First report after watching ‘Antim: The Final Truth’? My ear drums have shattered. Even going by the usual loudness of background music, this one sends it through the roof. Can you sit through a masala movie without having to say that no ears were harmed during the watching of the film? Next time, remind me to pick up ear-plugs.
Meanwhile, here we are, watching a film pay lip service, for the millionth time, to the plight of poor farmers, land-grabbers, greedy netas, and other evil people. The film, based on the Marathi movie ‘Mulshi Pattern’, uses that superstructure to give Aayush Sharma a chance to change his lover-boy image, cemented in the 2018 ‘Loveyatri’, and to give Salman Khan’s fans, pining for their dabangg idol, a chance to re-unite with him.
Those twin objects are fulfilled with a great deal of zeal and enthusiasm, because from the start, not a moment goes by without the school dropout Rahul/Rahulya (Aayush Sharma) glaring and flaring up at those who have grabbed his arrow-straight father’s (Sachin Khedekar) ‘zameen’. The moments that are left over are filled up by clean-and-mean police officer Sardar Rajveer Singh (Salman Khan), all togged out in a turban, having replaced his beloved azure bracelet with a ‘kadaa’, and doing what he does best– baring his ‘faulaadi’ chest, slinging out one-liners, and pulverizing the baddies.
Everything else, in this Pune-based actioner chock full of Marathi inflections and accents, is a filler. Sachin Khedekar as the long-suffering father who’d rather die than do anything dishonest; Upendra Limaye as the dodgy guy who takes Rahulya under his wing; Jisshu Sengupta as a local hood. Even Rahulya’s love-interest (Mahima Makwana), who plays a girl dispensing cutting chai, is a perfunctory presence: she gets a dance, a roll in the hay, and a couple of speaking scenes.
Sharma looks as if he could get into a character, once he stops playing a type. He may notionally be the lead, and he manages to snaffle a bare-chested scene or two, but make no mistake, the biggest lines are all Salman’s. Tu hoga Pune ka Bhai, says the latter to the former, par main Hindustan ka Bhai hoon.
[…] How can parents teach honesty to children? […]