review: ROCKY HANDSOME

Khach Khach Khach Khach! Action cinema ka khoon!

1/2 star


Mini Review:

Take away the poseurs that pass for the villains and his posse, take away the dude that makes faces at the camera to show he's 'baaaad', swallow the story of tourists in Goa selling their kidneys and other body parts, try not to remember where you saw the action sequences, do not laugh at the old as hills basic premise, even then you'll come away saying, 'why are we making such films?'

Main Review:

'Iski training itni brutal thee ki jo government officers dekhne gaye, woh behosh ho gaye!'

I didn't make this up, this exposition is supposed to make you fear this Rambo...Err... Rocky chap.

But Rocky is not his name, we are told. It is his code name. Whaat?

Never mind all that. That dialog is just an opportunity to show slo-mo action shots and the classic shot of hero walking away from an explosion. Alas this sequence comes too late. You are already hysterical from all the bad guys posing what they think is a matural born killers look. Their confusion may arise from not knowing what it is exactly that they do.

Drugs ka dhanda bhi karta hai 

'Russians ko maal dena hai', now you don't know why Russians will kill everybody and their uncle for what looks like two envelopes of heroine, also not clear whether it is Russian heroine that they need to pay them for, or that the Russians have paid and they need to be given that heroine. And if they are smuggling heroine in toy boxes, why are they so desperate for those two envelopes? Give some other stuff to the Ruskies, then find the thief who stole from you, no?

Body Parts ka dhanda karta hai

Seriously? And you have only what looks like just one ambulance to carve out body parts? Oh yes, to show you how awful these people are, there is one stretcher and a bowlful of entrails in a set that looks like a poor man's version of the Deadpool hospital. Remember the Shiney Ahuja horror movie set in a hospital, Ghost? They had better sets than this stupidity. You cannot just carve out body parts and sell them like fish...

Man From Nowhere

This movie is supposed to be a remake. And you can watch the broody, dark (literally) movie online. The action in the original is quiet and quick and brutal. The action here seems gimmicky in comparison, not matter how close they stick to the original. Also remakes does not mean subtitled dialog reproduced in Hindi here. It just seems too stilted. We are told Sharad Kelkar and his bunch are ANS. But what is ANS no one ever elaborates. It's not like CID - something even the kids understand. They just look like a bunch of bumbling cops who give food to a chap and then uncuff him. This after they think that they know he may have killed a big bad guy with his bare hands.

The Korean movie is almost six years old. And for an action movie, the action seems stale. Better bathroom fight award has already been claimed by Raid: The Redemption and shootouts in the bathroom are older than Rambo...

Thick Marathi Accents

It seems a trifle unkind to comment on the Marathiness of the accents but the movie is set in Goa, and they are very houseproud of the Goanness of their speech. The cop show Lakshya on Star Pravah has better police work than what you see here. And their Marathi in Crime Patrol used casually in a Hindi show is better than what you hear here. Cop in a bar, reporting on the bad guy scene is so badly done, he may have had a better chance wearing his uniform. 'He is not a bad guy, he is a Paytriuht!' type dialog don't help endearing the characters to us at all...

John Abraham's Best Scene

The half star that the film earns is for the scene where John Abraham stretches his leg and pushes the plate of the fish curry to the kid hiding under the table. Had we started with giving five stars to his physique, we would have had to cut them from the rating each time the kid (whom he's protecting) makes an appeaance. She tries hard, real hard to be prococious, ends up being slow and deliberate and boring and slow and slower and more and more annoying. 

What a pity Nishikant Kamat decided to show up as chief head villain and pose on the sofa, overdo the villain act in the elevator and in the nightclub. The knife fights were interesting up to a point, but the sound effects of 'Khach! Khach! Khach!' sounds more like apples being sliced than someone being stabbed by a knife, several times,

Fans of action films died a little here...But we will survive... And some day, Rambo will show up on the big screen, swallowing everything whole...