Old Wine In Old Bottle

SHAH RUKH Khan returns in and as Raees ,a golden-hearted mobster who does bad things for a good cause.

It is a role constructed to grab back his pole position, and to that end Shah Rukh Khan strains every sinew, trying to check every single point of the In and As trope. He sings and dances, fights and romances in a film with that very ’70s feel, a throwback to the movies in which the hero’s “entry” had the hall breaking into “seetis”: he also, in self-aware strokes, tries to fill in the outlines of a specific character.

And that's where the film gets stuck, between the two stools of restraint and fullblown tamasha: the In and As SRK is as familiar as he has ever been, despite the trimmings added on to induce freshness — the gold-rimmed glasses, the heavily-kohled eyes, the deliberate delivery, and that Scarface moment, full of guns, arcing bullets and spraying blood, which all actors dream of.

Which makes Raees a mish-mash of things we've seen so many times before, in a plot which owes allegiance to the real life story of a liquour baron who made his pile and his name in dry-but-hugely-porous Gujarat: they used to say you could get the best Scotch in the country in that state, and the man Raees is allegedly based on was instrumental in creating that bounty. You can also see the strong imprint of several Hindi mainstream blockbusters, including Zanjeer and Agneepath.

The filmmakers have denied any similarity but anyone with half an eye can quite easily join the dots — the corruption and the complicity of the police and the pols in Gujarat which allowed a Raees to flourish, the ingenuity of the man who could think on his feet (hooch-filled tomatoes!) and cart his illicit maal under the eye of the vigilant, sharp-eyed cop (Nawaz) who becomes a formidable adversary.

In fact, amongst all the effective supporting parts which bouy SRK (Kulkarni as the mentor-turned-adversary, Ayyub as best friend, who has more scenes with him than anyone else) it is Nawaz who shines most. His dry, wry one liners, and he has several, have a zing which SRK'S don't. And in a film where the leading man's dialogue-baazi is meant to wow the crowd, that is telling.

Dholakia knows his Gujarat. That was clear in his Parzania. There are some flashes ofthatinsiderknowledgeheretoo,but you can see how the fear of being censored has blunted the edges of this film, which could have been truly explosive. The re-creation of the riots, both in Mumbai and Gujarat, have a seriously anodyne feel. And the predictable arc of the story weighs the second half down.

SRK'S romantic interest, played by Mahira Khan, too, is not as fresh as she could have been: the coyness is tired old Bollywood and in a film which shies away from fully embracing its masala roots, it just sinks. So does item girl Sunny Leone, who shakes it, shakes it, but raises zero steam.

So this is what we get: a Nawaz having the time of his life, and making us crack multiple grins, up against an SRK breaking through in some moments (especially one which he shares with his bete noire, when the film shuts everything else down so that we can focus on the duo) but getting bogged down in florid, seen-too-many-times flourishes. That brief exchange makes us sigh for what might have been, and I will take it away.

There’s some zest in the beginning when we see a winning bunch of boys — the young Raees and his bestie — learn the ropes of their ganda dhanda, but soon enough adulthood is upon them, and so is the slide.

A song in the film reminds us that SRK who plays Raees is a “single piece” in this akkhi duniya (entire world): it is meant for the character, but we know it is for the star.

Yes he is. There is no one quite like SRK when he is fully switched on. But maybe we'll be more aware of that the next time around, when he is not so wrapped in slomo advances, and lacklustre song-anddances.

This one is, literally, old purani baatli. sharaab in