Race 3

First of all, let’s just acknowledge that Race as a franchise wasn’t a phenomenal one. The first two movies had bits which made me do the facepalm and occasionally it became unintentional comedies as well. Even though I wasn’t a fan of those films, I would definitely say they were watchable in a fun way. The third installment in the franchise, Race 3, that has a whole different cast and crew except for Anil Kapoor and Jacqueline Fernandez, is a tedious unbearable torture with a haywire story supported by tacky acting. If Kanan and Biswa are waiting for a movie to start a new season of pretentious movie reviews, brothers your wait is over.

Shamsher Singh is a big arms dealer in the Middle East and he has 3 kids Sikhandar, Sanjana, and Suraj. Yash is a close one to Sikhandar and is considered as family. In Cambodia, there is a hard disk in one bank locker that has certain information which could help the family in getting Indian politicians agree to their demands by blackmailing them. All of this is happening while a silent dispute over sharing the family fortune is going on within the family. Where all this will end at the end is what Race 3 dealing with.

Shiraz Ahmed’s writing was never really a great one and here he is failing to get over the low benchmarks set by him in the past. Let me give you an example by spoiling the hero’s entry in this movie. Out of the three siblings, two are fighting the bad guys and the father asks his man Friday to call Sikandhar and tell him to help them. And the guy says Sikandhar is already on the way. Do you want to know how Sikandhar goes for help? Remember that scene from the trailer where we see a flying Salman Khan? Ya! That thing happens. If you can whistle seeing that scene, this movie is tailor-made for you and immediately after the movie you should go and visit a therapist. Race 3 is a series of endless WTF moments making you wonder how the story would have got pitched. Remo D’Souza’s idea of filmmaking is to make every frame luxurious. Our characters are always seen wearing designer clothes, traveling in luxury cars and spending time mostly in nightclubs. Abbas Mustan duo must be laughing seeing this film as we get no thrill in discovering the backstabbers here.

Barring a half-hearted Anil Kapoor, everyone in the cast here is horrible. Salman Khan is giving a tough time to all his facial muscles making me realize how graceful Saif Ali Khan was. Poor Bobby Deol is clueless in the whole film. The official pole dancer of Bollywood, Jacqueline Fernandez shows us the result of her hard work in the gym. Daisy Shah who got the iconic business dialogue in this Salman Khan Job Guarantee scheme is forgettable. Saqib Saleem is yelling “bro” at the end of every sentence and I must say, bro, if that’s the way you show are going to show your anger, nobody is going to get afraid. Anil Kapoor, unfortunately, has very less to do in this Salman Khan show.

Remo D’Souza fails miserably as a director in this already terrible story. His idea about Race 3 is to stuff it with grand song set pieces, action set pieces and a few twists here and there. Apparently, he has forgotten the fact that he should edit all of it to make it look like a sensible story rather than an ad film for SUV’s, Sports cars, and Dubai tourism. If anyone says we have the creative mind to make something like a mission impossible and the budgets are the limiting factor, I will buy them the ticket for Race 3. The fact that arguably India’s biggest superstar has acted and produced this piece of trash is a reason why we are not making something like a mission impossible. Ayananka Bose might have felt like shooting for ad film each day on the set. The music of the movie is horrible and Salman Bhai, please don’t ever take that pen to write a song. I liked the first action set piece in which we see Anil Kapoor doing his heroics and rest of it was total rubbish.

You might want to ask “what the hell were you expecting seeing all those promos?”  In my defense, I went in with the lowest of expectations and this movie went to those stooping lows of sense that I couldn’t even look at it as an unintentional comedy. There is a fourth wall breaking Race 4 announcement from Bhai which actually broke my heart.

Rating: 1/5 (It’s for the guy who did the bike stunts for Salman)