Review of Bodyguard

Before starting my review of Bodyguard, let me be very true to myself. I happened to watch this movie 'chalte-chalte'. I'm not et al a fan of Salman Khan. Rather I believe that 'stars' like Salman, Emran, Imran, etc. can never be an actor even if they bake their bread in B Town for 100 coming years. But growing up watching Salman for over a decade, I believe Bodyguard is his best performance after Mr. aur Ms. Khanna. Don't know why, but I found Salman very cute in his portrayal of 'ehsaanon ke bojh taley dabaa insaan' aka Bodyguard Lovely Singh.

The story of the movie is a smoothie till the last 20 minutes. Don't know why did the writer-director Siddique twisted it in the end. And for the actions stunts, S. Vijayan has choreographed the action of this film too. Relation of Salman and Vijayan dates back to the days of Wanted and Dabangg. But in this serve, the scenes looked laboured. There is this fresh joke in the market which says that, 'Salman is Rajinikanth of North!'. And to be very true, he is. He defies all the logics just like what Rajini does. In a flash of second he can do anything. And the entry action stunts of Salman are purely Computer Generated. One can easily sense that they've used the modern-day techniques. Even the background of same appears to be wonder of post-production. This is something which is becoming the current rage in B Town. Personally speaking, I'm against the use of such tactics as it takes away the beauty of the frame and everything seems to be so dull.

In fact, the film’s action choreographer even borrows from Dabangg’s climax in which the wind ripped the shirt off the tall, strapping villain (Sonu Sood) and then tore the shirt off Chulbul Pandey (Salman) to drive home the point that the comparatively gigantic bad guy was no match for our heroic little package of dynamite. Witness the final fight in Bodyguard with a similar sequence of events but half the impact. What Salman needs are more ingenious fight directors and writers who could give him more Salman-esque lines such as Wanted’s “Ek baar jo maine commitment ki, toh main khud ki bhi nahin sunta”. In Dabangg he said, "arey ... Ji...se yaad aaya". And now in Bodyguard he says, 'Mujhpe ek ehsaan karna ke mujhpe koi ehsaan mat karna'. Without any of these ingredients, Bodyguard ends up as a sort-of-entertaining film with an enjoyable-even-if-mindless first half, good-looking lead players and several clichés; a film that appears to take committed fans terribly for granted

Kareena looked pretty. Hazel Keech seems to be the latest muse of Salman. And talking about Rajat Rawail [Tsunami], I can't understand why the hell fatsos are shown as a piece of laughter. I'm myself obese. Even mostly all the top corporate honchos are obese but they never in such a non-sensical way. Does the “masala” tag give writers and directors the right to be irresponsible and insensitive? So okay, some jokes about disabilities (however offensive) have to be accepted in the interests of realism, because they reflect the street language of our country. But while the world debates the correctness and acceptability of terms such as midget / dwarf / vertically challenged person / person of slight stature / little people, here in India, in a scene in Bodyguard Lovely Singh blithely refers to Divya’s small-sized classmate as a “handbag” to be contrasted with a “suitcase”! Oh wait, I’m not allowed to have such objections to a “masala” film, right Bollywood?!

Unlike the heroines of many of Salman’s recent films, in Bodyguard Kareena is not treated merely as a glamorous appendage to the hero’s antics. She has a substantial part to play in the film. But neither Salman’s charisma, nor Kareena’s acting and eye-catching kurtas can compensate for Bodyguard’s overall dullness. The music is not particularly memorable, despite the sweet-but-that’s-about-it title track composed by Himesh Reshammiya and Pritam’s I love you which is well sung and melodic though generic. The most melodious and well picturised track is Teri Meri. But mostly all the tracks are unwanted. In the language of a critic, they are included to provide you a loo break! Katrina Kaif’s minuscule appearance in one number doesn’t serve any purpose. And I think Salman must come out of camp things. I'm personally fed up of watching Mahesh Manjrekar in mostly all his films. Mahesh, you are wasting your talent, if I'm allowed to say this.

CBFC Rating- U/A
Run Time- 130 minutes [if I exactly remember]
My Rating- 1.5*/5* [would have been 2* but for that needlessly twisted climax]

P.S. My favourite moment in Bodyguard is when Tsunami reads “private number” as “Parvati Nambiar”. Now why couldn’t we have had more of that in the film? :P