Bholaa Review

Full disclosure: this reviewer has not seen the original Tamil version, and is taking the opinion of a previous review as the baseline truth. This is important, mind you, because it ties in directly to the perception of the movie - both by itself and as a remake.

Bholaa has "mainstream entertainer" written all over it. The movie makes no bones about being a film that is self-indulgent in all aspects - be it the action, the violence, the drama, or even the small tidbits of humour scattered through its 144-minute running time. Bholaa, the character, is the opposite - he is devoid of all indulgences, his motivation is singular (to meet his daughter), and his resolution is steadfast.

Bholaa (Ajay Devgn), a convict who was recently released from prison, is on his way to meet his daughter Jyothi (Hirva Trivedi), who he has never met, when Inspector Diana Joseph (Tabu) ropes him into driving a truck full of unconscious people. He has no choice but to accept, as Diana issues a threat that he would never be able to meet his daughter otherwise.

Unknown to poor Bholaa, he is in the midst of a grand conspiracy, one that involves multiple agents and double agents, poisoned police officers, good and bad cops, and twenty roast chickens. Will Bholaa come out on top? Or will innocents die, and generally bad things happen?

Bholaa is the remake of the 2019 Tamil film Kaithi, which itself was inspired by two English films, Con Air and Assault On Precinct 13. Kaithi was praised for its imaginativeness and its enterprise - but Bholaa manages to, at best, feel like a caricature. Unlike the original, which created a tense atmosphere that made the ultimate payoff feel rewarding and evoked raw emotion in the viewer, Bholaa is the kind of film where an actual leopard runs away after taking one look at the lead character. It wants to be both a fast-moving, action-packed journey movie like Con Air, and a survival affair like Assault On Precinct 13, at the same time - which is ultimately what lets it down.

To be fair to the movie, its vehicular action sequences are imaginative - featuring chases in all sorts of vehicles be they trucks, cars, bikes or tractors. The said vehicles flare up and explode, motocross-style stuntmen toss molotov cocktails, tractors pull off "wheelies" (a stunt where a vehicle, generally a motorbike, is ridden with the front wheel in the air), and all sorts of insane shenanigans occur when Bholaa is in the vicinity. Sadly, even the visuals are afflicted by quality issues such as dodgy CGI and obviously fake locations used in set-pieces.

But it is ultimately the ridiculous shifts in the movie's tone more than anything we've mentioned before that make it a hard watch. The supposedly tense mood gets interrupted by melodrama in more places than one, before going back to gratuitous violence - which gets cut into by light-hearted, comedic moments - before trying to go back into thriller mode. Oh, there's also romance thrown in if you thought that was missing, and tragedy to round it all up. Bholaa wants to be everything and do everything, and ends up falling short everywhere.

Ajay Devgn is more menacing than heroic, but the real star of the show is Deepak Dobriyal's Ashwathama. Don't get us wrong - it is a one-dimensional "evil is as evil does" kind of character with zero depth or redeeming qualities, and Dobriyal shines not due to but in spite of the insipidly written character. Tabu is dependable as always, and so is Sanjay Mishra who actually surprises you with a violent intensity and angst you rarely see from him (his portrayal of angst in the past has generally been that of the poor and the helpless, not of a seething cop). The supporting cast does ably considering the script.

Bholaa sets up for a sequel, complete with a post-credits scene with a cameo from a veteran actor. We're not waiting for that with bated breath, for sure.