Action Jackson

Starring: Ajay Devgan, Sonakshi Sinha, Yami Gautam, Manasvi Mamgai
Directed by Prabhu Deva
Rating: *

At the very beginning of Action Jackson is a nice, long chase in firangland. The film starts off with the promise of delivering nothing more than Rs 100 crore worth of inanity, stupidity and thrills. Fair enough, if it means some harmless fun and an opportunity to laugh at the film, if not with it. So there are some cartoonish characters, mindless comedy (the kind where the hero, as in Ajay Devgan, stops a BEST bus only so that he can put his foot up the flight of steps and tie his shoelaces), a few well-staged action sequences, several changes of locations—in India and then on to Bangkok and New Zealand—and a quick pace that ensures that the audience’s sense of logic is kept well in check. After all, how can you do a serious critique of action scenes where the hero kills with toothpicks and tomato sauce and dances awkwardly as he demolishes his enemies? Or where a ditzy heroine (Sonakshi Sinha) tries desperat­ely to spot the hero in the buff because it brings her some good luck. The twist at the interval keeps one curious and the attempts to make Ajay, of the two left feet fame, dance clumsily work rather well too.

The second half plunges badly into excessive violence. Heroine No. 1, the stupid Sonakshi, makes way for a dumber Yami Gautam, and the film becomes nothing more than a big yawn-fest. Yami keeps getting thrashed by an army of menacing men. Wonder what Prabhu Deva would have said while narrating the role to her. That she will play a pregnant lady who will get pounded to pulp but, despite that, will deliver a perfectly healthy baby in the tradition of a Mother India? For someone who played a modern, urban, confident woman with panache in Vicky Donor, Yami, suffice to say, disappoints big time, merely by opting to do this role. In fact, the trinity of heroines is enough of a pointer towards the filmmaker and actor’s own mindset towards women: one is plain silly, other is into self-persecution and the third is a vicious, sexualised vamp who gets called a ‘leg-piece’ and also a ‘Mercedes’ who the hero would like to take out for a ‘test drive’. Need we say more? Where are the ‘normal’ women and some good men?

While Sonakshi and Yami get voluntarily wasted, it is an out and out Ajay show, and he seems to be having a ball on the home turf. Manasvi, despite the cliche of a role, makes her presence felt. All because it is such a deliberately construc­ted eyeful of a presence. With a film like Queen at the beginning of the year giving us a gloriously believable heroine, to this blatan­tly chauvinistic wannabe blockbuster at the year-end, Bollywood has indeed come a long way in 2014.