DABANGG - Movie Review : Watch it only for Salman and his action but strictly not for anything more. (Review By Bobby Sing)

Building a fantastic hype with Salman Khan as never before in the brilliant promos and Malaika dancing to a hit item song “Munni Badnam Hui”, resulted in half the battle won for the makers of DABANGG. Further add to this the festival holiday weekend of IDD and you have a sure shot winner in your hands, irrespective of whatever content the film may have in it for the viewers. This is the latest HIT MACHINE formula developed by the marketing teams of various production houses which indeed has resulted in many deliberate Hits in the last few months.

DABANGG also follows the same path of somehow bringing in loads of crowds in the theaters within the first 3-4 days of its release and then generating maximum returns from the big centers to cover its major cost. The film no doubt proves successful in its above mentioned plan and provides ample entertainment to all die-hard fans of Salman Khan. But on the script, story and content front it does not rise above the level of a mere average entertainer.

Salman Khan is there in his full form mixing every emotion on the screen including love, hate, greed, comedy and revenge. His action sequences are superb as an extension of what we had last seen in WANTED. He introduces new comic styles of wearing goggles at the back of his collars and speaks few well written dialogues in his unique comical manners, which get him some instant claps. He finds new ways to hit his opponents and kills them right away along with Malaika in her inviting Shilpa Shetty avatar in a raunchy item number.

But that’s all what DABANGG has to offer to the audience waiting for it with their own individual big expectations. The film is based on a very loose script which has the same old story starting from the childhood of two step brothers and then moving on to the days of their youth wherein one of them becomes a corrupt-tough policeman. The Dabangg policeman has his own style of working and keeps amusing the viewers at regular intervals. But unfortunately the impressive scenes keep dropping in between whenever an action sequence comes into the narration.

To be precise, anything can happen any time in the film as it has no fixed storyline to follow or an engaging plot to tell. The characters of many reputed actors remain under-developed and meaningless, such as Om Puri as a fellow Policeman, Anupam Kher as the Big Politician, Vinod Khanna as the step father of Salman and Mahesh Manjrekar as the drunkard father of Sonakshi. Both Tinnu Anand & Mahi Gill as the father-daughter are simply wasted and anybody could have done their roles. Dimple Kapadia is fine in her short role of a loving mother, but she is not given any great scenes to show her talent. Arbaaz Khan as Salman’s step brother is simply there to fill up the space, but Sonakshi Sinha proves that she is the talented daughter of Shatrughan Sinha with an impressive silent language of her beautiful eyes and body postures. Even with a huge age difference between the lead pair, both Salman and Sonakshi look great together, shining throughout the film and the girl surely will surprise a lot more in the coming days.

Other than Salman, DABANGG has three more merits to its credits and they are its breath taking stunts, hit musical soundtrack (Sajid-Wajid & Lalit) and a great combo of well conceived Cinematography, Editing & Dialogues. The film has nothing new to tell in its story department, that’s true, but it moves at such a brisk speed with Salman and his enigma that you don’t get a moment to think about what’s actually happening in the story section of the movie. The songs are inserted without any requirement as usual but their melody keeps you hooked and you don’t mind them coming one after another.

Now apart from its weak storyline and script, what’s the greatest flaw in DABANGG? That’s the absence of any out of the box, solid and powerful villain standing against Salman Khan in the film. Unlike WANTED, DABANGG doesn’t have any amusing villain character who gives a tough fight to the hero in his own entertaining style and persona. Though Sonu Sood is quite refreshing and efficient in his portrayal of an ambitious politician with a criminal record, but his character stands no-where close to Prakash Raj in WANTED. Actually there is no fault of Sonu Sood in this as the writers seem to be only interested in writing everything around the character of Chulbul Pandey in the film and in the process may have forgotten the villain altogether.

However in the climax, both Sonu and Salman put up a worth watching action sequence to cover it up. But again the concluding part of the movie has a particular scene which was earlier associated with Dharmendra in the late 70s and 80s. Here I am referring to the scenes wherein Dharmendra’s shirts used to tear off all by themselves when he was shown to be in extreme anger and in a revenge mode. The same happens here with Salman in the climax when he comes to know the truth about his mother’s death. His body starts pumping up leading to his shirt tearing off from the arms and chest. The scene may bring in huge seeties and applause in the single screens, but in multiplexes I heard giggles and laughter when it came on the screen.

Debutant director Abhinav Singh Kashyap (Anurag Kashayp’s brother) displays his guts of making an out and out masala entertainer as his first movie. But in order to present Salman in a completely new persona he pays less attention on the story, script and important characterizations in his venture. And that results in only an average entertainer which solely depends on the Star Charisma of a leading Khan in Bollywood.

In all, the film has only SALMAN and SALMAN written all over it throughout its 2 hours of duration and has nothing else to write about. He is simply adorable in the role of Robinhood Chulbul Pandey, who ironically does nothing related to the concept of real Robinhood. Still the scenes featuring him as a funny man are just superb.

So if you are a big Salman Khan fan, then you are sure going to love it. But if you compare it with his previous hit WANTED, then the film falls way short of the overall experience provided by that Prabhu Deva blockbuster. Nevertheless, as in our country the cast is more important than the content, so here is another blockbuster from the one & only Salman Khan, who remains the sole savior of this action packed thriller.

Ratings : 3 / 5 (including .5 more only for Salman Khan.)