When the original Zanjeer released it heralded the angry young man trend based on which countless number of films have been made in many languages not just in Telugu. When one is attempting to remake such a film it has to be done with at most care and focus. Unfortunately Zanjeer remake looses on both counts and what makes the matter worse in the immaturity that comes across on screen while watching this remake.
So the basic story of the film is simple. Hero has an agonizing past which he wants to overcome and at the same time he faces a great challenge in the present. It shouldn’t be a great difficulty now to put the two dots together. Director Apoorva Lakhia who helms the remake retains this original plot and adds as much silliness as he could come up with to this basic plot to make it a silly juvenile enterprise.
Hero is a sincere cardboard cop, he fights with a minister and gets transferred. A dumb NRI Mala (Priyanka Chopra) comes to the wedding of a ‘Facebook’ friend, performs an item number at the wedding and gets drunk assuming its normal at an Indian wedding. That sets up the tone for what follows, which takes us to a murder via a pee in the bushes. Hero is a sincere cop but he has nightmares.
Hero is a sincere cop and he fights with a rogue. Then there is Teja (Prakash Raj) with his bimbo mole Mona Darling (Mahie Gill) and an annoying interrupter aide. This dumbed down caricaturish level of portrayal of the character takes away all the excitement that could have generated with the confrontation of the good and the bad. Meanwhile hero is a sincere cardboard cop and he gets dumb heroine to become a witness in the murder case by showing a dead burnt body because he can’t convince her with his cardboard face.
Hero is a sincere cop and he becomes friends with the rouge ‘pathan’ and plays play-station with him during leisure when he isn’t being sincere nor has nightmares. The ‘pathan’ aka Sher Khan when he is not playing play-station sleepwalks in Hindi, overacts as if there is no tomorrow in Telugu. We also have a supposedly intelligent newspaper owner Jayadev, who meets the villain to disclose him his research that could put him, the villain, behind bars. Hero is a sincere cop and he finally manages to take revenge for everyone.
With such dumb, bimbo, caricature, sleep walker, cardboard and intelligent characters created/designed there is only one way the remake is headed to. Now when you think about it, it isn’t a wonder really that the director/maker didn’t get all this because only a person who really possesses all those qualities could have come up with it. And yet there is someone else who could be all those and even more. Hint, if it weren’t for that person may be the film wouldn’t have been made in the first place.
Rating: 1.5/5
