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Release
date:
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July 27, 2018
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Director:
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Tigmanshu Dhulia
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Cast:
Language:
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Mahie Gill,
Sanjay Dutt, Jimmy Sheirgill, Chitrangda Singh, Deepak Tijori, Kabir Bedi, Deepraj
Rana, Soha Ali Khan, Zakir Hussain, Nafisa Ali
Hindi
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“Jab naam ke alaava kucch bacha na ho toh
naam ko bacha bacha ke chalna chahiye (When you have nothing left but your
name, you would do well to fiercely protect that name),” says a nautch girl to an
arrogant aristocrat in Saheb Biwi Aur
Gangster (SB&G) 3. The effect is lost in translation,
but in Hindi this is the kind of zinger written and delivered without sounding
self-conscious and bombastic that made Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster (2011) and its sequel, SB&G Returns (2013), such fun to watch. Five years after Jimmy
Sheirgill, Mahie Gill and Irrfan Khan crackled and popped on screen in
Tigmanshu Dhulia’s second film of the series, comes the third.
Sheirgill and Gill
remain the saheb (master) and biwi (wife) of the title. The gangster
played by Khan is gone, of course, and in his place arrives Sanjay Dutt, a once
charismatic superstar with a sensitive face who has, in the past decade, allowed
himself to become a listless, lumbering giant barely able to move a limb or a
facial muscle.
It is evident from
the opening scene that Dhulia intends to make this Dutt – the star, not the
character he plays – the centrepiece of his enterprise. And so we are treated
to several minutes of the man, yet unnamed, playing Russian Roulette with a
parade of hapless fellow humans in a London nightclub called House of Lords.
His invincibility is underlined by the Baba Theme track which goes – I exaggerate not – “Dekho dekho dekho dekho dekho dekho dekho dekho dekho dekho dekho aaya / He’s the Baba, he’s the Baba, he’s the
Baba / le aaya tera baap.”
As every Bollywood buff knows, these
lyrics allude to Dutt’s infantile real-life nickname, which serves to stress his
public image of an overgrown, golden-hearted baby who is too innocent to know
what he is doing when he messes up. There is not an atom of fierceness in the
teddy-bear-like sobriquet, so using it in this film makes no sense since he
plays a royal with a reputation for ruthlessness and violence here.
This is the first hint of
Dhulia’s seeming disinterest in this project, which appears to have been
slapped together to give everyone on the team something to do. In SB&G3, we are back with Aditya Pratap Singh (Sheirgill), member of a
former princely family trying to retain some significance by having a political
career in a post-Independence India that no longer recognises royalty and
titles although the families themselves hold on to “His Highness”, “Yuvraaj”, “Kunwar”
and other dregs of an era long gone. Aditya has been away in prison, while his
first wife Madhvi (Gill) honed her own skills as a politician and his second
wife Ranjana (Soha Ali Khan) honed her passion for alcohol.
Uday Pratap Singh (Dutt) is the
son of another royal family of Rajasthan, whose ties with his father (Kabir
Bedi) and brother (Deepak Tijori) are strained. Uday is in love with the
beautiful dancer Suhani (Chitrangda Singh).
As with the earlier two films, here
too someone is lusting after someone he ought not to be eyeing, several players
in the story are bitter, and some are planning revenge on those they resent or
hate. Given that two-thirds of the principal cast is the same, you would think
that this is a safe formula, but nothing is foolproof in the absence of solid
writing.
Except for a couple of clever
dialogues like the one quoted in the first paragraph, and Madhvi, the rest of
the lines and characters are barely developed and lack spark. Madhvi’s actions
in her first few scenes are laugh-out-loud hilarious and cheeky, which is
exactly what we have come to expect of this volatile creature who is
unapologetic about her sexual appetite and her anger towards Aditya. Sheirgill is sincere as always, but suffers
because Aditya’s graph lacks fizz. Still, the structuring of their first scene
together on a terrace is a reminder of how effective SB&G and SB&G Returns
were because Dhulia was evidently committed to both.
Here, the writer-director makes
the mistake of forgetting that the volcanic nature of the first two SB&G films came from the gangster
entering the Aditya-Madhvi relationship. Irrfan Khan and Randeep Hooda (who was
in Part 1) are among Bollywood’s finest actors. Dutt is an able actor who gave
up trying a long time ago. In the absence of an explosive third angle in this
triangle, the story moves along mechanically with a handful of somewhat
interesting turns but no major plot point worthy of a gasp.
Too many characters hang loosely
around, including Aditya’s loyal lieutenant Kanhaiya (still played by Deepraj
Rana), Kanhaiya’s impactless daughter and that lukewarm girl Aditya has
lukewarm sex with out of the blue, as though someone suddenly remembered, “Yaar, there was lots of great sex (uncommonly
explicit by Bollywood standards) in the first film. Yahaan bhi kucch karna chahiye, nahin?”
The editing, which was such a
strong point of the first two films, is lackadaisical here. The music is
run-of-the-mill unless you insist on counting the brief use of the gorgeous
classic Lag ja gale. And the sound
design and editing in a fight scene involving Uday in his father’s palace is
slapdash enough to draw the attention of even an inexpert ear.
To be fair to the film, it does
manage to summon up an eerie atmosphere of foreboding through its background
score by Dharma Vish, along with DoP Amlendu
Chaudhary’s low-lit frames and Dhananjoy Mondal’s production design in the
corridors and gloomy rooms of Aditya and Madhvi’s palace. And Gill does still
manage to make Madhvi a character deserving of a viewer’s emotional involvement.
The film could have been so much more than the passably entertaining fare that
it is if Dhulia and his co-writer Sanjay Chouhan had spent more time polishing
up her story and fleshing out the multiple characters around her, including
Uday, rather than leaning on Dutt’s stardom for support.
Sanjay Dutt is not Salman Khan whose films may often lack depth and
sensitivity, but who absolutely has to be credited for being completely
invested in his fandom and in maintaining himself. Sanju Baba has rested on his
laurels and his natural charisma for too long to be trying his hand at this stage
at those self-referential
lines and inside jokes that seem to resonate so well with
Salman fans (even if they are now boring to critics and non-fan audiences).
Here he tries a Salman on the viewer when his character says: “Zindagi ka mazaa humne bahut kam liya hai. Ab waapas lauta hoon. Zindagi
bhar ka mazaa loonga (I have not lived life to the fullest so far. Now I am
back. I intend to enjoy a lifetime of happiness).” Coming as they do on the
heels of the indulgent biopic lovingly crafted for him by his good friend,
director Rajkumar Hirani, that has been a box-office blockbuster, these lines
brim with Dutt’s desire to make a comeback in the public eye. He has a right to
that ambition, but why was a filmmaker capable of such lovely works as Haasil, Paan Singh Tomar and Raag Desh, unable to see that the actor lacks the
fire to hold up a weak script?
The first two Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster films were gratifying
action-and-vengeance-packed rides. This one is just okay.
Rating
(out of five stars): *1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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A
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Running time:
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2 hours 20 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/SBG3Film/
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