GOLD Review - Gold Man and the Sea of Irrelevance.

There have been few films that I have been excruciatingly made to sit through because my job required to do so. One classic example is last year’s Jab Harry Met Sejal, a rotten ulcer that is still alive and kicking in my memory. How hard it is to not leave your sit at mid-point, get into your car and drive back to the throws of your own home. If only I could’ve done the same watching Reema Kagti’s mind-numbing Gold, this review would’ve come earlier and I would’ve had more time to contemplate my career options this Independence Day - after watching the god-awful Satyameva Jayate and now this.

Gold is a (very) fictional story about the 1948 Olympics. Tapan Das (Akshay Kumar with a Ranveer Singh hangover from Bajirao Mastani) is a drunkard whose sole purpose in life is to get Free India (underlined several times through dialogue, song and visuals - just in case it wasn’t enough) a gold at the Olympics. These dreams start formulating and then wither and then formulate and then wither and then- You get the drill. Because the story, written by Reema and Rajesh Devraj (who also wrote the screenplay) is so monotonous and prosaic, that after a point, its overload of patriotic fervour becomes something both the audience and its actors can’t digest too well.

Reema, who has directed unconventional films like Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd, where a couple turned to be secret superheroes and Talaash which was one of India’s only riveting thrillers, seems to be underwhelmed by the dreariness of Gold, that her own film under-utilises her talents to revel in these seemingly impossible worlds. It doesn’t help that she has to balance Akshay Kumar 2.0’s ‘desh bhakt’ vibe. Kumar, here, obviously trying to appeal to wider parts of the country - therefore, armed with a thick Bengali accent with overuse of words like ‘machi’ and ‘dada’, ruins the streaks of excitement running awry in the screenplay.

Tapan is a singularly uninteresting character. There could be theses written about him and the writers’ unwillingness to explore his habits. So, in two of the film’s many song sequences, he’s drunk. But these aren’t seen as anything but lapses in judgement, and the easiness of the screenplay easily glosses over the shortcomings of its central character. Luckily, there are others to admire - especially Amit Sadh as Raghubir Pratap Singh and Sunny Kaushal as the trigger-happy Himmat. There’s a sweet but forgettable track that runs continuously throughout the film where Himmat flirts constantly with the village belle.

The textures of Gold are like that of gossamer - it’s delicate, light and insubstantial. It never truly answers the questions that it puts out there and Reema ends up highlighting the wrong values in the film. A classic example is the national anthem that plays in the all too familiar climax of the film.

The half-and-hour long climax is enjoyable but it’s derailed by a Sherlockian moment involving Akshay and his wife, played by a screechy Mouni Roy whose only brief seems to be pouting. The same can be said for Gold. It’s weighed down by star’s heavy persona. I figured at many points in Gold, especially during a stint involving a Buddhist temple, that I was just watching a DVD Special deleted scene reel of Padman, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Chak De! India and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag.

But Gold is even worse than those films, because it had potential. Its trailer was bold and straight to the point. An example to support this is the delicately handled way of portraying Pakistan and India. Vineet Kumar Singh playing Imtiaz Shah gets this responsibility, and Reema skilfully steers the narrative clear from any of those ugly nationalist tropes that overpopulate far too many Indian (and especially Independence Day) films. There are parts of Gold that shine, in spite of its stereotypically offensive leading man.

Akshay has strokes to him, but even an actor like him can’t match up to the freshness of Amit Sadh’s bruised overachiever, Vineet Kumar Singh’s troubled patriot and Sunny Kaushal’s insecure lover, whose personal life intertwines with his professional one far too often. If Gold told the story of these men, I would have happily watched it. But they are all on the bench (pun intended) for too long, because its star just won’t pass the puck back to them.

So it’s inevitable that in the climax, they shine and Akshay’s pompous patriot sort of blurs into the background. But honestly, who cares? Writing about this film is like writing a review on Chak De! Bhaag Padman Bhaag: Ek Prem Katha. There was a promo of Gold that was refreshingly blunt involving a national anthem and ‘God Save The Queen’. It was refreshingly aggressive. Sadly, too much of that fire is put out by the patriotic sanskari Akshay. He's this film's unwanted gold man that floods the film with so much saffron, it's hard to see the rest of it's (quite frankly) far more interesting characters. It’s sad that he wastes a perfectly fine film. I’m going with 2 stars out of 5 for Gold.