Raees Movie Review – Rich in performances, mediocre when it comes to story!
Divay Agarwal
Shah Rukh Khan in the recent times has been highly criticized for his choice of movies but Raees was expected to shun all the worries for all SRK fans. Though the movie could be categorized as full on entertainment Bollywood masala flick but Miyanbhaiki daring and baniye ka deemag couldn’t create the much needed ‘wow’ for Shah Rukh fans like a Chak De or Swades.
Raees (Shah Rukh Khan), hails from Fatepura in Gujarat who because of his unfortunate conditions gets into illegal bootlegging for a popular liquor smuggler Jairaj (Atul Kulkarni). Having a ‘tedhadeemag’, encouraged him to start his own bootlegging business and enter the big league along with his friend Sadiq (Zeeshan). Also, he falls in love and gets married to a girl named Razia (Mahira Khan). As he grows, his criminal activities also increased and to counter that comes in IPS Majumdar (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and thus starts their hide and seek as Majumdar only motive is to put Raees behind bars. What will happen is to be found out!
It’s a run of the mill chor-police story filled with a dose of action, love, crime and drama and of course star power. Rahul Dholakia after making movies like Parzania and Lamhaa has fallen trap to the commercial formula as he could have worked better on the storyline and the execution part of it. The first half is fast paced, engaging and strong whereas the second half slows down, lags as there is too much melodrama introduced in the act. Also, the climax is far too stretched which gives us the impression that the film could have been much tighter.
However, the dialogues are pretty well written and soon become favorites with the crowd. ‘Battery NahiBolneka’ & ‘Dhande se bada koi dharmnahihota’ created a rush in the audience. The setting of the 80’s Gujarat is also pretty well executed. Even the background score really suits the film well. Talking about the songs, they are really decent in their capacity but act as jerks in the film.
Talking about the performances, Shah Rukh Khan looks intriguing as the kohl eyed Raees and has signs of his brilliance in terms of acting. Though somewhere I feel, he couldn’t imbibe the character as there was too much of SRK elements in his performance. Nawazuddin Siddiqui was amazing as always and steals the show in every scene he’s seen. There was a fascinating chemistry between Nawaz and Shah Rukh and I would love to see them on screen again. Mahira Khan did not have much to do but she did put up a decent act. ZeeshanAyub as the sidekick is again entertaining to watch.
In all, if you are a SRK fan or you love typical Bollywood entertainers, then you could surely watch this film. But again, if you are saving your money to watch a great film, you should probably wait.
Rating – 3/5