Bholaa review: Brain bola, hola!

BholaaDirector Ajay DevgnActors Ajay Devgn TabuRating 155There is a point in this pointless movie set inside a prison where a boombox is brought in volume levels cranked up to play a Bhojpuri song to drown out the sound of a particularly loud inmateThere is a fully armed militia outside led by a tiny tyrant Deepak Dobriyal always a pleasure on the big screen Why this gang doesnrsquot storm into the jail with hardly any cops inside is beyond me Jungle laws altogether apply anywayIf some dancers had magically appeared as wellmdashto pull off an itemsong style variety entertainment with further nohead notail over whatever the hellrsquos going on in the jailmdashBholaa could qualify as a proper lsquoBhollywoodrsquo pictureMeaning a Bhojpuri movie rightly placed in the eastern IndianHindi heartland But of course this is a much better directed produced bigbudget enterprise with tight sounddesign thatrsquos uniformly cacophonous and a vast visual palette that defies desi geographyHence itrsquos aimed at an equally wide North Indian audience Except as with so many movies made in Mumbai the actual storyscreenwriting has been suitably outsourced to the South namely ChennaiBholaa is the official remake of Lokesh Kanagarajrsquos Tamil hit Kaithi Prisoner 2019 which in turn was already perceived as loosely adapted from Hollywood flicks Assault On Precinct 13 and Conair if you mayNow I havenrsquot seen Kaithi mainly to avoid screwing up the Bholaa experience That said Kanagaraj the Kollywood cat of the moment is seen to have developed his own captive fanbase since What with his Vikram 2022 in the same genre having banged it at the national boxoffice And Kaithi 2 is on its wayBesides the top Chennai superstaractors supplying the stuntssetpieces a common feature of Kanagarajrsquos cinematic universe if you may appears to be hardrock bordering on thrashheavy metal for an adrenaline pumping English score This isnrsquot quite the unifying soundtrack with Bholaamdashhave already told you about a Bhojpuri trackTherersquos a proper item number too Which I watched intently wonderingspotting whorsquos smoking among the backrow dancers because the antismoking scroll randomly appears and disappears on the screen every few secondsApart from the music bitmdashjust a casual glance of the originalrsquos trailer and those whorsquove seen the Tamil film will tell you toomdashKaithi BholaaThe protagonist is replaced with a Bollywood star thatrsquos Ajay Devgn Tabu Drishyam Kutteymdashturning out to be a female Jagdish Raj 144 movies of sortsmdashplays a good cop in khakee Only the setting therefore the twang is totally Uttar PradeshThink of this then as the most recent Hindi remake of a Tamil actioner PushkarGayathrirsquos Vikram Vedha 2022 starring Hrithik Roshan Saif Ali Khan The directorrsquos been replaced toomdashthatrsquos the star Devgn himself whorsquos the producer as wellTalk of betting big on SouthTamil Something that hasnrsquot proved particularly profitable since the pandemic Case in point Vikram Vedha itself The super crappy KGF Chapter 2 2022 in Kannada biggest hit ever in Indian cinema suggests audiences donrsquot mind their mad action dubbed into Hindi and other languages after allNone of these things are rules or apply to Devgnmdashhersquos just pulled off a Bollywood blockbuster Rs 240crore plus worth of theatrical footfalls with a scenebyscene copyremake of the Malayalam Drishyam 2 2022 Letrsquos just assume the son of the fightmaster Devgn knows what hersquos up to hereUnleashing a pack of rando nanga men forming multiple armies going after the superstar for reasons hersquos not aware Neither is the audience The happily clueless Diljale type Devgn is obviously here as Bholaa with bhasam grey chalk powder on his forehead a Shiva worshipping bloke whorsquos just been released from prisonHersquos forced to drive around a truck to Irsquom guessing the nearest hospital God knows Whatrsquos inside scores of ldquohigh ranking police officialsrdquo whorsquove passed out from drinking spurious alcohol No ambulance can be trusted to lug these officers somewhere safe The dystopia is hard enough to forcefit into a filmBut this and the seizure of tonnes of drugs is a good enough excuse for an actionthriller with the gangsters who owned the maal going in for the massive kill The gangs just keep exponentially expanding The entire film is set over one night in Uttar Pradeshmdasha raat that has no subah clearly There is simply no escaping the darkness all throughPlus yoursquore inside a dark hall Irsquoll tell you what makes it worsemdash3D which darkens normal screens to start with What you have then is nonstop fast and furious passages of daredevilry on motorbikes mortal combat somersaults the worksExcept with such unnatural light and money shotssequences that look like animation under thick glasses the actual killer stunts which mustrsquove been hard to pull off feel too fake to appreciate for its realism And itrsquos not like you walked in for the best of sideperformers Gajraj Rao Sanjay Mishra etcEven the lead characters let alone others arenrsquot relatable Backstories are for bozos You care or worry for no one Apocalypse is complete As is the absurdity But it doesnrsquot look like waning at any pointThe dimness on the screen eventually seeps into your brain that checks on you ldquoHola All goodrdquo Yup just need some air and lightAlso ReadBholaa Box Office Ajay Devgn and Tabu starrer opens at 1120 crore

Bholaa review: Brain bola, hola!

Bholaa

Director: Ajay Devgn

Actors: Ajay Devgn, Tabu

Rating: 1.5/5

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Home / Entertainment / Bollywood News / Article / Bholaa review: Brain bola, hola!

Bholaa review: Brain bola, hola!

Bholaa

Director: Ajay Devgn

Actors: Ajay Devgn, Tabu

Rating: 1.5/5

Trending Stories

Latest Photos

Latest Videos

Latest Web Stories

Mid-Day Fast