Movie Review: Action Jackson
Director: Pabhu Dheva
Producer: Govardhan P Tanwani, Sunil Lulla
Cast: Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha, Yami Gautam
Action Jackson is the kind of film where fifty gun trotting goons choose to pick up iron rods to fight a sword-bearing hero rather than shoot him dead and in process get killed. Beyond logic? Well this is just one of the instances. The film has scores of logic defying stuff.
Prabhu Dheva is known to make mass entertainers. The success of his Wanted has been responsible at large in bringing to fore a specific genre of films that has been fed by remakes of southern hits. And so far he has had quite a success rate despite a dip in his standards. With Action Jackson however the dancing director seems to have hit quite a rock bottom of reasoning.
The lesser said about the story the better.
Without giving away the suspense, the film starts of establishing the good samaritan Ajay Devgn, a waiter in a Pune hotel who helps people whenever he can and has the courage to catch a snake by its head. The focus shifts to Mumbai with the character shifting to the city. In the 'maximum city' Ajay is shown as a small time goon, Rishi, who changes the fortunes of terribly ill-fated girl Khushi (Sonakshi) when she sees him without his pants at a mall. Bizarreness starts when Khushi tries various means to catch Rishi without his pants again so that she keeps getting lucky, soon falling in love with him. A big revelation is made just before that interval and quite frankly my hopes were raised. Alas!
The film is written to define absurd. And the second half only gets worse.
It is not just the screenplay that is messed up. Action Jackson has characters that could make you laugh throughout, without intending to do so. Among other you have a villain with marble eyes that move, and a vamp who acts like she is a possessed zombie. Them apart you have a heroine who could do well to hide her thighs and another, played by Yami Gautam, who just refuses to die. And yes, there are colour coordinated minions who looks like they are out of a candy crush game!
One good thing about the film is the cinematography. Action Jackson has some extremely stylized action sequences. That includes Kill Bill inspired sword fighting. The photography is but let down by utterly poor special effects.
As we watched on helplessly, a very senior journalist sitting beside me remarked, "This is Ajay's Humshakals!" I could not help feeling sorry for the actor. He already has a Himmatwala. He did not need this. But then, the law of averages does catch up. This is Prabhu Dheva turning Sajid Khan... well every director has his right to emulate Khan. In process Prabhu even tries emulating Ram Gopal Varma with low angle shots of his actresses. Probably it is time Prabhu takes a break and reanalyzes what the audience might accept.
Final word - Action Jackson could be well described by one scene where Ajay Devgn does a moonwalk. He makes a joke of out the step just like the film makes a joke out of the audience's sensibilities. This is one of those films where every scene ends up being an inspiration for some self-pity joke for the viewer. Save your money.
Producer: Govardhan P Tanwani, Sunil Lulla
Cast: Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha, Yami Gautam
Action Jackson is the kind of film where fifty gun trotting goons choose to pick up iron rods to fight a sword-bearing hero rather than shoot him dead and in process get killed. Beyond logic? Well this is just one of the instances. The film has scores of logic defying stuff.
Prabhu Dheva is known to make mass entertainers. The success of his Wanted has been responsible at large in bringing to fore a specific genre of films that has been fed by remakes of southern hits. And so far he has had quite a success rate despite a dip in his standards. With Action Jackson however the dancing director seems to have hit quite a rock bottom of reasoning.
The lesser said about the story the better.
Without giving away the suspense, the film starts of establishing the good samaritan Ajay Devgn, a waiter in a Pune hotel who helps people whenever he can and has the courage to catch a snake by its head. The focus shifts to Mumbai with the character shifting to the city. In the 'maximum city' Ajay is shown as a small time goon, Rishi, who changes the fortunes of terribly ill-fated girl Khushi (Sonakshi) when she sees him without his pants at a mall. Bizarreness starts when Khushi tries various means to catch Rishi without his pants again so that she keeps getting lucky, soon falling in love with him. A big revelation is made just before that interval and quite frankly my hopes were raised. Alas!
The film is written to define absurd. And the second half only gets worse.
It is not just the screenplay that is messed up. Action Jackson has characters that could make you laugh throughout, without intending to do so. Among other you have a villain with marble eyes that move, and a vamp who acts like she is a possessed zombie. Them apart you have a heroine who could do well to hide her thighs and another, played by Yami Gautam, who just refuses to die. And yes, there are colour coordinated minions who looks like they are out of a candy crush game!
One good thing about the film is the cinematography. Action Jackson has some extremely stylized action sequences. That includes Kill Bill inspired sword fighting. The photography is but let down by utterly poor special effects.
As we watched on helplessly, a very senior journalist sitting beside me remarked, "This is Ajay's Humshakals!" I could not help feeling sorry for the actor. He already has a Himmatwala. He did not need this. But then, the law of averages does catch up. This is Prabhu Dheva turning Sajid Khan... well every director has his right to emulate Khan. In process Prabhu even tries emulating Ram Gopal Varma with low angle shots of his actresses. Probably it is time Prabhu takes a break and reanalyzes what the audience might accept.
Final word - Action Jackson could be well described by one scene where Ajay Devgn does a moonwalk. He makes a joke of out the step just like the film makes a joke out of the audience's sensibilities. This is one of those films where every scene ends up being an inspiration for some self-pity joke for the viewer. Save your money.
First published on NowRunning.com
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