Raees

Cast- Shah Rukh Khan, Mahira Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui

Director- Rahul Dholakia

Writers- Rahul Dholakia, Harit Mehta, Ashish Vashi, Niraj Shukla

The much awaited and much hyped film is here. Finally … ” Woh aa gaya ” !!

It’s an eighties kind of story where in, it begins with the child taking to petty crimes and then grows up to be a powerful and Robinhood-ish bootlegger with a heart of gold.

The story seems loosely based on a real life character of Abdul Latif who flourished due to alcohol prohibition in Gujarat during eighties / nineties.

Shahrukh Khan is practically in every frame and after a long gap, we see him flexing his muscles and breaking bones and …lot of bottles. His stylish good looks, kohl eyes and rimmed glasses invited a lot of whistles in the cinema ,actually much more than Sunny Leone could do in her much hyped song. He doesn’t camouflage his age just like most of his recent movies ( which is appreciable )and gives his best to the character as much as the screenplay allowed him.

Nawazuddin who plays an almost parallel role is a delight to watch as usual. There’s something great about him that even the simplest of the dialogues would be delivered with a difference, whether a twinkle of the eye of or slightest of grin or his trademark straight forward style. He does have some interesting share of dialogues.

Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub plays Shahrukh’s close friend and does a good job. Other support cast of Narendra Jha and Atul Kulkarni too fared well in their small roles.

Mahira Khan looked too young to romance Shahrukh and was nothing great to write home about . I simply fail to understand as to why do we need to import such mediocrity when we have so much talent and beauty here and that too at such high risk of all the intolerance nonsense that happens.

It’s just not worth it, unlike some of the talented singers from across the border who are a delight to listen to.

Music is good enough to keep us entertained. One song seemed very sudden and out of place. The action was average and could have been better.

In spite of such ace effort by Shahrukh and good performance by Nawazuddin, the film fails to have the wow factor because of the screenplay. The story seemed very predictable, was a little dragged post intermission and also had a few loopholes here and there. Many controversial similarities could have been avoided.

We have seen much better gangster/ smuggler movies like “Once Upon a time in Mumbai ” “Shoot out at Wadaala” with similar stories. This one’s trump card is Shahrukh and that seems to be the director’s sole appreciable achievement here.

Rahul Dholakia of Parzania fame could have done much better with this superb star cast.

Shahrukh ‘s charisma and Nawazuddin will sail the movie through plus the fact that it has all ingredients of a masala entertainer and an interesting central character.

Score 6.5 on 10