A Gentleman

Raj and DK are tow directors who were quite innovative in the beginning of their career and then gradually limited themselves to urban comedies. A Gentleman starring Sidharth Malhotra is one movie that falls flat in terms of emotions and excitement. It was supposed to be this agent/spy thriller with the texture of comedy. But apart from the discretely occurring jokes nothing in this assembled action comedy works for us.

Gaurav is this techie who has this dream of having a home, a car and then a family. He is a nerd and he is in love with Kavya who likes him as a friend and is not really sure about having a relationship with him because of his off character. In India there is a parallel story happening where an agent Rishi who fights for the secret services has decided to quit the job and is facing a lot of threats because of that. The film deals with the interesting turn of events when they both cross their paths in Mumbai.

The above written synopsis is partially fake as I don’t want to get into details that will spoil some of the very few surprises in the narrative. The two appreciable things in the whole movie in my opinion were the way they blurred the Gaurav-Rishi transformation and the way they captured the fist fights. Apart from that there is nothing rational about the movie. It is just a set of clichés and cardboard characters who has no emotional depth. Occasionally certain comedy counter dialogues will make you laugh, but the too simple structure of this story with zero novelty is really a letdown.

Sidharth Malhotra can’t add anything to his portrayal of the character to give it elegance or a sensible nerdy feel. His angry posture when he comes to meet Sunil Shetty’s character in Goa is somewhat funny. Jacqueline Fernandez once again gets a glamour driven character with nothing much to do in terms of acting. Sunil Shetty in his brief appearance as Colonel was also not really convincing. Darshan Kumar was an effective antagonist and Hussain Dalal was also fine.

It is really disappointing to see Raj and DK’s films getting less innovative and look more like a pattern driven content. The people who made Shor In The City(a personal favorite) and a comedy like Go Goa Gone are lacking originality in A Gentleman. They don’t really care about being sensible in terms of the plot proceedings. And they are tweaking character behaviors in a really odd way. This movie isn’t supposed to be a slapstick kind of illogical comedy. They are trying to get in to that terrain of Knight and Day, but nothing of that sort is really happening on screen. The visuals are more style and luxury driven. The cuts compliments the style of fist fight we see in the film.CGI works are a bit too excessive. Sachin Jigar’s tracks are fine and my favorite Bandook Meri Laila wasn’t used in the film.

As a Raj and DK film, A Gentleman is actually a dull movie with no real surprises. With actors lacking grace and the plot lacking freshness, this movie is bearable as it is skidding through everything swiftly within 132 minutes.

Rating: 2/5