Bollywood has been in a puzzling disarray this year. While a section of the industry continues to churn out remakes and ripoffs of contemporary Southern films, a part of it has been desperately emulating the kind of recent mass actioners that have somewhat proven to bring audience footfalls to the theaters. And there comes “Bhaiyya Ji” – a madcap mashup of B-grade Bhojpuri and Telugu masala movies crossed into the sensibilities of an angry young man protagonist. In an ideal industry, this could have been its own peculiar thing. But in this rather exhaustingly disappointing year for Bollywood, it might have managed to bring us its biggest dud.
Based on the internecine battles between two hierarchical orthodox satraps in parts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Ram Charan (Manoj Bajpayee), aka Bhaiyya Ji, must step out of his self-imposed retirement when his stepbrother, Bhola, gets brutally killed by the son of Chandra Bhan Singh (Suvinder Vicky).
An archetypal Bollywood mother, too, seeks this opportunity for revenge while a slimy police officer (Vipin Sharma) further fuels the systemic rage inside our titular lead. The film boasts itself so heavily with these commercial tropes that it succumbs to keep itself afloat with its on-screen mayhem. Even the generic revenge drama narrative runs dry before the outlandish action set pieces unfold.
Director and co-writer Apoorv Singh Karki, who recently worked with Bajpayee on the hit OTT courtroom drama “Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi” Hai, enters a new, more challenging terrain with this feature. But even the partly realized rustic milieu of the story here fizzles out in front of the film’s incongruous sensibility. The dialogue-baazi and the heightened action that is ideally tailored to lure the audience in soon turn hollow owing to the uneven pace.
Moreover, the color scheme and the muted charisma of characters (which is ironic, considering how both Bajpayee and Suvinder Vicky otherwise revel in bringing out the subtleties of their on-screen characters) compound the rather patchy storytelling (and VFX) of the movie. Bajpayee hurdles onto rusty roofs and hits a dozen men at once against the rails, all this while recuperating from his former life as well as injuries. Yet the biggest casualty of the film remains in the casualty of this being the actor’s 100th credited film.
Ram Charan’s family crest – that of a brass lion – is slammed onto the screen an exhausting number of times – the only thing you’re left thankful for is recognizing how it still wouldn’t rust the actor’s reputation. That’s also because the filmmaking here hardly breathes life into any scene or moment. Even the supposed moment of thematic reckoning gets delivered through one of the protagonist’s sidekicks (we don’t even sense why he’s there, but he is), who apparently gets wrapped around a storm caused by a forced second-act reveal.
Perhaps the biggest blunder on the director’s part seems to be bringing out the turmoil into an action landscape while tethering on an actor’s persona that excels at all things internal. That isn’t to say Bajpayee isn’t watchable here. He more than makes us for the bland filmmaking wherever he can. But the frequency with the duo seemed to function with their previous film doesn’t even get remotely translated into any kind of enthusiasm required for the ensuing battle here. After dealing with things in a civil way, when his brother is not handed over to him, Bhaiyya Ji declares a ‘narsanghar’ (carnage). I just wish the rest of the film either had the self-aware aptitude or the technical finesse demanded by that outroar.
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