By: Amit KumaR Agarwal
The best thing about Hindi film audiences is, they are not so very demanding w.r.t. technicalities of cinema. All they want is screenplay and dialogues that connect. Is it a tough call. After watching Heropanti 2 and now Dhaakad, it seems it is.
Coming to Dhaakad, agent Agni (Kangana Ranaut) is on the mission to end an international human-trafficking ring run by ruthless, Rudraveer (Arjun Rampal) and psychotic, Rohini (Divya Dutta). How she goes about executing it is the plot.
The biggest problem is the unconvincing screenplay. Spoilers ahead.
- Agni's boss (Shaswata Chatterjee) wants to bust Rudraveer and his racket. Why? Since he is the brain behind Rudraveer. There was no scene where it is shown Rudraveer is trying to seize control from him.
- Even if Rudraveer is trying to seize control, his location is known to Agni's boss. So, the entire first half devoted to know Rudra's location goes entirely waste. He could have simply sent Agni there to eliminate him.
- Even if we give leeway to writers that Agni's boss doesn't know the location; he does know his ruthlessness, if he wants to bring him down, he would send a bigger team with air-support.
These are just three of the many gaping holes in the screenplay.
Kangana Ranaut is best suited for psychotically challenged roles. She doesn't fit in 'normal' characters, case in point, Manikarnika. She tries hard, but. Arjun Rampal makes an impression as Rudraveer, though his dialogues are hard to understand at places. It is Divya Dutta as Rohini that steals the show, she is effortless and burns up the screen every time she is onscreen. Rest of the actors do a decent job.
Though a bad script and weak direction takes away a lot, the film is stylishly shot. At the BO the film will meet a disastrous fate. The publicity blitz - a new action star is born - is stillborn. The show quite emphatically thwarts any plans to make the film a franchise.