Dhaakad movie review: Kangana Ranaut tries a Lara Croft in a dull, embarrassingly derivative, grossly violent saga-Entertainment News , Firstpost

Language: Hindi 

Dhaakad is not so much a film as it is a series of embarrassments lasting over two hours, perhaps the most cringe-worthy of all being the song sung by Badshah in the finale with lyrics likening the leading lady to a Quentin Tarantino film. “Tarantino ki dasvi filam hai…”

The line unwittingly puts a seal on an embarrassing truth: that Dhaakad (meaning: Formidable) is shamelessly derivative. It is not Tarantino though, but the Lara Croft blockbuster franchise starring Angelina Jolie that the team of this Hindi film primarily seems to be mining, right down to the heroine’s look, which includes figure-hugging black outfits of varying lengths and long plaited hair in large parts of the narrative. 

Debutant director Razneesh ‘Razy’ Ghai’s Dhaakad stars Kangana Ranaut as the Indian undercover agent Agni. The storyline, for what it’s worth, is about a human trafficking racket led by one Rudraveer (Arjun Rampal) that she is directed to unearth. Rudraveer has a nasty partner called Rohini (Divya Dutt) who was bred in the sex trade herself. Agni’s work takes her from Europe to central India and back. 

Along the way, we learn that Agni has a tragic background. The storytelling is so colourless and soulless, however, that watching Dhaakad is equivalent to lying down on a giant block of ice on a winter’s day: it is bound to leave the body feeling cold. 

Ranaut has a penchant for action – we know that – and Dhaakad’s stunt choreography is impressive. But all the skilled, convincing-looking kicks and punches in the world, all the wig and costume changes, all the switches in hair colour cannot possibly compensate for superficial characterisation and a hollow script. 

Dhaakad is so unoriginal that the composition of its scenes in the countryside hark back to the Superman saga Man of Steel with Henry Cavill. At least the outdoor shooting is sophisticated and yields several spectacular visuals. The rest of Dhaakad does not even have that. 

Agni has what seems like an indestructible body that is left miraculously unscathed when she is in a vehicle that explodes. That’s the least of Dhaakad’s problems considering that men in most Bollywood – and Hollywood – action flicks tend to survive accidents that would be fatal for normal Homo sapiens like you and I. Dhaakad’s problem is far bigger: lack of imagination. 

To make up for the vacuum of ideas, extremely violent scenes are inserted into the proceedings at intervals. At one point we get a close-up of Agni poking her thumb through a man’s eye.

Arjun Rampal, Kangana Ranaut in a still from the film

In an Indian film scenario that rarely gives women actors central roles in action flicks, the unwavering focus on Ranaut in Dhaakad should ideally have been a happy development. How though can one celebrate vacuous writing, dull direction and a boring-as-hell result? 

In a career spanning 16 years, Ranaut has notched up several memorable performances (Queen Simran and Panga to name just a few).

There’s also a scene in which we are told that Agni has a rare congenital condition (one that does indeed exist in the real world – I checked) in which her heart tilts towards the right of her chest, unlike most human beings whose hearts lean to the left. I don’t know if this was meant as a joke because of the actor’s very publicly held political ideology; if not, it was inadvertently funny.