When you go to a Punjabi dhaba for some grub, you don’t expect to be served champagne and caviar. Parathas and lassi maybe, but no fancy stuff. That’s the kind of expectation you take with you when you go to watch a Salman Khan movie, that too one directed by Prabhu Deva.
Continuing in his role as “Chulbul Pandey” that began with “Dabang” (2010), Khan in “Dabang 3” is the same vigilante policeman who hails himself as “Robinhood Pandey” for the extra-judicial justice he metes out. Problematic as his character might be legally, one cannot deny that Chulbul Pandey is one of the most loved cop characters in the history of Bollywood.
A dacoit in the middle of a robbery rubs a lamp, hoping that a genie would appear. But then enters our hero who disarms them all while dodging hundreds of bullets with his dancing skills. That’s how Chulbul is introduced and that’s what the audience expects for the entire 2hrs 43mins. And people seemed to enjoy every moment of the elongated movie. A win for the Khan Brothers, but not a big one.
Dabang 3 is a Bollywood masala movie packed with absurdities. With the actor/choreographer turned director Prabhu Deva donning the director’s hat, the film only gets wilder. Forget what you studied in your physics class and forgo your logic and only then can you enjoy Dabang 3.
In this movie, we’re taken back in time for an ‘origin story’ of Chulbul Pandey. The trailer itself is a tell-tale so without the fear of giving out a spoiler, we can openly hint that a tragedy befalls a young man which forever changes his life. “Dhaakad Pandey” becomes Chulbul, and why he becomes a cop is an obvious guess.
But despite having nothing for a story, the writing is clever enough to incorporate bits and pieces from the previous two Dabangs to give the audience something to think about, identify and recall. We’re shown the origins of Chulbul’s memorable dialogues from the previous movies and how he picked up the style of hanging his sunglasses on the back of his collar.
Dabang 3 also revives some characters from the franchise and manages to replace the late actor Vinod Khanna who played Chulbul’s father with a convincing lookalike. The 21-year-old actress Saiee Manjrekar debuts opposite the 53-year-old Salman Khan as “Khusi”, the center figure around which the tragedy revolves. Sonakshi Sinha, who debuted in the same franchise in 2010, retains her role as “Rajjo”, Chulbul’s wife. While Sinha was brilliant in her debut role and bagged half-a-dozen ‘100 crore club’ roles consequently, there’s nothing to write about Manjrekar besides the customary “better luck next time.”
But as much as it takes from the previous Dabangs, D3 serves nowhere near the entertainment value they did. Yes, the film is partly enjoyable and doesn’t get boring despite its length, but this one fails to clear the high storytelling bars raised by the first two installments.
There’s a lot of forced humor. Many comic scenes could have been cut out to make the storytelling compact. Also, the dialogues are out of whack with the flow. The most underwhelming part of the movie though is the music. Sajid-Wajid cannot recreate the magic of the first Dabang.
The Dabang franchise banks on its item numbers and romantic songs to get the audience talking about the film. But there’s nothing in D3 to uphold that legacy. To make matters worse, the filmmakers include way too many songs in the already stretched-out movie. The recreated “Munna Badnaam Hua” doesn’t have the same groove “Munni” did, and will probably not be the most played song at Indian weddings.
While Salman Khan is his usual self in the movie, South Indian actor Sudeep playing Chulbul’s arch nemesis “Bali Singh” is the best performer. Singh is the most brutal villain in the whole franchise. He is cruel, unrelenting and shrewd. Sudeep, despite his limited Hindi, manages to give the character the viciousness it demands.
Who should watch it?
Any Salman fan would love this film. Also, this is meant for the audience who love illogical potboilers and there’s nothing wrong with us feeding our guilty pleasures once a while, right?
Rating: 2.5 stars
Genre: Action
Run time: 2h 43m
Director: Prabhu Deva
Actors: Salman Khan, Sudeep, Sonakshi Sinha
