Classic movies are sacrosanct. Tamper with them and you’re guaranteed to err more often than not. Gabbar Is Back is one such endeavour. Based on AR Murugadoss’ Ramanaa from 2002, this film attempts to tell a story about one man’s fight against corruption. The only problem is, Murugadoss did something similar with Akshay Kumar just last year. While Holiday did differ in its content by bits. Largely, the idea of one man leading a charge against corruption was basically the same. Even so, had Gabbar Is Back had stuck to the nitty-gritties of its original it could’ve been a decent watch. But it strays from the path grossly. It tries to be as slick and stylish as Holiday but in doing so it forgets the crucial story elements of Ramanaa. The Sholay packaging with Gabbar Singh dialogue only makes it worse. Step aside masala potboilers, this one’s a real hotchpotch mix.
The story deals with one man’s dexterous fight against corruption. He launches a covert attack on corrupt government officials by kidnapping a lot of 10 from the same field. The story starts when 10 Tahsildars (Assistant Collectors) are kidnapped and later nine are released and one is hanged publicly. The idea being, the grave punishment on their peers will discourage the corrupt officers and force them to mend their ways. An unknown man named Gabbar takes responsibility of this radical occurrences.
As it turns out, Gabbar is the alter ego of Professor Aditya (Akshay Kumar). Gabbar’s plans run into trouble when the most stereotypical, power hungry and brand conscious bad guy Patil (Suman) crosses paths with him. “I’m a brand” proclaims Patil on more than one occasion. And thus begins the brand war between good and bad. If that sounds sinfully original and interesting, it’s a decoy.
Don’t be misled into believing this concept could offer some b-grade South masala romping. The way Gabbar Is Back is executed, it lets the premise down to point that it makes a mockery out of its novel intentions.
The core problem with Gabbar Is Back is its vision. It’s a film trying to be cool, young and hep while projecting dramatic values that are age old. End of the day it’s a classic good guy versus bad guy showdown with contemporary garnishing of Google, Twitter and EDM.
On top of that, the hero is projecting his covert operations under the verbal guise of Gabbar Singh from Sholay. Here we have a guy out to change the system. Out to fighting against politics, power and corruption. And when such an icon resorts to cheap imitation of a grey character, things are bound to go out of hand.
The snowball effect hits this film hard. It doesn’t help when staples of South movies, the jerky camera movement in reaction shots and loud-mouthed over-friendly characters dominate proceedings. Add to that, a bizarre love angle between a man inspired by the death of his wife and a modern girl obsessed with Google and good deeds. None of it gels together. Even the music sticks out like a sore thumb.
The high flying action doesn’t cut it either. And let’s not talk about the forced humour.
The only thing that works in favour of this film are its performances. Akshay Kumar as the lead man looks smashing. When he’s doing the action or intimidating the bad guys he looks in top gear. It’s a pity his character displays such an absurd graph. Same goes for Shruthi Haasan’s role. She’s supposed to be the bubbly but industrious young girl. She’s bang on cue, but the tuning of her character is totally off.
A veteran like Suman, who plays the bad guy, ends up looking out of place and out of sorts, because the filmmakers are too focused on getting punchy dialogue and snazzy camera angles in place. In one of the fights, the not so athletic looking Suman actually takes a karate pose, albeit momentarily. That’s instant parody material.
Ramanaa was a good Tamil film. Its consequent adaptations in Telugu, Kannada, Bengali and now Hindi have confirmed the existence of the ‘lost in translation’ phenomenon. In this story’s fifth rendition, filming gimmicks and juvenile humour upstage logical writing and character development. The end result is a lackluster and utterly pointless film trying too hard to impress.
