To begin with, very few films prove to be true & loyal to their strong and powerful title giving you a clear message. Expectedly THUGS OF HINDOSTAN happens to be one of the same, which openly performs a clever thuggery with the audience and that too at cunningly inflated ticket prices, just to set some new records beating the other major hits of the recent Hindi cinema.
However, to be honest, the film truly took me back to the times of mid-80s when we experienced the most awful and disappointing era watching Amitabh Bachchan’s duds coming one after another giving us a seriously tough time in the theater as the young, energetic die-hard fans of the beloved icon.
Luckily I had my early training of watching cinema from my elder brothers and their friends who were extremely knowledgeable as well as critical of films, even if they featured their most loved star or director. THUGS OF HINDOSTAN strongly reminded me of those extremely painful hours spent in the theater when we all used to sit with our heads down in deep pain and distress watching films such as TOOFAN, JAADUGAR, AJOOBA and GANGA JAMUNA SARSWATI in their very first night show in our nearby theaters. Just 15 minutes into the film, we all used to know that is another flop from our favorite icon and is not going to work in any manner. Being the youngest member of the group, I was also asked to give my opinion, which always used to be in sync with the elders as a sincere and eager learner of quality cinema.
Many decades later THUGS OF HINDOSTAN gave me exactly the same feel and jitters sitting in a multiplex, when it typically started like a film from the 80s (strongly reminding you of Manoj Kumar’s KRANTI) and then began sliding down at an unbelievable pace post the initial interesting introductions, giving you an assurance of something better coming ahead.
Unfortunately the assurances never get fulfill in its painfully tiring duration of 2 hours and 44 minutes. And this new age CON-GAME, simply offers NOTHING in terms of entertainment as a colossal disappointment of the year despite a huge canvas, a major production house and a never before casting of two stalwarts of Hindi cinema coming together.
In short, all you get to see as merits in this epic disaster is a few well shot introductions, a couple of fast-paced actions sequences and one particular scene in the beginning where Amitabh and the gang pose as a huge statue before attacking the British ship. Apart from these THUGS OF HINDOSTAN frankly offers ZERO in return of the high priced tickets bought, strangely contradicting and defying many wide-spread notions about its stellar cast and team.
First of all, it defies the popular fact that AAMIR KHAN never signs a film without any novelty in the subject and without getting convinced from its confident script or writing. The notion as well as the tag of Mr. Perfectionist doesn’t work anymore as THUGS OF HINDOSTAN has the most unoriginal, jaded, rotten and pathetic script presented in the recent decades in the name of commercial entertaining cinema.
Continuing with Aamir, this also happens to be the most badly directed films of the present times by the writer-director Vijay Krishna Acharya. And thus also contradicts the assumption that Aamir intervenes in his director’s work, since both TASHAN and DHOOM 3 were not any well made films either coming from the same director. In fact keeping apart the action and cinematography, THUGS OF HINDOSTAN can easily be rated as the worst film from Acharya till date with minimum entertainment quotient in comparison to his last two films.
Further taking into account the recent mention by Aamir of Jack Sparrow (the famous fictional character in the English PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN film series), it clearly reveals from where both the makers as well as the actors drew their inspiration from, how deeply our actors are obsessed by the works of the renowned western actors and how desperately they wish to somehow achieve the same reputed status.
Secondly, the film once again points towards the casual approach followed by the big productions houses and filmmakers towards the writing department in particular. To be straight if this was what they were writing since last couple of years then I don’t know what to say or how to comment upon the same. In other words, at one end they keep on rejecting the innovative and novel ideas/writings of both new and established writers. And on the other come up with such crap content in their mega-giant ventures spending hundreds of crores offering simply NOTHING.
For instance just imagine a wanted revolutionary, who is constantly hiding and attacking the britishers, is shown trying to cultivate a barren land, when he is supposed to be on a never-ending run with no permanent home or living place in the region. That was frankly the ‘Kuchh Bhi’ moment for me in this epic failure. No doubt Hindi Cinema is miles behind the outstanding writing as well as VFX witnessed in our own Indian Regional Language cinema, forget the World Cinema.
Putting it differently, if this is what you can think of, bringing together two gigantic pillars of Hindi Cinema for the first time ever, then it is nothing short of a cultural crime and a blessed opportunity brutally wasted by the irresponsible, careless filmmakers. Hence if you are expecting some well written characterisations and explosive confrontations scenes featuring Amitabh and Aamir, then would like to inform you with a heavy heart, that there are NONE in the entire film criminally ignoring their individual proven talent and capabilities.
Thirdly coming to the towering onscreen persona of Amitabh Bachchan, our filmmakers still haven’t figured out what to do with this kind of giant actor of the present times and how to exploit his enigmatic presence on screen justifying his huge talent. As a result in THUGS OF HINDOSTAN they thankfully manage to give Amitabh an appreciable getup as AZAAD but fail to give him any solid, well-written role/character or dialogues setting the screen on fire. So despite looking extraordinary as AZAAD, Amitabh is unable to deliver any peaks in the film, betrayed by a lackluster writing.
Fourthly, the use of women characters in the script also reveals the same old mindset of our Hindi Cinema of the 80s, in which one girl needs to be with the gang and the other a nautch-girl forming a sort of love triangle. As the fighter girl, Fatima Sana Shaikh performs her actions well but has the same look on her face even in the emotional scenes. Plus the way they use one of the top actress of the present times, Katrina Kaif, in just two songs and a few scenes, easily makes you guess how the industry works and treats the girls as mere attractive decorative props and nothing else.
Here would clearly like to mention that it’s not about whether Katrina can act or not. Its actually about how and why one of the most successful actress still cannot say NO and has to do such foolish, small role in a film knowingly bowing down to the ‘ugly power system’.
To be exact, TOH can easily be described as a project wherein every character remains half-baked and unimpressive, just appearing in the scenes joined together to form a lengthy film. Really wonder how Aamir Khan approved such a poorly written script with a completely clichéd, predictable and uninteresting story progression.
Moreover I am really amazed how a production house like YRF, Aamir Khan and highly talented composers Ajay-Atul together approved such poor songs becoming one of the major drawbacks of the film. Thankfully, choreography still gives you something to watch on screen during these terrible tracks. But no doubt most of the present filmmakers have stopped giving any preference and time to the soundtrack of their films treating them as a mere unavoidable requisite of our Hindi cinema.
Relying heavily on its inspirations, the background score also takes a lot from the western hits. Though it turns out to be more than fine in a few sequences featuring Aamir Khan, it largely remains alien in sound and feel, which actually doesn’t match with the purely Indianised theme of the film as I strongly felt. Besides it also didn’t have the energy and spirit as required by a film with a supposedly revolutionary or patriotic theme.
Summing up, THUGS OF HINDOSTAN is a huge disappointment, rather a torture, where you will even find Aamir Khan overacting along with Mohd. Zeeshan Ayyub in the supporting cast. The film neither has any exciting thug-acts (as per its title) nor any extra-ordinary enjoyable moments in its entire duration. And it’s really a shame that we get to see this kind of joyless, entertainment-less, humour-less, stale and boring kind of project from a team that had everything to its disposal both in terms of financial resources and the creative talent.
So this avoidable, mis-venture isn’t recommended and you should ideally watch something much better and entertaining on the online portals instead, skipping this big time thug-act.
Rating : 1 / 5
Note : Following the same old exploitive practice, the ticket prices were yet again raised by the multiplexes for the film releasing one day post Diwali on a Thursday.
Strangely where the Consumer Product Industry organizes MEGA SALES on festivals reducing their high prices, the multiplexes ironically increase the prices exploiting the unconcerned public. Now though the people might have accepted this timely exploitation without thinking of any revolt as such, BTC will continue the tradition of deducting a big one star from such films, not caring about their passionate viewers.
Hence
Net Ratings of THUGS OF HINDOSTAN : 1-1 / 5 = You can easily guess what remains.
