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It’s been some time since Bollywood has come up with a Gangster movie and Raees does a good job at fitting the bill.
The movie is about the rise and fall of a small time liquor smuggler in Gujarat who goes on to become one of the kingpins in his trade.
Shah Rukh Khan has put in a rather restrained performance with his regular hamming kept to a minimum. I think we have to thank the Director Rahul Dholakia for that.
The lead actress Mahira Khan comes across as a damp squid with a permanent facial expression of someone who just sat on a hot frying pan.
With her role restricted to a few songs and hardly any impactful dialogues, I wonder why Farhaan Akhtar and his team had to go all the way to Pakistan for hiring her. They could have taken a mannequin and still got away with it, since Shah Rukh keeps hogging the camera all the time.
Sunny Leone (stop drooling) plays a pivotal role in the movie and that’s where the movie takes a serious….mmmmmm…… Curve 😝
The only saving grace of the Movie was a fantastic performance by Nawazuddin Siddiqui who plays the role of ACP Majmudar who gives Shah Rukh a run for his money in the movie as well as in the acting department.
The first half of the movie is totally entertaining, although the second half slips a bit.
They have actually spent the last 45 mins of the movie trying to glorify a Gangster, but then again, you can’t end the career of a Gangster without trying your best to make the audience feel bad for him, especially if the Gangster is a Super Star with a huge fan following.
The songs are nothing to boast about and there in the movie for no rhyme or reason. They just crop up right out of the blue to justify Mahira Khans presence in the movie.
The chase sequences and the action scenes seem to be right out of Assassin’s Creed with SRK jumping off rooftops and doing slow motion fancy shooting and kicking. This makes the action highly unrealistic albeit it makes the Hero look larger than life. This is what happens when you spend too much time playing PlayStation 😝
All in all Raees was much better than I had expected, though its a long shot from being anything close to what the other two Khans have delivered recently.
Disclaimer: The movie is not based on the life of Abdul Latif and any resemblance of SRK’s character to the original Gangster from Gujarat, along with all the events are merely a coincidence 😝
The Desi Cracked Pot 