Bang Bang! is the film equivalent of reading a Mills & Boon romance novel. The hero (Hrithik Roshan) is tall, dark and handsome and the lead actress Katrina Kaif is an incredibly beautiful, never-been-kissed brunette.
But while these novels are relatively conflict-free (come on, whether the hunk will kiss the waif against her will doesn’t call for global attention), Bang Bang! has enough explosions, bullet-spraying and car chases to make your head roll.
The story is straightforward. Roshan plays Rajveer Nanda, a deadly jewel thief who’s in the market to hawk the Kohinoor diamond that he has stolen in London. How he does it is anyone’s guess, but going by the way he demolishes and obliterates his enemies, this one he could pull off with his eyes closed.
During his mission to sell his loot, he runs into the wide-eyed, chaste bank receptionist Harleen Sahni. If Nanda oozes James Bond-like suaveness and insouciance, Sahni is a timid beauty.
She lives with her ahead-of-her-times grandma, looks for love on internet dating websites and is happily unaware of the effect she has on men. Kaif, as always, looks beautiful, but her dialogues sound juvenile. We wish she had been given a sassy role instead of a girl-trapped-in-a-woman’s body role.
For instance, towards the end of the film she’s forcibly injected a lethal dose of truth serum by the world’s most wanted criminals (more on them later).
Naturally, her knight in shining armour swoops to her rescue. They are dodging bullets when she purrs: “I want to tear your shirt off”. The next minute she becomes needy, badgering him about whether he finds her “exciting enough”. Something tells me that these scenes were banking on their chemistry to make it explosive, but it just ended up looking cheesy. However, the redeeming portions of the film were their eventful encounters and witty exchanges in the first half. They have their moments, but corny lines weigh them down.
The action sequences filmed in Abu Dhabi, but not identified as the Middle East, and other picturesque locations such as Prague look slick and highly stylised. But the film would have benefitted hugely from a solid plot.
The only solid objects in this film, an official remake of Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz’s Knight and Day, were Roshan’s washboard abs and Kaif’s bikini-perfect body. The camera lovingly captures them in all their splendour and there are times when the film feels like a homage to six-packs. However, we wish the director had also given some love to the villains. Danny Denzongpa as the menacing Omar Zafar is ineffective as a bad guy. We wish his personality was as colourful as his bright, well-tailored jackets.
While the chemistry between Kaif and Roshan is crackling for most part, the film drags towards the end. Watch this one if you dig Roshan’s toned torso and tousled hair. Kaif looks breathtaking but we wish she had dialed down the squeaky, I-am-so-cute dialogues.
