Dabaang 2010

Now that the song "Munni badnaam hui.....zandu balm hui.."is under litigation, I fear one of the very few reasons to watch this movie is also going to disappear. The song is catchy and so it Malaika Arora's luscious behind. Directed by Abhinav Kashyap (Anurag's younger brother, in talent too) and produced by Arbaaz Khan, this movie makes maximum use of Salman Khan's persona and minimum use of logic. Which would have been good if it was an out and out spoof, but the director/writer couldn't make up his mind.

The movie begins with the hero and his brother's childhood. Hero Chulbul Pandey (Salman) and his mother (Dimple Kapadia) live with his stepfather (Vinod Khanna) and step brother Makhi (Arbaaz Khan) Chulbul hates his step family with good reason and grows up to be Robinhood Pandey - a policeman with a heart of gold and fists of iron. Lots of Bhojpuri references, fights and dialogues follow. Sonakshi Sinha appears in between as the love interest potter girl and Mahesh Manjrekar plays her drunk father. All the characters are cut out from the normal bollywood milieu.

[Spoiler]

The movie follows a not very convoluted plot, Pandey catches a dacoit and takes the money. The dacoit is working for the local political gunda (Sonu Sood) who is not very liked by the main political honcho (Anupam Kher) whose assistant is the heroine's polio afflicted brother. (take a breath) Makhi steals the money that Pandey had got from the dacoit to marry his love (Mahi Gill), their mom dies, Pandey is thrown out of the house, Makhi goes ahead and prepares for his wedding with the stolen money, Pandey asks heroine to marry him, she says she can't cos she has to look after drunkard father.Pandey advices father to make daughter agree or move out of the way, father commits suicide, Heroine isn't resentful at all and cuts the funeral short to walk out with Pandey. Makhi's wedding is arranged, Pandey crashes the wedding and gets married himself. Makhi's wedding is cancelled. The political gunda wants his money and revenge against Pandey, he burns the step father's mill down and the step father has a heart attack, Makhi goes to goon for help, Goon uses him to bomb the honcho down, heroines brother is also killed. Makhi is then asked to kill Pandey. He can't so he goes to Pandey and spills the beans and then goes back to the villain (why? nobody knows) and is informed that the goon actually killed his mother while looking for the money. The showdown begins.

The only good part of the movie begins now. The director throws away all pretense and makes it a full fledged masala pow wow with shirt tearing flexed muscles, slow motion punches, bullets, explosions and blood that would make Quentin Tarantino proud. After the fight fest, everybody becomes friends and lives happily ever after. Apart from the continent sized plot holes and confusion, the only other mystery is how this movie became such a hit.

3/10