Welcome to hell,’ says Salman Khan somewhere at the beginning of Sikandar. It doesn’t take you long to realise he was warning you about his own film.
Salman, set to turn 60 this December, was never much of an actor (I use ‘much’ with much politeness). Except, perhaps, for few and far between flashes of some sort of emoting — and emotion — in films like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Tere Naam, and a fistful of others. The last film he truly ‘acted’ in was Kabir Khan’s Bajrangi Bhaijaan, and that was 10 years ago. In the last couple of outings (see box), the indifference has been evident, with directors employing everything from miraculous computer graphics to superhuman editing skills to simply ensure that Salman is a living presence on screen. In Sikandar, Salman’s disinterest has peaked, and in a directly proportional manner, so has our disillusionment.
A.R. Murugadoss — who with Aamir Khan’s Ghajini was one of the first to introduce ‘pan India’ to our vocabulary before he was left far behind by the Rajamoulis of the southern side of the country — rehashes everything that we have seen in a Salman film before. But he somehow manages to make each element worse. Which is a near impossible task in itself. Murugadoss achieves that with ease; what he doesn’t is making a bad film so bad that it almost becomes good.
When it comes to a Salman film, the bar of expectations has anyway been low, and in recent years, almost non-existent. What you do expect, whether you are a critic or a cinegoer, is a decent dose of action and entertainment, a certain suspension of reality and a somewhat paisa-vasool experience. But the law of diminishing marginal utility, with no effort being made from Salman’s end to step up even a little, has resulted in the monstrosity called Sikandar.
For long, we have heard how Salman’s films are review-proof; how a Salman festival release — especially on Eid — will draw in crowds, no matter what. But a film like Sikandar — with no plot, wispy players, nausea-inducing fan service and no regard for the time and money of even the most diehard Bhai fan — commits the unforgivable mistake, from the first to the final frame, of taking its audience for granted.
First, it has the weakest entry scene for any Salman Khan film. Opening inside a plane, we see a man — Prateik Babbar (aka Prateik Smita Patil, we think) hamming it up in a way that makes Orry look like a better ‘actor’ in that one scene he had in Nadaaniyan — trying to molest a woman after blackmailing her that he will reveal her former career as an adult film actor, or some such. Just as he is about to lay his grubby hands on her, another hand — with a familiar-looking Feroza bracelet loosely dangling from the wrist — reaches out and gives him a solid drubbing even as the airhostess does chance pe dance to announce that there is turbulence to be expected on board. The handful of viewers in the theatre I was in — it was evident that they were all mostly Bhai’s loyal ‘bandhus’ — launched into ceetees and taalis. As Sikandar progressed, they fell eerily silent.
It turns out that Salman is no Tiger or Radhe, Chulbul or Sultan. He is, in fact, royalty, belonging to the ruling family of Rajkot. Sanjay Rajkot — yes, that is his name — is also known as ‘Sikandar’, after Alexander The Great. ‘Sanjay’ comes from his parents being big fans of Sunil and Nargis Dutt. I haven’t made up any of this. Apart from being a one-man army, Sanjay controls 25 per cent of the country’s gold reserves, we are told. It is an unnecessary addition to this review, but has been put in simply to illustrate how the entire existence of Sikandar is unnecessary.
Sanjay aka Sikandar is philanthropic and benevolent. He has an army of bodyguards, but his fists are enough for him to function as both protector and predator. He is supported in his efforts by his wife Saisri (Rashmika Mandanna). Mandanna has built a career on playing partner to alpha-males with varying degrees of toxicity — Sikandar follows Animal, Pushpa 2 and Chhaava — and though her character has a little more agency here, that isn’t saying much, either for her or for the film.
Murugadoss’s brief to his ‘co-writers’ — Rajat Arora, Hussain Dalal and Abbas Dalal — seems to have been: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. So, Sikandar attempts to pre-empt criticism of the huge age gap between Salman and Rashmika by bringing it up itself, in what it hopes will be enough of a self-aware exercise. Nothing is enough when the age difference is a whopping 31 years. The total lack of chemistry between the two makes it even more glaring.
Ghajini was built on a story of revenge around a dead fiancee. As had been made amply clear in the trailer, Sikandar has Saisri meeting the same fate, with Prateik’s character Arjun and his politico father Pradhan (played by Sathyaraj, who is now permanently attached to the identity of: ‘Katappa ne Bahubali ko kyon maara?’) emerging as the primary antagonists.
In what is yet another example of a totally unnecessary plot point, Sikandar journeys from Rajkot to Mumbai to track down all those who have been donated Saisri’s organs. Boom, thwack, whack follows, with Sikandar’s benevolence (read: ‘Bhai saviour complex’) extending to everyone from slum kids to subjugated women. A kid, at one point, calls him ‘Santa uncle’.
Over the last few years, the attempt to paint Salman and, by extension his characters, as a unidimensional do-gooder has reduced him to a facile presence on screen. Sikandar simply reinforces that.
Salman is seen in saffron and also guarding an old man in a skull cap, with inclusivity and politically correct boxes being ticked off one by one. Fight scenes pop up, some lazy dialogues are spouted. More and more incoherence follows. Salman increasingly looks like he would rather be on the set of Bigg Boss.
Sikandar has a clutch of capable actors — Kajal Aggarwal, Jatin Sarna, Anjini Dhawan — but they are all reduced to a footnote in the script. Sharman Joshi, as Sikandar aka Sanjay aka Santa Uncle’s sidekick, gets a very bad deal.
Who gets the worst deal? You know who. Simply go and have a long, hard look in the mirror.