Bachchhan Paandey

If the script is interesting, then even a bad filmmaker won’t be able to mess it up. This is a statement I have heard many people say in interviews. Well, the new film Bachchhan Paandey from Akshay Kumar has the potential to make those people rethink that statement. Bachchhan Paandey is very much a scene-by-scene remake of Jigarthanda from Karthik Subbaraj. And yet, at no point this film feels interesting like the original, simply because of the loud treatment.

Myra Devekar is an AD in Bollywood. A fallout with her director leads to a scenario where she is offered a chance to make her first film by the producer. Myra decides to make a gangster story, and she chooses the life story of Bachchhan Paandey as his track record was nasty all the way. But getting to know Bachchhan was no easy task, and the movie shows the struggle of Myra to achieve that.

Jigarthanda, which itself was inspired by the Korean film A Dirty Carnival, was quirky in its presentation. Even though it has this gangster comedy texture, there was love towards the passion of filmmaking somewhere in the narrative. The problem with Farhad Samji’s presentation is that his making never wants to look at characters more deeply and sensitively. He is treating the story as another one in the Housefull franchise. In Jigarthanda, we have Guru Somasundaram as the acting coach giving this gibberish training, which had an authentic feel. But in Bachchhan Paandey, Pankaj Tripathi is making them spit on one another; Farhad Samji just loves keeping things in the slapstick zone.

Akshay Kumar, in his salt and pepper look with that eye, looks deadly for sure. The scripting is so superficial that it doesn’t want the character to be subtle at any point. Kriti Sanon is also playing a very shallow character. There are moments in the film where Myra is presented as a dumb individual. It is sad to see someone like Arshad Warsi in a role that hardly adds anything to the plot. Jacqueline Fernandez as Sophie looks stunning, and that’s it. Pankaj Tripathi, Prateik Babbar, and Sanjay Mishra are given characters that were written so poorly that I felt it was an insult to their talent.

The love for making cinema and the creative influence was something that made Jigarthanda quirky and raw. But when it comes to Bachchhan Paandey, Farhad Samji and Sajid Nadiadwala have zero regards for that aspect of the narrative. They assume that the acting coach slapping the gangster is the humor that made this film a hit. In the typical Farhad Samji style, they practically ruined every humorous scene. There is a back story here to Bachchhan Paandey, and it is the cheesiest and the least imaginative thing one could come up with. Gavemic U Ary’s cinematography tries to achieve something through the color palette. Still, the tone-deaf treatment of the movie never deserved that level of effort.

They have included a useless love track featuring Jacqueline Fernandez in this movie. They haven’t included the scene where Sangili Murugan’s character’s speech influences the decision-making of Siddharth’s Karthik. This exclusion and inclusion basically show the inability of the filmmakers to understand why some movies work for the audience. Bachchhan Paandey from Sajid Nadiadwala is just a loud mess.