2.5 stars out of 5
Director: Rahul Dholakia
Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Mahira Khan, Atul Kulkarni
Of all the doubts that assail Shah Rukh Khan's career at this stage, there is no question about one thing—he has leveraged his filmi persona to become very Raees (rich), with his staggering bank account likely unaffected by the economic earthquake that struck his fans and others recently from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. To the audiences who do not like their cinema brainless, however, the bigger question remains whether that richness will ever get re-invested in the film-making vision that has eluded the superstar in the last dozen years.
This film's biggest villain is neither its corrupt chief minister nor a conniving Mumbai gangster. It isn’t even Raees himself. It is the background music. It shouts and screams in every frame, not allowing you to feel anything. A fight in a mutton marketplace early in the film would have played 10 times better with the soundtrack being silent.
Poor Raees does not even know that he has these kind of behind-the-scenes enemies. This title character is played by Shah Rukh Khan—a gutsy businessman who arises from humble beginnings to become a rich influential trader, bootlegging alcohol from his base in Fatehpura in the state of Gujarat where alcohol is officially prohibited since independence. Ultimately superseding his treacherous senior, trading favours with the chief minister, while proving to be a generous messiah to the masses, he remains inspired by his mother's diktat that no trade is too small, and that trade itself is bigger than any religion. Eventually, the script dragoons him, abruptly, into entering politics, which heralds his downfall.
From Raees’ childhood scenes, we see a street-smart kid who takes big risks, but what we never get to see is that he has also been tutored by the Kung Fu Masters of Shaolin and the US Army's Elite Assassination Unit. This becomes obvious when he soars and climbs 20 feet up the buildings while chasing his assassin and firing a dozen shots all around the room, thus cleaning up his enemies with balletic brutality, which unfortunately sometimes resembles cartoonish gore.
The film is deliberately infused with a light-hearted air commingling with its criminal world, so that the film-makers would not have to worry about the film being too intense for the masses, apart from giving them a chance to harmoniously slip in designer songs. The tone of the film thus hangs in an awkward limbo—neither Sarkar nor Transporter or a bravura fusion. Resultantly, the starkly bold climax appears disconnected from the rest of the film's effect.
This schism also shows in Khan's acting here, which needed a better director to extract more depth. In an early scene, Raees suddenly grabs an inspector by the collar and makes him blow a torn tire. What we should see is an abrupt chilling turn of face, what we actually see is less scary. His epic grief at the end also does not resonate much.
It is a terrific decision to cast the brilliance of Nawazuddin Siddiqui against the charisma of Shah Rukh Khan. In their coveted face-offs, it is Siddiqui whose intensity shines deeper. With stabs of dry humour, straight-arrow talk, and whip-cracking law enforcement, the latter nails his top-cop role. Excellence is also evident in Atul Kulkarni's restrained but clearly malevolent edge in portraying a criminal big-shot. The script, however, serves a cuckoo to Mahira Khan who plays Aasiya, Raees' wife. She acts coyly, smiles brightly, and also handles emotional dialogue well, but her character is a poorly written one where she is forced to be a dumb barbie doll for three-quarters of her role.
So, the film's real-life star has all the money in the world, but he still remains chained to commercial concerns. Directors who can browbeat him into crafting consistently uncompromised cinema are either not getting through to him or not being allowed to get through. As long as this continues, his ongoing brand of films will continue to be adulterated with "If only" and "I wish".