City Review: Sheer torture

Prabhudheva’s Action Jackson hits a low point 
not only for the director but also for its lead star Ajay Devgn, Deepa Gauri writes

It needs a certain kind of star power to pull off a Prabhudheva movie, if you can call the sort of three-hour-long sagas that he churns out ‘films.’

But then, this being Bollywood, everyone has their space, so if the ‘dancing machine’ of Tamil Nadu believes that he too can make movies, who are we to argue?

Prabhudheva knows just one formula; he has found success with it in Tamil cinema and even in Hindi so perhaps he sincerely believes that it can be recycled, refurbished and refitted to suit any actor and that the masses will blindly follow.

That takes us to the star power of the lead actor. Prabhudheva’s success with Wanted not only gave Salman Khan a new lease of box office appeal in 2009, he also realized that tweaking the formula with some ‘being human’ philosophy works big time.

Alas, Ajay Devgn (a brilliant award-winning actor, no doubt) does not have the pull quotient of Salman. He shines in movies that bring out his gravitas not his silliness, while it works the other way round for Salman.

So with a terrible miscast starts the torturous journey through the lives of Action Jackson and Vishy (both Ajay). No prizes for guessing that one is a dreaded killer and the other is a do-gooder – and yet of course both are good people. Seriously, with all the mind-numbing gore and a deafening background score, it really doesn’t matter who’s who and who does what.

And as in all B-grade Bollywood movies of today, we have Sonakshi Sinha doing exactly the same thing she has been doing from her first film. Undoubtedly, she has stepped into the void that Sridevi left behind doing all those Jeetendra movies.

But why pray, does Sonakshi insist on doing such regressive roles? Talk about luck coming from some guy’s c***** and a dame that believes in it – and you get the drift. The denominator for cheapness descends to low extremes in Action Jackson.

For those who care for the story of this movie, here it goes; don’t blame me if I get it wrong - I had turned apathetic immediately past the first few minutes. An obnoxious goon’s (Anand Raj) irritating sister (Manasvi Mamgai) wants to marry one Ajay Devgn; the said Ajay refuses and the goon’s mini-goons give him a chase.

But sadly, they are hounding the other Ajay. Spotting this Ajay in his briefs brings luck to perennially unlucky Sonakshi and so she loves him. One Ajay meets the other Ajay; the goons and mini-goons have no inkling what is happening and then one Ajay plots with the other Ajay to confuse the goons even more so they all can live happily ever after with their respective lovers.

Many stunt artists do somersaults and flying feats until they fall down and die at the hands of one of the Ajays. Swords slash, guns blaze, people scream and either of the Ajays walks in slow motion or dance clumsily. And finally, we trudge home weary and beaten. Long live Bollywood!

What do we say about performances in this movie; all actors – right from Ajay Devgn to Manasvi Mamgai – are terrible caricatures from the 80s; had this film been a spoof on Prabhudheva movies, perhaps it might have worked.

This year, over the past 50 odd weeks, Bollywood has offered several movies; a few were rare gems, most were terrible – and Action Jackson indeed sets the lowest bar for the year. On second thoughts, no it was already set low by Humshakals. Coincidentally both deal with doppelgangers.