Aditya Roy Kapur's Om: The Battle Within trailer looks outdated due to its dog-eared plot

Aditya Roy Kapur has the makings of a solid action star. He is lean wiry athletic… Agreed, he looks a little lazy, the kind of guy who would rather snooze than stretch. But he also has this dormant-volcano quality, what Amitabh Bachchan had very expressively described as a ‘soya hua sher’ (sleeping lion) in Prakash Mehra ’s Khoon Pasina. I am happy to see ARK shed plenty of khoon (blood) and pasina (sweat) in the trailer of Om: The Battle Within . Regrettably, the action scenes are accompanied by the kind of dog-eared plot that went out of fashion with bellbottoms. You see, Om, that’s our hero, is the son of a disgraced father Jackie Shroff an actor who never looks repentant when disgraced. He looks like a boy who’s caught with his hand in the cookie jar. But anyway, remember Satyen Kappu in Bachchan’s Deewaar ….Mera baap chor hai (my father is a thief), etc? Aditya has no incriminating tattoo on his forearm. Tattoos on an amnesiac hero being so passé after Aamir Khan in Ghajini .

Those long-lost days of sunny-boy fighting for his father’s reputation are back. Interestingly Om’s disgraced dad is a nuclear scientist, a la Nambiar, so I guess Madhavan ’s biopic on Nambiar (Rocketry) has some competition. Going by the trailer, Om: The Battle Within looks so outdated you can smell the mothballs. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Om down with Omnesia …sorry, amnesia, with a very helpful Sanjana Sanghi (good to see this talented girl back after playing Sushant Singh Rajput ’s terminally ill sweetheart in Dil Bechara) egging Om on to memory-recall like Nanda in Woh Din Yaad Karo 45 years ago. There are some competent actors around like Prakash Raj and Ashutosh Rana. These are players any plot can depend on. But it is clear that all the action converges on sinewy Aditya Kapur. I must admit he looks capable of shouldering the plot. And let’s be clear on this: Kapur is all that trailer has going for itself. Is that enough? True to its title, Om: The Battle Within plays the Hindutva card with much desi glee. Every time Om plunges into a dangerous situation (none more dangerous than playing the Ghajini of the pandemic period) he chants, “Jai Bhawani” The trailer ends with a sobering thought: “Rakt rahe na rahe, rashtra hamesha rahega(whether the blood remains or not the nation will always remain).” Jai Bhawani to that. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.