In sport, we’ve had several stories of obsessed fans harming their favourite’s rival and bookies/betting mafia losing money due to one player’s performance and taking violent turns. The director is not interested in the serious drama of such psychotic fans or betting and drug cartels. He just wants to use this as a wafer thin plot and make a buddy cop movie. The problem with Dhawan however is that he has miles to go before even reaching the Abbas-Mustan level of keeping you entertained.
Everything about Dishoom is generic. A generic buddy cop movie. A man of action (John Abraham as Kabir Shergill) with little regard for authority and his sidekick (Varun Dhawan as Junaid Ansari) who gives you the feeling that he can pull off good jokes and great comedy but only no one is giving him that. The star player who goes missing is Viraj(t) (Saqib Saleem doing his best Virat Kohli impression). There is a constant battle between the text on screen, the background score and the actual frames. Each belongs in a different film.
For some reason, Dhawan believes there are several money shots in his film. Surely there are introductions galore even halfway through Dishoom. Out of nowhere, Jacqueline Fernandez is running in slow-motion. There is Nargis Fakhri. And Akshay Kumar. And hey, Parineeti Chopra too. The film is over and Dhawan continues to introduce characters. We keep hearing blazing scores set for all these intros and plot turns (spoiler alert: nothing has turned except my eyes towards the exit sign) that for a film named Dishoom, there is really very little of dishoom dishoom going on.
Here are some of the things you can learn by watching Dishoom: One, in a film with Mohinder Amarnath, Rameez Raja, and Nargis Fakhri, John Abraham still manages to come across as the worst actor. Two, the overused non-actor makes you wonder why an actor like Akshaye Khanna remains under-used. Three, Jacqueline Fernandez would fit right into the shoes of some of the worst roles mainstream Tamil film directors write for the female leads. Hansika Motwani and Tamannah, be very afraid. Four, there is a new found respect for Abbas-Mustan.