Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan

Sparsh Khetarpal and Tasha Bhambra's story is promising and has all the trappings of a commercial blockbuster. Sparsh Khetarpal and Tasha Bhambra's screenplay is a mixed bag. A few scenes are exceptionally written and thought of. But some major scenes in the second half lack meat. Farhad Samji's dialogues are strictly okay. A film like this ought to have more funny and power-packed dialogues. Farhad Samji's direction is fair. To give credit where it's due, he has handled the grandeur and scale very well. He has also left no stone unturned in showing Salman Khan at his best. Some scenes are executed deftly and enhance the impact. The family angle in the second half will be loved by the family audiences. Hence, this is a film that will appeal not only to Salman Khan’s fans but to a wider moviegoer base.

At 144 minutes, the film is painfully long and stretched. Even if you throw all the songs away, the story, whatever little is there, remains the same and it would make for a crisper watch. Actually, since the songs are so abrupt and loud (though peppy), releasing them separately as an album, not as a part of the film, would have been a wiser choice. But, it seems the makers were more concerned about showing everyone's dance moves that they didn't mind ingesting as many as seven tracks into the film. Watching Salman do those extremely cringe dance steps is no longer fun. They neither look good on screen nor do they make him look any good.

Once they are crushed, everybody shoves off to shimmy to Let’s Dance Chotu Motu (whose lyrics include nursery rhymes). Farhad Samji’s remake of the Ajith-led Tamil film Veeram (2014) has the feel of an unruly picnic where everyone is invited. The spread includes all the elements typical of a Salman Khan movie, but in more judicious quantities than in his previous few outings. This helps, since there are almost no new discoveries. Except, maybe, that Pooja Hegde holds her own against her hard-bodied leading man, the Delhi Metro can keep on running despite broken windows and mangled equipment (courtesy Bhaijaan’s fists of fury) and denim hotpants go well with rolled-up lungis.

In his earlier films, Salman at least had names — Prem being the most popular — and Bhaijaan was just the moniker his besotted fans bestowed upon him. In this latest outing, a remake of the 2014 Tamil-language ‘Veeram’, such niceties have been dispensed with, because, a) what’s in a name? And b) who cares, everyone knows it’s Bhaijaan, right? But names have weight: the last time a Salman film had Bhaijan in the title, its prefix was ‘Bajrangi’, and that solid Kabir Khan film had, verily, a story. This Bhaijaan is running on empty. Even at that climactic moment when the shirt is about to be taken off, because it is that time, there’s no excitement: this Bhaijaan is a tired, unimaginative amalgamation of every Bhaijaan version we’ve seen.