Gabbar is Back review- A war of 'Brands'

Source: gabbarboxofficecollection.in

Salman Khan made Dabangg and changed Bollywood for ever. Something tremendous happened after that- everyone started thinking they could be Salman. Gabbar is Back is another such failed attempt at bringing up a larger than life figure on the celluloid under the guise of a battle against corruption.

Akshay Kumar, as we all know, plays Gabbar/Aditya who is a full time vigilante and part-time professor of....Physics ? Something has happened in his life that made him choose this avatar of his although there is no straight justification as to how it happened. Still he goes about doing his thing by abducting corrupt officials, choosing the topper on the list and hanging them on busy streets in broad daylight without anyone noticing- Yup, because he is Gabbar. And that is all that happens in the entire movie. There is some hinted romance between Aditya and Shruti (Shruti Hasan) but that doesn't amount to much. Of course there is a villain in Digvijay Patil (Suman) who is a bigshot businessman and is corrupt as corrupt can be. So naturally, he is the arch rival of Gabbar. But instead of an emotionally charged battle of 'Right vs. Wrong', it is a fistfight over who is the bigger brand- Gabbar or Patil? Where has Bollywood come so as to make such cliched trashy movies again and again and try to dunk them into our throats? This movie is a failure at levels I don't even care to mention but shall have to for the sake of  a review.

And who wrote this screenplay and dialogues? Probably the worst that I have witnessed in the decade. A journalist goes- "इस वक़्त आप देख सकते हैं कि यहाँ मेडिकल कॉलेज, आर्ट्स कॉलेज और हर तरह के कॉलेज के छात्र मौजूद हैं " - Did someone really get paid to write all this ? Hear the songs, look at what people do while they 'play' - all of it is as dumb and waste of screentime as they can be. The biggest tragedy about the film is that Akshay Kumar can act but just when he seems to be forming a connection with the audiences, the director R.K.Jagarlamudi says "Okay, next shot". That said, the whole connection of the protagonist's story with the people becomes lost. I would rather they would have shown Hawaldar Sadhuram's story (Sunil Grover) which was more massy and relatable than Gabbar's.

Finally, to save myself from the wrath of people who actually liked the movie, I would say that Yes, the idea of the country standing against corruption is a good thing but the portrayal of that in Cinema is so trite that unless you come up with something entirely original, you have a setback waiting for you. Maybe the makers thought they could reap the sentiments of the masses in order to gain popularity and maybe they will gain it. But that does not change the fact that it is a bad bad movie with an even worse execution.

Bandwidth Verdict: Skip over it without thinking twice. If you have nothing to do, watch some cool South Indian flick to get that dose of unthinking action and adrenaline.