Given
all the sky-is-falling media coverage of the Trump Administration, you would
think India’s Emergency Period would suddenly be a hot topic. From late June
1975 to late March 1977, the world’s largest democracy essentially put its
democratic government on hold, instituting something very much like martial
law. Of course, PM Indira Gandhi was a socialist, more or less. She was
complicated and the media can’t handle that. From time to time, Indian pop
culture sizes up the Emergency Period and finds it rather odd. Evidently, they
have reached the point when they can use the era of widespread human rights
abuses as the backdrop for an action movie (that sounds like progress to us). Government
stooges have plundered the ancient family treasure of a beloved Rajasthan
princess, but her loyal bodyguard and on-again-off-again lover intends to
hijack it back in Milan Luthria’s
Baadshaho
(trailer here),
which is currently playing in Los Angeles.
Maharani
Gitanjali always knew she could rely on strong, silent Bhavani Singh and that
up-and-coming politician Sanjeev is total pond scum. She rebuffs Sanjeev’s
advances, so he nationalizes her gold (meaning he will deposit it in his own
coffers, for the sake of the “public good”), so Singh will assemble a colorful
team to steal it back. Sounds simple, right? Wrong, complications are aplenty,
starting with the transport truck, a veritable bank vault on wheels, and the
multiple combination locks to be cracked therein.
Fortunately,
Singh knows the crankiest safecracker on the subcontinent. He will also recruit
his self-styled lothario pal Dalia, and Gitanjali’s trusted rep, Sanjana. Ordinarily,
those four could easily handle all the cops and military personnel from Jodhpur
to Delhi, but Major Seher Singh is also on the case. That one will be trouble,
even before the double and triple crosses start coming fast and furious.
Surely,
the Emergency Period was nowhere near as much fun as it looks in Baadshaho. For one thing, Dalia gets a
suggestive Bollywood number with a dancer played by Sunny Leone in cameo that
doesn’t exactly stretch her screen persona. There is a bounty of action involving
barrel-chested Singh the bodyguard climbing over the roof and under the chassis
of speeding flatbed fortress. However, the real pleasures of Baadshaho are the courtly intrigues
swirling around Gitanjali.
As
the dueling Singhs, Ajay Devgn and Vidyut Jamwal have mucho action chops and
are quite evenly matched when it comes to swaggering screen presence. However,
neither of them can lay a finger on Ileana D’Cruz, who burns up the screen as
the femme fatale Mahrani. Man, is she ever formidable, just you wait and see.
She basically owns the film, but it is also nice to have Denzil Smith onboard as
Seher Singh’s commanding officer Rudra Singh, because his baritone voice can
make even the most prosaic lines sounds like “now is the winter of our
discontent.”