Bang Bang: All about glitz and glamour but no content

“Bang Bang” is Sidharth Anand’s first foray into action, a departure from his rom coms like “Salaam Namaste”, “Bachna Aai Haseeno”, “Tara Ra Rum Pum” and “Anjana Anjani”.

Officially it is the remake of Tom Cruise’s not so impressive “Knight & Day”. “Bang Bang” has a wafer thin story by Patrick O Neil about Rajveer Singh (Hrithik Roshan) a thief who steals the Kohinoor diamond from London, falls in love with a dumb damsel Harleen (Katrina Kaif) and is in search of international terrorist Omar Zafar (Danny), why, when and how is what the movie is all about…

Screenplay by Sujoy Ghosh and Suresh Nair is equally unimpressive. The central character is almost like a super hero, I think the writers created an alter ego of Krish with Rajveer Nanda who jumps, leaps, uses state of art gadgets, shows his well sculpted body and kisses his damsel with passion, he is too perfect to be believable. The plot or should I say chaos is just a collage of some action sequences, car chases in international locations and songs in beautiful locations like Greece, nothing more than that. I did not expect such a half baked plot from Sujoy, it had a premise of a sleek spy thriller but the screenplay just does not pick up. Even the love story does not strike a chord, it only has some kissing sequences, and songs which pop up from nowhere. Half hour into the movie and you can predict the narration.

Dialogues by Abbas Tyrewala is amateurish and too mundane with desh bhakti punch lines like the 80’s, even the dialogues could not salvage the bland script.

Performance wise Hrithik Roshan sleep walks through his portrayal and it felt that it was an extension of his previous character Krish. Katrina Kaif with her forced innocent act as Harleen Sahani the bank receptionist is irritating and she end up being an arm candy and only needs to look good. Danny has a hackneyed villainous character of Omar Zafar who is a quintessential bollywood villain, but his presence makes an impact. Pawan Malhotra is wasted as Intelligence Officer Dilawar, as his character is poorly written and half backed. Deepti Naval, Kanwaljit Singh, Jimmy shergill and Vikram Gokhale are wasted in insignificant cameos. Javed Jaffery as Hamid Gul has nothing much to do. In short a good ensemble cast is wasted in a half baked story.

The best aspect of the movie is its action by Parvez Shaikh, it is sleek and well choreographed. Choreography by Bosco Ceaser & Ahmed Khan is done well, especially the song “Tu Meri” song which showcased Hrithik’s brilliant moves. Music by Vishal Shekhar is foot tapping and breezy, apt for the kind of subject, even the background score by Salim-Sulaiman is good. Another highlight of the movie is the cinematography by Vikas Sivaraman and Sunil Patel which added the glitz and style to the narration.

Sidharth Anand had everything going for him in this movie, superstar Hrithik Roshan and the beautiful Katrina Kaif, Fox star as the producer did not spare any expense in making “Bang Bang” a grand cinematic experience, but it is opportunity lost due to weak and half baked script. Even Sidharth’s direction is inconsistent, he concentrated more on style and glitz and less on the content and eventually the movie falls flat.

A plot which could have been a good spy thriller, but fails miserably, I will go with 2 stars….

Movie Rating: (2 / 5)