Hero (Hindi)
Director: Nikhil Advani
Cast: Sooraj Pancholi, Athiya Shetty, Aditya Pancholi, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Sharad Kelkar
This week, Nikhil Advani tries to rejig the 1980s masala for the diet cola generation and has come up with a contraption high on fizz, low on substance. It is a kind of film where the hero makes an entry on a bulldozer and the villain bamboozles with his punch lines. It is a kind of film that expects us to go back in time which we have outgrown and enjoy it because the director is trying to make it appear cool.
The idea is to retrofit Subhash Ghai’s 1983 hit to launch two new star kids: Sooraj Pancholi and Athiya Shetty. And like Ghai, who made an impact by launching Jackie Shroff in the time of Amitabh Bachchan, Advani has done a lot of padding around the lead players to hide their limitations.
The support cast led by Aditya Pancholi, Tigmanshu Dhulia and Sharad Kelkar try to create a strong ground so that Sooraj and Athiya take a leap. Plus, the stylistic cinematography, fast cutting, immersive action choreography and booming background sound make you give the young romance a chance to bloom. The diabolic Pasha (Aditya Pancholi) is unable to buy the honest IG Mathur (Tigmanshu Dhulia). So he asks his trusted lieutenant Sooraj to kidnap Mathur’s daughter Radha (Athiya). As expected, Radha doesn’t realise that Sooraj is an imposter and is pretending to be a police officer. Along the way, the two fall in love giving the story the much needed twist.
We sorely miss the rawness of the original as the conflict increasingly feels staged and even the action sounds hollow like a well-shot ad film. More importantly, the second half which requires the narrative to breathe, the emotional upheaval falls flat.
ANUJ KUMAR
