Movie Review: Dhoom 3
The Great Indian Circus in Chicago is in danger of closing down and only the bank can bail them out. Unfortunately, even after Jackie Shroff along with his 10-year-old son Sahir (Aamir Khan) displays one of the best acts, the board of directors fail to give him any more rope for his tricks. In five days he has to sell off and pay up. He puts a gun to his own head and closes the deal.
With his dad dead, and almost 23 years later, Sahir gets on the road to destruction—robbing the many branches of the bank, bringing it down to its knees. The robberies are well planned and slickly executed. But what is even flashier, is the way Sahir escapes on his power-engine after every robbery. Every bike trick in the book is up for display in Dhoom 3.
For the first 25 minutes, Aamir Khan holds you spell-bound. He is a method actor you see. But then, all method is thrown to the wind as YRF Films brings in their Bunny Boy Uday Chopra for some ‘ghar ka fun’. He makes fun of his face, throws in some cheesy dialogues with his goofy grin announcing he is a cop in Mumbai.
Yes, from Chicago, the setting moves to some basti in the city for some time. He is then joined by another cop Jai Dikshit (Abhishek Bachchan). After some rickshaw fight between these two cops and a local goon and his cronies, Jai and his partner are called to Chicago to help solve the bank robbery where the only clue Sahir leaves is a message in Hindi.
In the meanwhile, the Great Indian Circus is back on track. Sahir decides to pull a fast one on Jai and tells him that he knows who the robber is. He narrates a story of a clown in the circus called ‘Chup Chaap Charlie’. His con, however, is pulled off when Jai injures him in his next robbery. However, when Jai lands at the circus to arrest Sahir he finds that there is no bullet mark on his back! Is this another trick from The Great Indian Circus?
Jai, who has been made a fool of, is told to pack up by the Chicago police, but Ali Akbar (Uday Chopra) manages to convince him to stay back and restore his lost pride. You are then treated to some more ‘basti like’ scenes in an amusement park in Chicago.
Dhoom 3 is all about Aamir Khan the method actor and a little more about Bollywood’s penchant for spoiling a good thing by throwing in some foolhardiness, bending to please people in power and pushing in more songs than necessary. In fact, Dhoom 3 is all about how to begin a movie with a bang, and then ruin it.
At a point in time, the bike chases gets a little over-the-top and the over acting of Uday Chopra and his funny dream sequences (I don’t know what that was all about) is a joke on the film itself.
The music is getting louder by the day. Only the first song is attractive, that too, because of the well-choreographed ‘Tap Dance’. The length too is eight minutes under three hours. An action film should be crisp and to the point. No point lengthening it beyond a point!
Dhoom 3 is like the Indian cricket team of the nineties. After Sachin Tendulkar got out, the batting lost its spine.
Take out Aamir Khan and you have Kaizad Gustad’s Boom!
Rating: 2.5 / 5
Martin D’Souza
This first appeared on glamsham.com on December 20, 2013