A formula gangster film

Amid the retelling of this tale, you can expect the usual gangster film fare — an item number, several shootouts, emotional moments shot in extreme close-up.

Even if you take it at face value, though, Daddy is not coherent. Its sepia-toned frames lead you to expect a gritty, dark tale; the storyline never quite matches up to this.

The plot is sloppy, the screenplay, melodramatic. There’s nothing new to see here, except for Arjun Rampal in an unusual role, and the film’s surprise package — Farhan Akhtar as Gawli’s bête noire.

Rampal aces the look and body language; he is impressive in parts. Farhan plays the bhai of Mumbai, a man called Maqsood. This performance will not be counted among his best.

What comes across as most grating, however, is that Daddy does not glorify its subject — we might have forgiven that in a gangster flick — but worse, it seems to be trying to justify Gawli’s actions.

Even in a work of pure fiction, the film’s argument that poverty is to blame, that the state’s considerable failures are really at fault — it wouldn’t have washed, not even in the 1980s. To weave such a tale around a real-life, convicted killer, is just bizarre.

Aremake of the hit Marathi film Poshter Boyz, this one is set somewhere in Haryana. Three young men find themselves on posters promoting vasectomy. Now, no one wants to have anything to do with them; women won’t consider marrying them; even their families are being frozen out.

The three buddies — Chaudhary Jagawar (Sunny Deol), Vinay Sharma (Bobby Deol) and Arjun Singh (Shreyas Talpade, also director of the film) — must take on the health department to prove that their photos were used without permission. Until they clear their names, they’ll remain the butt of jokes.

It’s a sensible theme, with the population crisis and female