ACTION JACKSON - Not even close to 'Commitment' and far away from 'Appointment', with all rotten stuff offered by the reputed names. (Review By Bobby Sing)

Many rate Prabhudeva as a ‘one film wonder’ overrated director who has been mostly lucky till date either due to the star power featuring in his movies or few hit tracks largely saving his projects despite the routine scripts. Frankly I enjoyed watching his WANTED a lot along with the fairly entertaining ROWDY RATHORE that had a big merit of being a Rajamouli remake. But Prabhudeva tried to play it pretty safe with RAMAIYA VASTAIYA (a new age remake of MAINE PYAR KIYA) and then raised many big doubts with his R…RAJKUMAR, one of the weakest biggies this year disappointing hugely.

However I was still willing to give the experienced director a strong benefit of doubt, until I witnessed this utterly atrocious attempt in the name of entertainment by the same Prabhudeva along with Ajay Devgun and a big production house falling down to a rare unbelievable level which even goes beyond R…RAJKUMAR in comparative terms.

Following his fixed pattern of opening the film with a supposedly entertaining mix of action, romance and few songs having some surprising cameos, ACTION JACKSON actually reveals its storyline of lookalikes post 50 minutes of the film. And then has got nothing great to offer in terms of content apart from a well shot, brutal & bloody fight sequence just before the intermission. Sharing my personal experience of watching this terrible attempt, at first I thought that a weirdly dancing Ajay Devgun is having great fun here that should ideally build up later offering some fine enjoyable moments. But as the film moved further, I realized that this was in turn a great ham show put together by all the renowned names which is sure going to find one of the top places in the next “Golden Kela Awards” for the worst movie of the year unarguably.

To give you  the exact idea about the amazing hamming sequences shot by the team hilariously, just sample the following and then give it a thought that how could such big names of the industry could even think of doing it on the screen in the name of entertainment. (Spoilers Ahead)

A. The leading lady accidently gets to see the private parts of our hero and assumes that it is her lucky charm. As she tries to witness ‘it’ again making repeated attempts (to become lucky), her group of friends is also willing to do the same and they end up undressing a wrong person instead having a good fun. So this is the romantic angle of the movie (involving all educated new age girls) to be rated as cheeky, cheap, disgusting or vulgar as per your own choice.

B. A scene dealing with the problem of primary school admissions has a principal who behaves more like a Kirana shop-keeper, undeservingly sitting at the reputed post.

C. The actions sequences go on throwing, stabbing, killing dozens of people like vegetables both in the country as well as abroad and our Police is more interested in working for the criminals than the government they wear their uniform for. Moreover the Don’ psycho sister even kills four goons throwing them out of a high rise building to fall on the road in Bangkok as if she owned the city and its law too.

D. The two lookalikes are so overconfident that one even decides to go to Bangkok in place of the other along with his friend without any official hassles at all.

E.  Our hero narrates his tragic story in the flashback, recalling the incidents which actually happened in his absence, as if he had the power of a gifted third eye.

F. A pregnant woman is stabbed pretty badly but she delivers a healthy baby later on surviving a ‘big final operation’ which is never shown. Also our hero’s funny friend gets brutally stabbed in the back only to return looking perfectly fine in the end.

G. Played by an ambitious actress, the film also has the most hamming lip-lock sequence ever with the girl kissing the hero’s funny friend only, to know the hero’s whereabouts.

H. Despite having a reputed name in the lyrics department, AJ has some outrageously written songs such as “Surya Ast Punjabi Mast" (What do you mean by that really???), “Tujhse Milne Ka Keeda Ander Hai” (Now we have fallen down to the ‘Keeda’ level) and “Chhichhora Piya” revealing our foolish journey from “Dagabaaz Piya" to this disgraceful phrase calling the lover Chhichhora. (How could you even approve these dear Prabhudeva and Ajay Devgun?)

I. Along with a badly written, rotten script (can we even call it a script taking everything from here and there?) the film has some sick punch lines mocking two earlier cult hits WANTED and AGNEEPATH. Whereas in reality it is not even close to ‘The Commitment’ and far, far away from ‘The Appointment’ quite shamelessly.

J. The background score is another of those strong hamming elements of ACTION JACKSON, that turns out to be hugely loud as well as funny instead of terrifying at regular intervals. Moreover despite having Prabhudeva as the director, we do not get to see any exceptional choreography too in the mediocre songs unexpectedly.

K. Adding to the technical hamming, the over excessive use of illogical animation and special effects in the film’s editing is so ‘at your face’ that it seems as if the editor has used this opportunity to showcase everything he had got in his editing machines and then tried to make a personal show-reel out of the film, acting smartly.

L. Coming to the performances, they all force you to question their cinematic intelligence loudly as Ajay Devgun seems to be all confused doing nothing new in the film apart from his weird, over confident ‘left foot dancing’. Sonakshi Sinha looks like acting clever while giving her interviews only because the girl has done all exactly similar roles till date except LOOTERE. In straight words, If they are not offering you something different then who is stopping you to refuse all these stupid, identical roles one after another dear Sonakshi? Yami Gautam suffers again due to a bad project and we cannot really blame her completely since who can refuse a Prabhudeva film (with such reputation) as her third assignment only in the industry. The debutante Manasvi tries showcasing her every asset to grab your attention in vain along with those never seen before hamming villains contributing nothing. So among all these non-performers there is only Kunaal Roy Kapur doing a repetitive yet entertaining role of Ajay’s friend generating some kind of laughter in his few sequences.

In all, ACTION JACKSON seriously made me think that did Ajay Devgun & Prabhudeva really had to do this, stooping to such a low? Do these makers actually consider we the viewers as fools for granted, who can accept anything and everything served in a well publicized movie with some known faces offering a big ‘no-show’ in terms of content or entertainment.
OR
Do they have all reached their saturation point in reality, having nothing left in them creatively, hence trying these ridiculous mix-n-match remakes in order to skip the hard work of experimenting with some new subjects and scripts.

Ending on a sad note, the film reminded me of a beautiful story wherein an intelligent father gives 100 rupees to his 3 sons individually and asks them to buy something to fill a room with the money given. Two of his sons decide to buy cheap things such as cotton and grass to fill the room with the money given, but the third son cleverly buys an incense stick for just one rupee and saves 99. He burns the stick and fills the room with its soothing fragrance in no time, winning the competition hands down.

Now finding a relation with the above inspiring story, Prabhudeva’s ACTION JACKSON is exactly like the act of those two sons who try to fill the room with just anything without thinking much. So we have a big budgeted look, huge canvas, great fights, good looking faces, foreign locations, romance, glamour, sex, songs and everything else in the movie stuffed in forcibly to complete those 145 minutes. But the act doesn’t have that soothing fragrance to win hearts.

We are all looking for that pleasant fragrance in our films, dear film-makers. So better try to be the third intelligent son in your upcoming ventures……..gracefully!

Rating : 1 / 5 (Just for the huge effort put in by the entire crew and very few enjoyable moments with Kunaal Roy Kapur)

(Note : Not anything related to the storyline but ACTION JACKSON takes it major inspirations for its sword fighting and all colour scheme and graphics used in the promos from Quentin Tarantino’s KILL BILL.)