DHOOM 3

One star

Overacting Ki Dhoom

Mini Review:

If the camera is not chasing bikes needlessly, it concentrates on facial contortions of Aamir Khan. The audience is saved by Uday Chopra’s antics. Go figure!

Main Review:

Dhoom the movie worked brilliantly because it stayed true to the Luc Besson script of Taxi ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_(1998_film) ), where a cop who doesn’t know how to drive enlists the help of a street smart taxi driver. Here Jay Dixit and his sidekick Ali were rather fun. And the stunts and the tumbles were all good popcorn cinema. Dhoom 2 sort of became a Tom & Jerry thing that made for a decent watch.

In Dhoom 3, they decide, fun and games is not fun any more, let’s give the audience a drama. We will have audience clapping at the dialog, shaking their fists at the screen and stomping the feet to the ‘beat’. Sigh. They forgot, Kader Khan has retired, and when you hear, ’Pakad ke rakhna, chhodna mat’ it sounds more like the ad for a popular glue rather than love between brothers.

That said, they offer this role of ridiculous dialog to Aamir Khan, and then let him have a free hand. The result: more facial contortions than Urmila Matondkar’s filmography, painted on abs, and technology that perhaps only Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne would have access to. Aamir Khan’s hamming is so pathetic, he should be henceforth called Ham-ir Khan. A b-grade horror film where the poorly paid actors put in an honest effort to be Saamri or whatever zombie creature they are supposed to be is better than Aamir’s in this movie. (Yes, there are a few ‘aww’ moments with Aamir, but most of them are when he’s being put in a box and taken far away from the audience. Don’t ask!) And at one point when Aamir tries the Clockwork Orange look ( https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi67x2rTkQjY36SpV6PwQbA6RU6rpcCnkwfmvysN2bT73k_WWO6nREh6Zr068LVHMKjM1sRD99o402BIWdAj3eMAyma7EES-pr19BLB_YzF1_mzWI9v-zUvykBpTSQ7tq6-KuXQ/s1600/01.jpg ), you wonder where the eyelash went, and hope that Uday Chopra shows up with a ‘waapas gamdevi’ type dialog. And this happens often.

And stunts? So many bikes vrooming on the screen? And how about the Bike that gets an exo-skeleton? Naah, it looks like al Batman/Ironman reject trying to be ‘kewl’. Especially when Aamir is working out a bank robbery on a Ironman/Minority Report style transparent computer screen with graphics manipulated by hands. So much for original thought.

Yes, kahani mein twist is there, but as one of the lads sitting behind me in the audience said, ‘Now that we know the twist, let’s go home and watch the rest on You Tube whenever it shows up’. This was at the Interval.

Katrina looks good and she kisses the hero yet again at a train station. She knows the twist in the tale but we are not told how she knows it. Again, the writing is so lazy, you think Salman Khan, the Indian spy told her while singing ‘Banjara, banjara, dil mera dil mera banjara’ in the movie you should have seen.

The writing is so unimaginative, the entire Chicago PD consists of cops who aim but don’t shoot, who assume that the thief is Indian because he wrote a message in Hindi after a robbery, and the token ‘white person’ who is a villain is addressed as, ‘Mister Anderson’ again and again until you begin imagining a bizarre version of The Matrix.

Poor Abhishek Bachchan. His earnest Jay Dixit feels like he has been trapped under the fallen bike. If a real bike ever fell on you, your leg would be probably broken and skin burnt from the hot exhaust of the bike. But no one cares about this character (he did not know how to drive, isn’t it? Now he’s stunt riding sports bikes and even auto rickshaws). All attention is on Haamir who chews up the footage with more and more of his childhood angst.

Speaking of childhood, I loved the little boy (Aamir as a child), and Jackie Shroff as the dad. Loved that the bags under Jackie dada’s eyes have been ironed out (about time!), and that he still makes his presence felt even in a small role. But mostly loved Uday Chopra for the fun he was having as a sidekick.. That’s the most honest thing about the movie. The star is shared by these three. 

Epic movie lengths should be left to Peter Jackson. Here, it is just a dhoom of overacting. The spectacle of the movie might rake in moolah, but the story doesn’t rise above bleaargh.

Bottomline: Dhoom 3 is Haamir Khan’s Besharam.