**
As far as Akshay Kumar and his streak of Patriotic movies go, right from Holiday to Baby to Airlift … Rustom is by far one of the worst movies.
What starts as a promising suspense court room thriller, gets sidelined by its predictability to the extent, that right from the beginning you are pretty sure how the movie is going to end. Well, atleast it doesnt disappoint you in that aspect.
Director Dharmendra Desai tries to keep you engrossed by using the backdrop of a Murder and a courtroom drama but fails to understand the fine nuances of law and courtroom etiquette, which I personally think are very important if you are directing more than half of your movie in the Court of Law.
The movie is based in the 50s and frankly, the attention to detail is quite good to make the movie look aged.
Akshay Kumar wastes a splendid opportunity to play the role of a Parsi Naval Officer. Though he is quite passable as a Naval Officer, looking good in the uniform and all that, but the Parsi bit is found missing. No, I did not expect him to sound like a regular movie’s, stereotype Parsi saying “Dikra Dikra” all the time, but I did expect him to have some aspects of Parsiness in his accent or mannerism in a subtle way, if possible. He could have been a Malhotra or a Singh or a (well) Kumar, the way he played this role, but then again, Akshay Kumar can only play Akshay Kumar.
Ileana Dcruz has spent most of the movie shedding tears and is completely and utterly wasted.
Esha Gupta is made to snarl and show her legs so that you never forget, that she is the “Bad Girl”.
The Courtroom drama in itself, is more of a heckling match between everyone concerned and the addition of the brilliant Sachin Khedekar, doesnt help as even he is reduced to a bumbling idiot just to gain some brownie points with the sympathetic audience.
The judge played by Anang Desai looks like he is still into his Khichadi hangover and runs the courtroom like he would run a Comedy Show.
They even managed to spoil, Pavan Malhotra, by giving him an unnecessary quirk of ticking his pen all the time.
The movie ends with leaving you feeling rather high and dry, unless you feel sympathetic about a murderer and have no qualms about allowing someone to kill another person because he was sleeping with his wife (no this is not the suspense, so I am not letting anything out).
So if you like a movie, which gives you an idea, that law can be thrown in the dustbin, simply based on sympathetic and patriotic emotions, I am sure you will enjoy this movie.
Neeraj Pandey who claims that this movie was inspired by the case of Commander K. M. Nanavati of 1959 should perhaps have thought of reminding the audience that the judgement of the trial court was dismissed by the then Bombay High Court and Nanavati spent the rest of his life in jail rather than being applauded, cheered and going off to Canada.
But then that would not get you a sense of fierce pride about our National Heroes even if they are breaking the law in their life.
All those people who love watching Akshay Kumar in a Military Officers role, do go and watch this movie. All those people who enjoy intelligent Courtroom dramas dont blame me if you watch the movie and then bang your head on the wall.
Disclaimer: The two stars given for this movie are based on the attempt of setting the movie in 1959s and for an eyeful of Esha Gupta’s thighs.
The Desi Cracked Pot 