Movie Review : Dabangg

Once upon a time in a town called Bollywood, commercial films used to be fashioned around the ability of an individual to get butts into seats, a semblance of a plot and a heavy dose of emotion and dialogue-baazi. Over many years this town was taken over by urban educated, westernised people who brought in things like detailed scripts, realistic dialogue, special effects, elaborate sets, costume design and the like. The end result of this was a bunch of films that seemed to cater to either Indians living abroad or in cities. Even the names of movies started to change - Jab We Met, Once Upon a Time in Mumbai and so on. However, did the heartbeat of the old Bollywood die? No it continued to beat, albeit weakly with a few films a year.

Well, it beats weakly no longer. This year, Salman Khan has applied the defibrillator twice and we hear the beat loud and strong. First with Wanted and more effectively with the now released Dabangg. True Bollywood is back!

Dabangg is a UP western, complete with Spanish Guitar riffs and a suitably stark backdrop. This is a no-frills action movie with a family-centric heart, the way Bollywood used to do it. It succeeds due to direction of Abhinav Kashyap and more so due to the deadpan, take-no-prisoners approach Salman Khan brings to his role. He is the movie, pure and simple - whether taking on five baddies with a fire hose, delivering dialogues that get the seetees or paying homage to Dharmendra when dancing, the man is in his element, and the audience is with him all the way.

The movie has already grossed over fourty crores in the weekend of its release and is well on to blockbuster status. Salman Khan is now officially a real superstar. Not one like SRK who needs a tailor-made script and an NRI-Indian urban fan base, but a true one that can pull in the crowd anywhere in India, not just the multiplexes. Please move over a bit, Rajni and Mithunda..........

Over the weekend, there was a brawl in a Bangalore multiplex during the screening of the movie; of all places. Do you need a better recommendation?