Even Badshah Khan’s performance and the underplayed role of Nawazuddin Siddiqui fail to lift ‘RAEES’. Badshah Khan fails to deliver on hyper expectations. The first half is a bit enjoyable. However, it suffers from same issues that make second-half a drag. The whole film is fragmented episodic linear progression with jerky transitions.
Mahira Khan, the actress from Pakistan fails to add any freshness to the film. Her small role is restricted to the girl next door, who must be coy, who will laugh and smile and dance a bit. She does show her potential in few emotional sequences, where she is allowed space and expression.
Sunny Leone’s item song is just another box ticked in a gangster movie check-list. The oomph
is missing. The glamour is hardly there. Maybe her time is over. There is a clinical coldness that will fail to serve the front benchers. And in some time, all these songs are missing the newness in choreography. They start and end in the same predictable steps.
‘RAEES’ borrows from the real-life story. Trying to do too many things and large doses of creative licensing has made it weak. The attempt to over glorify the gangster and bring in religion-agnostic Hindi-Muslim angle at the end makes it just sink. Too many known faces play the same stereotyped roles that they sleep walk through them. The newness demanded by yet another gangster film is sorely missing.
Today is the era of realism. It is the in thing. Yet again, a wide canvas, offbeat cardboard characters with just a touch of light shades of grey fails to deliver. Indian audience is no longer excited with half-baked cardboard characters, childhood loyal friends, the early signs of criminal activity, the neighborly budding romance, the good-hearted gangster, the cat and mouse chor-police game, the gangster-politician nexus. It has been over done and is of no more interest.
‘RAEES’ could have done without the songs and dance routine that drag the film. Oh, an SRK film cannot be without them.
Dialogues are more of one liner audio match. They are also dipped in earlier time. The connect with new audience is missing. So, dialogues like “Koi dhanda chhota nahin hota aur dhande se bada koi dharam nahin hota” and “Baniye ki dimaag aur Miyabhai ki daring, dono hai iske paas” which may have had the hall whistling, hardly find traction. They remain a forced hook to explain the whole film. The audience and Indian cinema has moved on.
There are traces of old SRK. He rises to his best performance in the film at the end. This time he excels in anger and frustration. As Nawazuddin Siddiqui is brilliant in understated silent conversations. However, he and Nawazuddin Siddiqui fail to salvage the film. They prevent it from being a write off. It is not boring or Pakau, but it is neither entertaining nor a paisa vasool film.
‘RAEES’ is a very linear episodic film. There are many missing links. Forced closure of few incidents leave you unsatisfied.
In short, the film RAEES, captures the life of Raees Alam and his illegal alcohol empire in the dry state of Gujarat. ACP Majmudar, is the tough cop hell-bent on closing it.
If you are a fan of masala movies, and you can still get kick from jerky editing, linear narration and episodic treatment, then RAEES is a movie YOU MAY ENJOY.
STRA CAST: Shah Rukh Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Mahira Khan, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Atul Kulkarn I Rahul Dholakia
……….
Did I miss it, or did SRK gang handled it well, or was it that the people were no longer interested in the subject? Why after Karan Johar episode for having a Pakistani actor in the film, there was not much noise or protest about Pakistani actress Mahira Khan in RAEES. This is inconsistency in behavior. Such unexplained twist makes the audience doubt, both the filmmaker and the people who raise this type of subjects.
……
BLOG/09/2017
