Review: The Salman Khan show

Wanted (A)
Director: Prabhudheva
Cast: Salman Khan, Ayesha Takia, Prakash Raj, Mahesh Manjrekar and Vinod Khanna
Rating: ** ½

Salman Khan fans, congratulations. This film has been made for you. Sit back and enjoy your favourite star fight, dance, act funny and entertain you in trademark ‘bhai’ style. Even if the ghosts of God Tussi Great Ho and Yuvvraaj still linger, worry not. This is Sallu at his best, even if the writing doesn’t always help. Others who may like the film are those who enjoy a mélange of action, romance and comedy, even if the script has to suffer in the process. For those have who have no tolerance for inane sequences, unwanted songs and a plot that stretches over 150 minutes, stay away.

Wanted, for starters, rests on an outdated plot that had been exploited in the Tamil and Telgu versions of the film, both titled Pokiri, to advantageous returns. Salman plays the good hearted thug Radhe, who enemies fear and who gets every job done, no matter what the obstacles. Chehre se toh romantic hero lagta hai, tells the villain to him at one point. 

There’s more to him than that. Radhe doesn’t mind resorting to violence to achieve his goals. He switches ‘gangs’ if it means a better career prospect and doesn’t act on his feelings for a call centre girl (Ayesha Takia) because “paise ke peeche bhagega, toh ladki tere peeche bhagegi,” he philosophises. The film has a few such gems of dialogues that make you guffaw from time to time, even if they aren’t intended to. There’s a twist in the end too, nothing you haven’t seen in scores of films with a similar plot before. But you don’t mind it because the story moves fast and the action keeps you hooked. 

The credit for that goes mainly to director Prabhudheva, who in spite of a shaky script, makes the drama watchable with the help of well-executed action sequences and extracts a performance from Salman that would endear him to his fans. If only he could have kept unwanted comedy in the form of the annoying Manoj Pahwa and at least two songs out (the music is strictly pedestrian), the impact would have been much better. 

Ayesha Takia does what is required of her: preen, pout and weep, while Mahesh Manjrekar plays a slimy, corrupt cop to perfection. Even though villain Prakash Raj – who incidentally won the National award for Best Actor only last week – does well, he looks more like, in the words of Radhe himself, “a B-grade villain.” 

But in the end, the film is an out-and-out Salman fest. If you have been able to survive the onslaught of marketing he unleashed on you for the last two months, this one should be a walk in the park.