DHAKAAD Poor writing and direction take down action thriller

Starring: Kangana Ranaut, Arjun Rampal Director: Razneesh Razy Ghai

THERE has been a rapid rise of action as a genre in Indian films and this recent cinema release continues that trend.

A young orphan girl is raised to become a deadly killing machine and works as a secret agent, with the sole aim of protecting her country. She is brought in to crack a human trafficking operation that is masterminded by a mysterious criminal and soon finds herself journeying back to a painful past. What follows is a collision course with an evil villain, she has an unexpected connection with.

Although the premise of a fierce female protagonist is a great one, it needs to be backed up with a solid storyline and unfortunately this fractured film doesn’t have that. There is a decent set up, but then Dhaakad starts to unravel as it becomes apparent that more effort has been put into style than actual substance.

It seems as if more thought was put into making the lead protagonist look heroic with guns and over-the-top fighting moves, ahead of making sense of why she is doing everything. This results in somewhat of a self-indulgent movie that takes audiences for granted and by the time it ends you have a splitting headache.

There were multiple missed opportunities to make an international level action thriller because the budget, locations and cast were there for that to happen. Unfortunately, the writing and directing let Dhaakad down.

While the character seemed tailor-made for Kangana Ranaut, her overacting removes any substance from it. It is also obvious the creative team has drawn inspiration from Hollywood films in a lot of areas and that makes it look like a poor copy.

The only real positives are some slick camerawork, a few decent fight sequences and a surprisingly good turn from Arjun Rampal as the antagonist. That doesn’t stop this film from being a migraineinducing let-down. And so it should be avoided.