DHOOM 3 REVIEWS & BO updates-CLOSED - Page 86

REVIEW: Dhoom 3 - Gloom And Doom

The first two Dhoom films were all about cool shades, fast bikes, practised scowls, preposterous scenarios and, the cornerstone of every mainstream Hindi film, pointless songs. Dhoom 3 is all about cool shades, fast bikes, practised scowls, preposterous scenarios and pointless songs. But it has a plot too, one that is semi-borrowed from Christopher Nolan's The Prestigeand given a Bollywood twist.

The twist, in fact, presents itself at interval point; everything until then is a replica of what you've seen in earlier Dhoom films. There's a robber who seems impossible to nab, there's a cop who spectacularly fails at trapping the robber despite repeated attempts (that probably explains why he's still ACP, nine years later), a sidekick who adds absolutely nothing to the plot apart from (a few) funny one-liners, a skimpily clad female actor and half-a-dozen chase sequences. Budgets have gone up in the nine years since the first Dhoom released, and the action's gotten much better. But little else is different till mid-point.

Then, Dhoom 3 swerves into a different direction, one that may or may not work for you depending entirely on how big an Aamir Khan fan you are. Even though "protagonists" Jai (Abhishek Bachchan) and Ali (Uday Chopra) have had to share the stage with anti-heroes in the earlier two films, Dhoom 3 pretty much relegates them to the corner, with new entrant Sahir Khan (played by Aamir) not just taking centre stage but owning it.

If the film wasn't titled Dhoom, and was called "Clown" or - as Sahir says at one point - "Maskara" or "Vidushak", no one would have wondered what Jai and Ali were doing in there. Simply put, this is an out-and-out Aamir Khan show - a full-blown ode to the Hindi film hero who hogs the limelight, gets out of the stickiest of situations with a smile and emerges triumphant despite the odds.

Keeping that in mind, and going by everything the industry has produced with mega stars in the recent past, Dhoom 3 is a small step up for mainstream Hindi cinema. It's as devoid of depth and sensibility as other films made with the sole intention of belling the box office cat, but Dhoom 3 - to its credit - is not a lazily-made film.

As writer, Vijay Krishna Acharya sticks to the tried-and-tested, but the franchise gets its most sturdy film under his directorship, and he ensures the film never really strays from what it promises to be - a big-ticket entertainer that's meant to provide instant gratification and little recall value.

The money seems well-spent: the action set-pieces are decently staged (barring some exceptions, like Khan running down a building in slo-mo, which looks super-tacky), the film is largely well shot (Sudeep Chatterjee channelling his inner Wally Pfister), and there are enough twists-and-turns (okay, one major twist) to keep you interested in the story.

Dhoom 3, however, could have done with less daft dialogues [Bank owner: "Do we know who's responsible (for the robbery)?" Cop: "All we know at this point is that it was a thief."], and fewer slo-mos, but the film is fairly enjoyable in a knock-back-a-few-drinks-and-watch-some-cars-blow-up kinda way.

On a side note, the Imax conversion is extremely ineffective - you can stop hyperventilating about the ticket price and watch it at whichever theatre's near you, preferable a single-screen one.

Read the interview with Vijay Krishna Acharya here.

The first two Dhoom films were all about cool shades, fast bikes, practised scowls, preposterous scenarios and, the cornerstone of every mainstream Hindi film, pointless songs. Dhoom 3 is all about cool shades, fast bikes, practised scowls, preposterous scenarios and pointless songs. But it has a plot too, one that is semi-borrowed from Christopher Nolan's The Prestigeand given a Bollywood twist.

The twist, in fact, presents itself at interval point; everything until then is a replica of what you've seen in earlier Dhoom films. There's a robber who seems impossible to nab, there's a cop who spectacularly fails at trapping the robber despite repeated attempts (that probably explains why he's still ACP, nine years later), a sidekick who adds absolutely nothing to the plot apart from (a few) funny one-liners, a skimpily clad female actor and half-a-dozen chase sequences. Budgets have gone up in the nine years since the first Dhoom released, and the action's gotten much better. But little else is different till mid-point.

Then, Dhoom 3 swerves into a different direction, one that may or may not work for you depending entirely on how big an Aamir Khan fan you are. Even though "protagonists" Jai (Abhishek Bachchan) and Ali (Uday Chopra) have had to share the stage with anti-heroes in the earlier two films, Dhoom 3 pretty much relegates them to the corner, with new entrant Sahir Khan (played by Aamir) not just taking centre stage but owning it.

If the film wasn't titled Dhoom, and was called "Clown" or - as Sahir says at one point - "Maskara" or "Vidushak", no one would have wondered what Jai and Ali were doing in there. Simply put, this is an out-and-out Aamir Khan show - a full-blown ode to the Hindi film hero who hogs the limelight, gets out of the stickiest of situations with a smile and emerges triumphant despite the odds.

Keeping that in mind, and going by everything the industry has produced with mega stars in the recent past, Dhoom 3 is a small step up for mainstream Hindi cinema. It's as devoid of depth and sensibility as other films made with the sole intention of belling the box office cat, but Dhoom 3 - to its credit - is not a lazily-made film.

As writer, Vijay Krishna Acharya sticks to the tried-and-tested, but the franchise gets its most sturdy film under his directorship, and he ensures the film never really strays from what it promises to be - a big-ticket entertainer that's meant to provide instant gratification and little recall value.

The money seems well-spent: the action set-pieces are decently staged (barring some exceptions, like Khan running down a building in slo-mo, which looks super-tacky), the film is largely well shot (Sudeep Chatterjee channelling his inner Wally Pfister), and there are enough twists-and-turns (okay, one major twist) to keep you interested in the story.

Dhoom 3, however, could have done with less daft dialogues [Bank owner: "Do we know who's responsible (for the robbery)?" Cop: "All we know at this point is that it was a thief."], and fewer slo-mos, but the film is fairly enjoyable in a knock-back-a-few-drinks-and-watch-some-cars-blow-up kinda way.

On a side note, the Imax conversion is extremely ineffective - you can stop hyperventilating about the ticket price and watch it at whichever theatre's near you, preferable a single-screen one.