start with the former.
As a film, Bholaa repeats many of the same mistakes that caused the likes of blockbuster candidates such as Shamshera to crash and burn.
Sadly, Bollywood in general and Bholaa in particular seem to be having a hard time letting go of exposition when it comes to introducing a character or a story point.
Thus it is that from the moment Bholaa (Ajay Devgn) is being released from prison to the end, we get little by way of his backstory and motivations, which makes it harder to identify or sympathise with, and therefore root for, him.
In fact, his biggest bit of character development seems to come right at the beginning, when he is being co-opted to drive a truck.
Ditto for Superintendent of Police Diana Joseph (Tabu), who appears as a one-dimensional police officer with speckles of humanity here and there. What’s worse, the character is reduced to a damsel in distress when we could have easily had another strong female lead or supporting cast member.
Of the entire list of actors, Deepak Dobriyal is deliciously despicable as Ashu. It would not be surprising to see him break into the ranks of Pankaj Tripathi and Vijay Varma, rather than languishing among the likes of Inaamulhaq and Sharib Hashmi — actors who are remembered more by their faces than their names.
Another find is Amir Khan as Kadchi, who appears to be the only one who has a nice character arc, and manages to do justice to it.
Thus, it is sad that a single compliment to him from Bholaa at the correct time, which would have given much-needed character development to the latter, is missing. It comes much too late.
Gajraj Rao seems to do a competent job with what he has been given, while the rest of the cast are mostly token baddies, or hardly able to be recalled when the lights come back on in the theatre.
And that includes Makrand Deshpande, whose character’s only task is apparently to be a hype man for Bholaa. Ditto for Vineet Singh, the other supposed baddie in the film. Heck, even Sanjay Mishra seems downplayed!
That brings us to the dialogues, which show sparks, but never set fire to the screen. In some cases, they feel like captions for what is unfolding on the screen.
Yet, the pace of the film rarely lags. The action scenes seem competent, but there’s hardly anything we have not seen before.
A still from Bholaa. (Supplied)
The background music seems to replicate the success of “mass BGMs” from South India. That’s why we appear straddled with shouts of “Re Bholaa!” every time Ajay Devgn does anything remotely out of the ordinary.
The item song at the beginning is most welcome when it stops. The other songs seem tolerable only when they are in the background as the drama unfolds.
And therein lies one of the biggest drawbacks of Bholaa. There are a number of places where the intrigue factor could have been ratcheted up to 11, where the suspense could have worked well, and where the story could have risen from mediocrity if the characters acted in consonance with what they are supposed to be.
All of these are absent, and instead what we get are supposedly high-octane action sequences and chase set-pieces, which are marred by the use of shaky cam.
There’s a simple tenet of showing action: Let the audience see it! Sometimes, they may need to see it twice, which is why Jackie Chan was so successful with old-world Hong Kong directors and their films.
In its absence, we get nausea-inducing fights where it is difficult to make out who hits whom with what, and what the impact is.
And then there are scenes that seem to make no sense. For example, how come the baddies are looking for a truck even though no one has pinpointed it to be the vehicle being used to transport the unwell police officers?
Or, who takes a photo of Bholaa and sends it to one of the masterminds? What’s egregious with this one is that Bholaa is wearing shades in the image, which he does not wear any time in the present in the film.
What also does not escape the eye is the ash that Bholaa applies during fights, which somehow returns to what it was before the fight. Whither, continuity?
Although some jump-cuts impress and the CGI is nice in parts, some visual effects — like the animated big cat in one of the sequences — are laughably low quality.
What worked for Kaithi in 2019 was that it was mostly grounded. The story — its suspense, intrigue, and resolution — propelled it along.
The characters were written and brought to life to be believable and empathy-inducing.
In fact, the only time Kaithi went over the top was in one of the action sequences where Dilli — the protagonist played by Karthi — went beast mode.
In the 2023 beast mode, most of that human drama makes way for this “beast mode” action, which is what holds Bholaa back.
Ajay Devgn the director is just four films old, and still seems to use broad strokes to bring characters to life.
And the films themselves seem to lack cohesion when it comes to direction, editing, and dialogue.
Maybe he will get better with time. He has definitely shown sparks of it.
As for Bholaa, wait for the OTT release. This film could very well have been 2D instead of being made in 3D.
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