'Bhaiyya Ji' movie review: Manoj Bajpayee's 100th film fails to score a century despite an impressive performance

Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Suvinder Vicky, Zoya Hussain, Vipin Sharma

Director: Apoorv Singh Karki

Language: Hindi

Few actors have got the desi lingo right in their repertoire with ease. The effortlessness in the rustic swag is not easy to crack. In the recent crop of names, a certain sense of pretense is inevitable and acts as an irritant. For a 90s kid that still harps on nostalgia, the two stars that fit the bill are Govinda and Manoj Bajpayee. They have smelled the stench of rust and the fragrance of the heartland without romanticizing it. Bajpayee, in particular, rose and resurrected with two bonafide classics- Satya and Gangs Of Wasseypur.

It’s fitting and fascinating that his 100th film is called _Bhaiyya Ji_, another tale from the small town of India. This is also the moniker that was given to Govinda for Kill Dill and Anil Kapoor for Tashan. Whoever that is given this name cannot belong to Bandra or Cuff Parade, he has to be the man of the soil. It’s these very stories bathed in the supposed ‘backward’ provinces that have given us some contagious masala moments. Bhaiyya Ji is a revenge drama with some high-voltage dialoguebaazi and confrontations accompanied by a booming background score. The lines are shudh Hindi how they should be, unlike written in English and then cringingly translated in Hindi.

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Revenge- A Dish Served Cold

It’s always delightful to see Bajpayee hungry and pining for roles that are driven by meat. Post 2010, his enviable body of work is for everyone to see and study. The choices that he made as an actor, or the choices that were given to him rather, allowed him to explore the unthinkable possibilities he always dreamed of, right from _Raajneeti_ to Gangs Of Wasseypur to Aligarh to Bhonsle to Bandaa. With Bhaiyya Ji, he enters into the arena of what we recognize as Mass and Masala. It’s an action flick where the madness and mayhem and all the other motions are designed by action director Vijayan, who also conceived the newly found aura of Salman Khan back in 2009 with Prabhu Deva’s rollicking Wanted. Come to think of it, an actor once again from the North looks to the South for those big bucks. But as much as one needs to laud the actor’s commitment to cater to the lowest common denominator, Bhaiyya Ji still lacks the freshness to reach the finish line due to its done-to-death narrative. A revenge drama where guns and fists do all the talking is a conflict popularized by the era of the 70s, but sadly by now, that dish is getting cold, even if not necessarily stale.

Bandaa, Bhaiyya Ji, And Badassery

The one common thread between Apoorv Singh Kirki’s two titles is how the central character’s badassery looms large over the plot. In that chilling courtroom drama, Bajpayee played a no-nonsense lawyer with a thriving aura whose words hit home. Here too, the character’s fight for justice allows him to walk the tightrope of being both the victim and the vigilante, but for purely personal reasons. Is he a Robinhood? Is he an outlaw? Or just an ordinary family man who has been wronged? The best way to describe Bhaiyya Ji, both the hero and the title is that there’s no specific definition or description. There’s a lot of badassery on display even when the drama runs out of fuel. The captain of the ship tries his darndest, but forgets he’s trying to sail the ship on a deserted island.

Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars)

Bhaiyaa Ji is now playing in cinemas