Bachchhan Paandey Review

Just what is Akshay Kumar up to in Bachchhan Paandey, wonders Prasanna Zore.

Akshay Kumar, who stars in and as Bachchhan Paandey is utter balderdash in the film, all two hours and 26 minutes of it.

Okay, correction: The last 45 minutes is worth your time.

Right from the beginning to the end, there is stomach-churning, hammer-and-tongs violence. Quite literally.

Scenes of Paandey wielding hammers to gouge out intestines, splattering skull bones, blood gushing out of guts, eyes, chests and the jugular make up for one-fourth the film.

One-fourth keeps warning the audience that smoking is injurious to health.

One-fourth is spent explaining why Bachchhan Paandey is the way he is: Violent, beastly, ghastly and romantic. Yes, the last is not a mistake.

It's only the remaining one-fourth that gets your attention, and is quite enjoyable.

Kriti Sanon (Myra Devekar) is a struggling film-maker determined to make her father proud.

She achieves her dream by making a film titled BP -- Bhola Pandey, not Bachchhan Paandey.

Arshad Warsi (Vishnukant aka Vishnu Mhatre) is a struggling actor determined to make his father proud too. He fails to achieve his dream because Myra hoodwinks him into helping her get Paandey's real story out by enticing him with the role of a 'second hero' in the film.

Producer Sajid Nadiwadwala and Director Farhad Samji (who are also credited with story, dialogue and screenplay) ensure that Warsi ends up playing a bumbling 'Circuit'. Even though he gets lot of screen time, he fails to leave a mark.

They also ensure, one desperately hopes, that Akshay Kumar would think umpteen times before agreeing to another such enterprise.

Akshay's Bachchhan Paandey look is an eye sore.

With a deep scar running across his nose, a salt and pepper beard, and his left eye cast in stone, the actor seems to have been keen on an image makeover. Or, perhaps, he is just a director's actor.

Kumar, like Kriti, Arshad, Jacqueline Fernandez, and all the other characters in Bachchhan Paandey perform their duties with sincerity.

But with all the blood and gore, one's senses are numbed enough not to take note of this aspect of their acting craft.

None of this star cast should have acted in a film like Bachchhan Paandey. More so, a superstar like Akshay Kumar!

Just what is he trying to prove by essaying a role as artificial and concocted as this one? 

Bachchhan Paandey is being promoted as an action and comedy film.

If action means violence, and more violence, then this certainly is not an action film.

The action is ghastly: There is constant swishing of knives that jar one's ear drums.

Is it then a comedy?

Pankaj Tripathi plays (Bhavesh Bhoplo), a Gujarati acting teacher, who is hired to teach Kumar and his gang of goondas so that Myra can make a film on Bachchhan Paandey and is worth every rupee. He gets the audience out of their eeks moments and electrifies the last 45 minutes of the film.

In fact, it is Bhavesh Bhoplo who should get the tag of 'second hero' of the film. Not Arshad, whose Vishnukant aka Vishnu is a waste of his talent.