‘Ruslaan’ movie review: Aayush Sharma’s action film is forgettable but not without its guilty pleasures

Cast: Aayush Sharma, Jagapathi Babu, Vidya Malvade, Sushrii Mishraa

Director: Karan Butani

Language: Hindi

Ruslaan begins in the year 2004. That’s the year when Farah Khan’s directorial debut Main Hoon Na released. I’m mentioning it here because just like that potboiler, this film also involves a patriotic protagonist going undercover to a college. There, it was protecting a girl, here, it’s the entire nation. Three action scenes play out in the dark accompanied by a soothing background score but unfortunately marred by multiple slow-motion shots. What’s also ironic is that Ruslaan, which means lion, played by Ayush Sharma, is driven by music and even masquerades as a music teacher, but doesn’t sing one decent song. For a film whose logo boasts off a guitar fails to give a single memorable number is both appalling and unforgiving.

Patriotic=Pensive

Patriotic sentiments religiously get equated to the pensiveness of the characters. Ditto for Ruslaan. There are tried and tested monologues and endless conversations about desh and duty that these people mouth with such ease and expressionlessness that none leave an impact. We are constantly reminded he’s a terrorist ka beta and the horror looms large on our hero. If the same narrative had to exist in the 70s, Salim-Javed would have milked all the juicy sentiments with all its masala and mass. And even a veteran like Jagapathi Babu struggles with the kind of writing once prevalent in the era he actually started. There’s Vidya Malvade too, and her struggle has been to find one meaty role since she saved that one penalty goal that led to Indian women’s hockey World Cup in 2007.

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What the hack?

One should marvel at the technological advancement the nation has accomplished, especially in films. In the recent heist comedy Crew, three ladies were able to bring all the gold back to India after a plan that felt too perfunctory. And in _Ruslaan_ , two RAW agents smuggle themselves to a fictional landscape to cover a terrorist’s blow with an equally facile manoeuvre. Both involve nothing but hacking into a system.

Guilty pleasure anyone?

But Ruslaan isn’t a write-off at all. Films that want to make a statement are the ones that turn out to be fun after a point. The bronzed hero and his desire to kill offer quite a few hoot moments and guilty pleasures. Directed by Karan Butani, Ruslaan swings between the hilarity of Mission Istanbul (2008) and the comical villainy of Qayamat (2003). And in between, believe it or not, there’s a reminder of Aditya Roy Kapur’s disastrous Rashtriya Kavach Om too. Every time the nation is under threat, there’s always one man, and only one man, fit for the job to get the job done. And Aayush Sharma jumps into the bandwagon of names that already boasts of the likes of Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Tiger Shroff, and Vidyut Jammwal. Of course, this is just his third film and he’s nowhere close to the agility that the above heroes have, he tries. After a point, one can only sit back and enjoy the bullet shoots and punches and a swelling BGM and forget what the mission was in the first place.

The one scene that steals the show here is when Malvade tells Sharma about a RAW agent who was once a Punjabi actor and mouths his line- ‘Achcha agent banne ke liye achcha actor hona zaroori hai.’ What does that mean? Doesn’t matter as long as you’re enjoying the guilty pleasure!

Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars)

Ruslaan is playing in cinemas near you