Review of “Bullett Raja”

It has became a trend in last few years in bollywood, first a talented director makes an wonderful film within a limited budget and lesser known actors, then big production houses sign him to direct their films, they provide him superstars, better budget but they added an extra responsibility to make the film commercially successful so that the budget of taking the superstar can be recovered. With this added responsibility the director cannot make the film in his own way and fails to deliver a solid film as good as his earlier works.

Recently such incidents have happened with Kabeer Khan in “Ek Tha Tiger”, Neeraj Pandey in “Special Chhabbis” and with “Bullett Raja”, director Tigmangshu Dhulia has added himself in the list of those helpless directors.

“Bullett Raja”, as it was looking from its promos, is based in the small town of UP. It is the story of two friends Raja Mishra (Saif Ali Khan) and Rudra Tripathy(Jimmy Shergil). Destiny bonds them together in friendship and forced them to the world of crime and politics.

They keep growing as gangsters and tried to rule world with their own way but as usual when they become bigger in power their own support system goes against them and try to finish them. In between the intense drama of power and revenge, there is a romantic story too between Raja and Mitali (Sonakshi Sinha). But rather than the love story, it is more about the male bonding of two friends which will remind you of the friendship of Hindi movies of 70s, even in the film the two friends has been compared with Jai and Veeru of “Sholay”.

The story has nothing new; all this has been told earlier in too many movies. Also it is very much violent especially in the second half when Raja is on the mission to take revenge of his personal loss. While watching the movie, audiences will feel the lack of lighter moments.

There is a romantic track but it seems just to make it a complete commercial movie the track has been forced. Even the screenplay has been twisted just to fit songs there like the disco song in Mumbai nightclub “Tamanchey Pe Disco”. In fact in the second half it is visible that the director has pressure to showcase Saif Ali Khan as star giving him more opportunities to show his herogiri.

But there are some moments which will be with you for some time like the instance where Raja wants to shoot a person from 100 meters distance just to break the records of another shooter, or the scene where the kidnapper and hostage is enjoying a comedy show on TV together. The chase sequence between Raja and Bajaj (Gulshan Grover) are also well shot. But such moments are very few and not enough to make up the loop holes in the screenplay.

As director Tigmangshu Dhulia has been successful to create the ambience of UP especially with his well written dialogues. He has extracted good performances from his cast, but he is unable to cover up the lack of the weakness of the story and screenplay. There is no doubt it is his most commercial film so far but he has lost his own style of filmmaking ,in between the pressure to add commercial elements.

Saif Ali Khan has done a good job as Raja Mishra a ganster from UP with his own style

and attitude but it is far away from “Langda Tyagi” from “Omkara”. Sonakshi Sinha has nothing to do except from appearing in two songs and some scenes and saying some Bengali lines in between with a wrong accent.

The supporting cast have done a good job. Gulshan Grover is brilliant as a corrupt businessman. Raj Babbar has done well as a politician. Ravi Kissen has done a good job as a

hit-man who pretends to be crazy and wears women’s dresses just to escape from getting arrested. Vidyut Jamwal has a smaller role and his character is introduced much later in the movie. Anyways it is always a delight to watch him doing his daredevil stunts.

But the show stealer is undoubtedly Jimmy Shergil, he has again proved that he has the talent and because of that Tigmangshu Dhulia gives him chances again and again in almost in his every movie. Wish after this some other movie makers will also notice his potential. Jimmy Shergil has played his character Rudra with honesty. His bonding with Saif Ali Khan is excellent. The audience will surely miss the character of Rudra very much, in the second half of the film.

In technical department the film is average. The dialogues by Tigmangshu Dhulia are superb and will get seeti and taali in small centres. The action scenes conceptualized by Parvez Fazal Khan are good especially the scenes picturised on Vidyut Jamwal. The sets by Dhanajoy Mondal are realistic. Rahul Shivastava’s editing has a lot of scope for improvement. Sajid Wajid’ background score does not go well with the drama on screen.

The music by Sajid Wajid is just okay there is not a single superhit song. Even the item song picturised onMahie Gill(in a special appearance) sounds similar with too many other old item songs. Only the song "Samne hai sawera " is better but the way it has been used in the movie , it does not serve any purpose. The disco is a forced song but will remain popular in party circuits for some time.

Overall “Bullet Raja” is just another story of gangster and politics based in UP. There is nothing new to watch. The first half is still okay with the good bonding between two lead actors Saif Ali Khan and Jimmy Shergil but the second half is too much violent and lacks interesting moment. If you are a fan of Tigmangshu Dhulia’s style of filmmaking then you will be disappointed for sure. Watch it if you like to see the bhaigiri of UP wale Bhaiyajee with solid dialoguebaazi, otherwise please stay away from it.