A Kick rant: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me again and again, you must be bollywood.

Are these big shot Indian producers that scared of making a good film? I mean they have got themselves convinced that if a big budget movie so much as made sense, people would shun it. A good movie cant possibly make 200 crores. I'm sure the writers (yes, apparently Kick had more than one writer) have long sessions where they sit together and carefully weed out the clever bits, one by one, till the movie is stupid enough to make 200 crores.

And Kick is a Bhai ka move. Of course you can't let a thing like a clever engaging plot steal the thunder from Bhai. This is a guy who stands in front of a hockey goal-post and coolly dives to catch a rugby ball (thus completing a brilliant catch and dismissing Chris Gayle, maybe). God knows how many strips of Revital that sold. Now if that scene made sense, for example, Bhai standing in front of a football goal post catching a football, I'm sure Ranbaxy would have gone bankrupt by now. We love bullshit. And these film makers dump it on us again and again. And we pay for it, both literally and figuratively. Now, why had I gone to watch kick? I don't know. I was a fool. I thought that maybe all the stupidity would some how make me feel like a god damn genius. Well that didn't work. If I was a god damn genius I wouldn't watch this movie. 

This is a movie about a guy who needs to live on the edge constantly, needs adrenaline rushes time and again (basically Salman from the Thumbs up ad). He calls it getting a kick. And the movie takes the entire first half to establish this character trait. I must admit it was this part of the movie where I could actually relate to some of the characters. Like for example when Jacqueline Fernandes gets a call from Bhai early in the movie and we find out she'd saved his name as 'Headache', I could totally see where that was coming from. Again in another scene we have a cop played by Sanjay Misha standing in the middle if a scene with an ice pack on his head looking like he was only moments from blowing his own brains out. Again I could see myself reflected there in his utter helplessness as a very unpleasant variety of chaos unfolded around him.

Let me give you a bit of the premise of this movie. A so called Indian top cop has to go abroad and catch an Indian super thief who, helpfully, commits all his crimes in an incredibly dumb pattern (only steals during festivals? seriously?). This is just so the top cop can identify said dumb pattern and look intelligent to us mere mortals. The thief also leaves a miniature version of his mask at the crime scene so the cops know its him. Sounds a bit like Dhoom 2 so far? Well obviously you are wrong. And retarded. When has an Indian movie not been a hundred percent original? Like ever?

And if the pattern and the miniature mask wasn't enough, the thief at one point simply tells the cops who he's going to steal from next. Even sends a photograph of the person with a handwritten note. Needless to say the thief still manages to escape, albeit with a bullet wound to the shoulder. This is where I realise I will be going to a very special kind of hell for referring to Sallu bhai as just 'the thief'. If you want to know, the 'super' thief is called Devil. That comes from the characters name Devi Lal Singh. Yes. That's his name. I'm pretty sure he is somehow the ancestor of the star trek villain Khan Noonien Singh. Both names have that same utterly stupid quality that prevents most real people from getting names like that.

So yeah, just like Krishna became Krrish, Devi Lal becomes Devil. If Americans had the same level of ingenuity that our own film makers have shown we'd have brilliant superhero names like Bruceman and Clarkman. It's such a shame they don't.

There is this one scene in the movie where Bhai calls up the top cop to have a condescending chat with him. Obviously he proceeds to track where the call was coming from, all the while stalling Bhai. As the police closes in towards the phone booth Bhai is using, you cant help but expect something clever. Some deception Bhai is hiding up his sleeve so that Randeep Hooda is left looking like an idiot while Bhai makes a grand exit. Cue applause... and whistles... and screams of BHAIIII!!

Nope. Turns out Bhai was actually being overconfident. He gets cornered by cops leading to one of the most embarrassing escapes I have ever seen. All these big movies in the past have at least had some scenes of contrived intelligence fooling an audience into thinking their protagonist was a genius. This movie doesn't even make that much of an effort.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Sorry man. there was nothing you could do. And if your final confrontation with Devil, mirroring (very faintly, I must admit) Dr. Siddhart Arya's final confrontation with krrish, was one of the most underwhelming climaxes to a Big-Bollywood movies after the climax of Boss, I refuse to blame you for it.

Randeep Hooda. I respect this man for not giving up on the movie till the end. He tried his level best and is probably the only reason I left the hall a sane man. Oh... and while leaving the hall I actually overheard a man saying that he could only figure out one of the twists and that the rest of them blew his mind. Yes. Twists. Plural. He must have seen Race 3 in the hidden Secret Future Movie Screen. Or maybe he was genuinely shocked when it was revealed that Bhai himself was Devil.

I am not proud I watched this movie. But I'm proud I held on to my sanity and, after a few hours of rigorous yoga and profound meditation, logic makes sense again. If you cut your hair short, your hair will be shorter. Hence proved. Over and out.