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Release
date:
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December 28, 2018
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Director:
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Rohit Shetty
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Cast:
Language:
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Ranveer Singh,
Sonu Sood, Ashutosh Rana, Sara Ali Khan, Ajay Devgn, Vipin Sharma, Sree Swara
Dubey, Sulbha Arya, Guest appearances by Karan Johar, Kunal Khemu, Arshad
Warsi, Tusshar Kapoor, Shreyas Talpade and Akshay Kumar
Hindi with Marathi
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If you are a
serious, intellectual sort, chances are you will judge me for admitting this,
but the truth is, I enjoyed Singham. Simmba has been positioned as a spin-off
of that 2011 Ajay Devgn-starrer, but Rohit Shetty – who directed the earlier
film too – forgot to include in this one the panache that made Singham’s melodrama and OTTness
watchable and fun despite its formulaic nature.
In Simmba, Shetty replaces Devgn with
Ranveer Singh, and exchanges a trigger-happy but financially clean policeman
with a corrupt-as-hell cop who turns over a new leaf when a tragedy befalls him. If the earlier film took its story from Kollywood’s Singham, this one turns to Tollywood’s Temper for inspiration, and therein lies
the problem.
Simmba is loud, steeped in clichés and has nothing going
for it apart from the leading man’s comic flair and willingness to lose himself
in a role, however silly it may be. Those qualities make the first half
somewhat enjoyable despite its dated feel on many fronts. All is lost though by
the second half when the screenplay shelves comedy in favour of grim speeches
by a newly minted messiah of India’s beleaguered women.
Singh plays
Inspector Sangram Bhalerao a.k.a. Simmba who has no qualms about admitting that
he became a cop to make money. You see, as he explains in a weepy speech late
into the plot, he had no loving Mummy nor a strict Daddy to give him thappads that would have set him right
as a child. And so he took his cues from a bribe-taking local policeman.
The adult Simmba’s
avarice takes a backseat though when the hand that feeds him turns on a person
he loves. Because this is post-2012 Bollywood where ‘women’s empowerment’ is
being seen as a saleable formula like any other, Simmba’s battle for justice
for a rape victim is embellished by a courtroom monologue on the December 2012
Delhi bus gangrape and National Crime Records Bureau statistics for rape.
Just as the Indian public and press have felt driven to lionise a dead woman as The Fearless One
(i.e. Nirbhaya) to make her worth fighting for, so also Simmba’s crusade is not
for a mere woman who has been wronged, but for a woman he called his sister and
for all the sisters and daughters of this country.
Hindi cinema has
given us various live variants of Nirbhaya down the decades, from Dimple
Kapadia’s rape-victim-turned-avenging-Durga in Zakhmi Aurat to Sridevi’s vengeful Mommy in Mom – because regular women are so
darned pointless, I guess. The difference between these films and Simmba is that the Nirbhaya here is a
man. Because as a junior cop tells Simmba: “Jab
tak yeh rapist log ko apan policewala tthok nahin dega tab tak kucch nahin
badlega.” (Nothing will change until we policemen kill off these rapists.)
Don’t be deceived
by the apparent good intentions – women’s safety is just another excuse for
Shetty’s macho hero to deliver speeches, take the law into his own hands,
display his impressive biceps and single-handedly bash up groups of bad men.
Nothing underlines Simmba’s insincerity better than the
sidelining of women in a film purportedly about women’s rights. Every female
human in sight is a sidelight. Even Sara Ali Khan, who was so captivating in a
substantial role on debut in Kedarnath,
is reduced to being a pretty prop in the hero’s life. You can count the number
of scenes she gets on the fingers of one hand.
Not that Singham was not patriarchal in a similar
fashion – it was. But at least it had memorable male supporting characters,
including the lead villain played by Prakash Raj. The usually dependable Sonu
Sood is wasted in Simmba as the
poorly written central antagonist.
More thought is
given to the cameo by Devgn, an array of guest appearances (by Karan Johar,
Kunal Khemu, Arshad Warsi, Tusshar Kapoor, Shreyas Talpade and Akshay Kumar)
and self-referential tributes to Shetty’s filmography than to the entire
lukewarm screenplay of Simmba.
Even Ranveer Singh’s
pre-interval swag deserves to be forgotten by the end of the insufferable
second half. As if to add insult to injury, after pontificating about women’s
concerns throughout that portion, Simmba ends with the hero dancing
surrounded mostly by large groups of
nameless women in little skirts, with Sara Ali Khan occasionally chucked
in – for variety, I suppose.
Never mind the rest
of Team Simmba, Ms Khan, but you
deserve better than this hypocritical nonsense.
Rating (out
of five stars): *
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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159 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy:
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