R…Rajkumar

The cool tapori act works for Salman but Shahid doesn’t have the panache to pull it off

When you see a ‘mindless’ film like R…Rajkumar, you have to come around to the idea that the essential principle of popular culture is to thumb your nose at traditional values without really upsetting the status quo. Though the pop cinema of Mumbai and south India may appear different to each other in approach, a film like this doesn’t really upset the apple cart because it is placed outside a specific socio-political context. It may offend your sense of aesthetics, but little else.

It is enough to know, for instance, that R…Rajkumar takes place somewhere on the Indian mainland and that people here talk in Hindi. Interestingly, the only geographically specific scene in the movie is in Hong Kong, where the don who controls drug supplies to India, Ajit Taaka (Srihari), lives in a penthouse, surrounded by Caucasian women in bikinis. He snorts cocaine and sends his stuff to two rival dealers in India called Shivraj (Sonu Sood) and Parmar (Ashish Vidyarthi).

Rajkumar (Shahid Kapoor) works for Shivraj and is in love with Parmar’s niece. He is a goon on hire, and struts around with the über cool attitude that director Prabhu Deva gave Salman Khan in Wanted. That worked, this doesn’t. No matter how much he has developed his pectorals, knocking out two dozen goons in five minutes by flying around in the air and kicking his legs needs to be made plausible by Shahid’s persona and star image, neither of which fits the bill.

As a lover boy, he doesn’t fare much better and badgers Chanda (Sonakshi Sinha) into acknowledging his existence. She views him as a pest and it is only when her drug dealer uncle makes peace with his rival by arranging her marriage with him that Chanda panics. Rajkumar, then, seems the more attractive option.

All this takes place in a complete vacuum and you will safely delete it from your mind as soon as you leave the theatre.

PrabhudevaShahid Kapoortapori