2 hours, 39 minutes... Oh boy. I am in deeply unfamiliar territory with this weeks movie choice; Race 3, the third instalment of the Race trilogy of which I have seen none of... but am reliably informed that you don't even need to watch the first 2 to... appreciate? how terrible this movie is... An Indian-Hindi language *checks notes* action thriller movie from 2018 and let me tell you, at 2 hours 39 minutes there better be plenty of action. Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End clocks in close to 2 hours 39 minutes and shit load of things go down in that movie; being the closer to the good 'Pirates' trilogy, and like Pirates I too am in unchartered waters here because I've never watched a Hindi language film. I'm fairly sure I'm not the intended demographic here but this movie got savagely eviscerated by critics and at time of writing holds an ironically impressive 1.9 / 10 on IMDB earning it's place with cap and gown honours on my movie watchlist as a result, so I'm going to get very comfortable, ensure I have access to food and water, schedule in a mid movie exercise break to avoid deep vein thrombosis and find out what all the... lack?... of fuss.. was about.
Shamsear Singh (Anil Kapoor) just gets done blowing up a mans heart with a pen... when he is subject to an assassination attempt which he survives due to some physics defying driving and absolute pinpoint accuracy. This however was enough to enrage his children; Suraj (Saqib Saleem) and Sanjana (Daisy Shah), his cousin, Sikander (Salman Khan) and Yash (Bobby Deol) one of Sikander's employees, who descend upon Rana Khanna (Freddy Daruwala)'s base, one of them via fucking wingsuit... to fuck shit up. And fuck shit up they do in some of the most over-the-top fight scenes I've ever watched and I've seen all the MCU. That out of the way Suraj and Sanjana inherit 25% each of a property from their late mothers will, and learning that Sikander has inherited the further 50% are angry that somebody is who isn't immediate family has not only inherited more than them but is seemingly held in higher regard by Shamsear than they are. Meanwhile Shamsear goes to meet an old school friend who tells him about a hotel he co-owned that was frequented by politicians masquerading as a brothel. Unbeknownst to the guests, the hotel boss recorded all the footage and it was saved on a single hard disk, but when Rana found out he seized the potential to blackmail the politicians and kidnapped the hotel owner who subsequently died whilst being tortured. Shamsear is asked to recover the hard drive from a bank vault in Cambodia and the potential profits will then be split between himself and his friend and he appoints Sikander for the task. Following that, at a party Yash reveals his girlfriend Jessica (Jacqueline Fernandez) to the rest of the family who just so happens to be an old flame of Sikander who vanished. Sikander and her meet in a security lobby and for reasons that aren't immediately explained Jessica is mad at him and announces their relationship is over, but not before a passionate hug is caught on spy cam by Suraj. Suraj shows the footage to Yash and Yash races (get it?) over to Sikander to confront him. But after a lengthy conversation Sikander and Jessica reveal that Jessica was hired by Suraj and Sanjana (the twins) to drive a wedge between Sikander and Yash. Meanwhile, Shamsear arranges for Khanna (Narendra Jha), a corrupt officer of Interpol, to blackmail the 8 politicians whose were secretly recorded at the brothel hotel into a meeting so that they may prevent the footage from leaking to the press, y'know, with lots and lots of money. Sikander and Yash meet in Cambodia prior to the mission to retrieve the hard drive and whilst there Yash tells Sikander that the twins motivation is to recruit him away from Sikander and into their operation, but he intends to stay loyal to Sikander. Later, Sikander formulates the plot to retrieve the hard drive by breaking into the vault via the drainage system, which also serves the neighbouring nightclub, and sends Yash and the twins to carry out the job. They retrieve the hard drive but something goes wrong outside the nightclub and Sikander is arrested and taken away. Suraj travels back and delivers the hard drive to Shamsear, but Sanjana and Yash don't return with them. Instead they hang out on a yacht where it's revealed that Yash and Sanjana are lovers, Yash orchestrated Jessica as a love tri-angle interest between himself and Sikander, and for Jessica to reveal that it was the twins who planted her, and that he did it all so he and Sanjana could be lovers. Yash also arranged for Rana to pay off the police to abduct Sikander who is now stuck in the middle of nowhere in Cambodia. But luckily both himself and Jessica injected themselves with GPS tracking fluid (yes, really) before the heist and after an over produced escape scene with lots of pointless explosions, Sikander is rescued by Jessica. Who is now driving a LGV lorryhead for some reason and then they actually jump from the lorryhead in wingsuits to get away. Fuck this shit. I AM DONE. There's still 55 minutes of this movie left... Sikander returns, everyone has a big sing, and then later Suraj denies having anything to do with what happened to Sikander and announces that he and Sanjana want to split, however Shamsear beats this down. Later at a party Jessica reveals to Sanjana that she is a government agent, sent to infiltrate the family and investigate the illegal distribution of arms. They have a big overly-produced fight, but Yash breaks it up and offers to pay Jessica off. Shamsear makes his way to the meeting with the politicians but not before taking the time first to blow up the car Sikander was driving in, killing him off. At the meeting Shamsear reveals Rana is his business partner and demands 25,000 sq. ft. of land from each of the politicians estates to manage a drugs and arms trafficking ring. Yash then plugs in the hard drive to play back the videos but instead a video of Sikander's mother begins to play. She reveals that her husband and Sikander's father was murdered by Shamsear and that Shamsear is not the twins fathers. She also reveals that Shamsear is slowly poisoning her to kill her off. Shamsear pulls the video and reveals that Yash is his son and the twins have both been written out the inheritance. The twins, on the verge of being executed, are then saved when Sikander bursts in, apparently not dead, and saves the day. He reveals to Shamsear he knew the truth all along and was waiting for the opportune moment. But then for some reason, he lets Shamsear and Yash walk away just as Jessica and the army burst into the hanger, starting a big gunfight. Sikander quickly dispatches of Rana as Suraj gives chase eliminating Shamsear and Yash's convoy with a little bit of help from Sikander who catches up with him later. Sikander and Yash then have a big punch up, including a shirt tearing scene Yakuza video game style, whilst Jessica prevents Shamsear from fleeing with a helicopter and an onboard mounted changun because fuck it why not at this point. Sikander is on the verge of winning the fight when he spares Yash, who realising his mistake, pledges loyalty back to Sikander, sort of. Jessica finally lands that helicopter, the twins catch up and Shamsear and Yash are arrested. Post-drama, back at home - Sikander reveals that Jessica was working for him the whole time, the hard disk was a fake, the money Jessica blackmailed them for has been returned, he had been tipped off about the car and escaped before it exploded, he paid off Shamsear's friend to get rid of him and keep the hard drive and handed it to Jessica and the police to deal with, and thank god it is over.
This was a long film, way too long. Way, way, too long. Not made any easier a watch by how completely ridiculous it is. This is the first film I've covered for the blog that I genuinely wanted to switch off before the end. That bit with the wingsuits escape from the lorryhead. That was me done. That is not how wingsuits work, you can't just 'fly'... fucking fuck me. This was the most difficult watch for me yet.
Christ, so where do we start? How about with the completely nonsensical, physics defying, logic defying, downright impossible action set pieces? Everything about almost every single one was so overly produced, painfully overcooked that it was borderline amusing by how ridiculous they were. Cars do not just stop and turn 90 or 180 degrees on the spot. You cannot jump from a moving vehicle and land perfectly on the spot and stay on your feet. You cannot hit a moving target square in the chest with a single bullet from the left hand passenger side of a vehicle with the window wound down... I could go on. Things were so chokingly, overbearingly over dramatic that it was literally becoming comical as to how far they would go next. If you thought Marvel fight scenes were overbooked. Watch this movie. It's fantasy. There is no reality in them whatsoever.
Next; the soundtrack. Fuck the soundtrack. "Were coming back to the Raaaaace." I hope you like that bit because you will be hearing it a-fucking-lot. The OST was all dubstep numbers and over-produced wobble music, and then lots of WUUUUUUM bits. I hated it. The actual musical parts - whilst not really for me - I can't really criticise as I have no frame of reference to compare them to, and I'm biased because I hate musicals, but I guess they were mostly alright, although the lyrics were corny as fuck. Maybe that's the style though? I'm not the target audience here. Maybe the people who this film was made for, whoever the fuck they are, love this kind of shit and they eat it up? Dance moves were pretty on point for what it's worth although Salman Khan can't breakdance for shit.
Next: the over use of slow motion and bullet time camera. Deployed in the right spots at the right moment and it turns a good scene into a great one. This movie peppered that shit around like it was seasoning. Every action set piece... EVERY ACTION SET PIECE... was saturated with it. It doesn't make it look cool. You just get burned out. It ruined any kind of immersion really. The set pieces were already so far fetched as to be practically fantasy anyway, this does nothing to ground them. And stuff just blowing up for no reason. This was a Michael Bay wet dream. Bikes just exploding into balls of flame from a single bullet shot. Wooden Cambodian shanty houses bursting into flames as a car smashes through the roof. All overbaked. Dramatic, totally over-the-top action for the sake of it.
Next: the dialogue. I had to watch this with subs because I don't speak Hindi so I will give this movie some leeway here, and again not the target audience, but the dialogue was so corny, dripping in corny, oversaturated with it in places. Really, really bad. Maybe that's what the core demographic want from these kind of movies but it just made me cringe. I can at least appreciate and acknowledge that this is an Indian film, and Indian family values do play a role in it, and those parts were fine, but the way the men talk to the women; "hey baby", "hey sweetheart", was mega cringe. And the way they talk at each other before a fight scene or a gunfight was painfully overdramatic. I hated it.
A bit like this movie, I could go on all night. There was alot I didn't like. I hated the needlessly convoluted plot; the swerve from such-and-such is double crossing such-and-such, oh but that was such-and-such's plan all along, and the attempt at the end to play it out like it was all part of Sukinder's plan from the beginning was frankly bollocks. Too many plot holes, too many plot developments meant I couldn't buy that. Although there is one saving grace for this entire movie, one glimmer of hope: I thought Shamsear was a very snappy dresser and for the movies main lead and then swerve main villain he at least looked trendy and looked cool. But that's it. That's the only bit.
This is a solid zero from me. A giant, novelty sized turd cast-in-solid gold level zero. I hated everything about it. It had nothing for me, and that was me trying to approach the movie at face value, casting aside that it was -to me- a foreign language film, casting aside that it wasn't designed to appeal to me. I went in with an open mind, an open approach and I fucking hated it. I was done 1 hour and 34 minutes in. Will I be going back to the race? No.
