Simmba Review - Bhai From Another Sigh.

Ranveer Singh made me do it. I thought that if I were to like his latest outing, with a director that seems like his soul sister, he would convert me to the cult of Rohit Shetty. Long story short - for a while it did, and then it didn’t. And then, I wanted to leave the theatre, suffocated by Shetty’s misguided notions of feminism, equality and protection. Essentially, in this masala entertainer, under the garb of a wafer-thin storyline that follows a rape, Shetty and his team say - a woman is safe in this country, if and when a towering Ranveer Singh, or in this case, Sangram Bhalerao, is there to protect her and become her bha

It’s honestly ironic that for the entire second half, as the script hams on about women empowerment, the actual ‘heroine’, Sara Ali Khan has a role about as substantial as the tiffin boxes she carries to the police station. In fact, in the final acts, Sara just stands in the background and nods her head obediently while Ranveer plays the avenging angel who’s grown a conscience. Sangram, known as Simmba, is a corrupt cop by nature. In fact, as he so memorably puts it - ‘Yeh kalyug hain. Yahan log sirph ek hi matlab ke liye jeete hain - apne matlab ke liye.’ Basically, he’s anti-Bajirao Singham, another one of Shetty’s titular cop characters.

The best part about Simmba is Ranveer. He’s charismatic, charming and truly funny - he elevates the lame dialogues by writer Farhad Samji with great comic timing and a brimming effervescence. With his towering physicality and that iconic moustache, Sangram, who’s recently been transferred to Miramar police station, wants all the money he can. Ranveer revels in playing this character. He’s so good, in fact, that you wonder why it’s taken 8 years for the superstar to combine his roguish charm and acting talent with the masala genre, headlined by Shetty himself.

It’s a perfect fit, and for the first half, Simmba flies. The film is gleefully silly, but it plays to its talents. Rohit has never been a director who induces particularly evolved emotions in his audiences, and Simmba is no different. Ranveer, from the get-go, is aided well by a plethora of supporting characters like Siddhartha Jadhav playing Santosh Tavde and Ashutosh Rana as Nityanand Mohile. Rohit sets the stage for conflicts, both within and outside the walls of Miramar. I’ve always sub-consciously loved Rohit’s gleefully energetic worlds, bereft of logic, of course. So, it’s no surprise that another guilty pleasure production house - Dharma Productions - has backed Simmba. Watch out for Karan Johar’s cameo, it just killed me. But, when Simmba, in the closing shots of the first half, starts to address the story it wants to, all hell breaks loose. Rohit loses his grip on the narrative and the language and decibel level of the film changes. Simmba turns into a dangerously plotted rape-revenge drama, the kind that worked in moderation in the 80s, but seems especially ill-timed today, with the millions of rape cases spewed in the press. Ranveer has a constant look of grim anger, because in the second half, Simmba becomes like Singham 3 - a sequel we never asked for.

Ironic, because Ajay Devgan’s show-stopping cameo is marked by a grand entry, that just falters when you realise what purpose he serves to the plot. Another reason Simmba fails to work is Sonu Sood as Durva Ranade, a goon who is in cahoots with Simmba, bribing him to turn the other cheek to some of his objectionable actions. You have to applaud Simmba and its director’s intentions - to use a mainstream lexicon to address violence against women. But the resolutions, especially when women sturdily tell Simmba to kill the rapists is immature and a crowd-pleasing solution to a problem that is plaguing our country today.

Based on the Telugu film, Temper (2016), Rohit forgets to change the language of the film in order to suit our audiences. It’s ironic, because Dharma did the same things just months ago, forgetting that Sairat (2016) and Dhadak (2018) catered to two very different types of audiences, therefore having varying ranges of emotional impact. Honestly, in the kindest way possible, the people making Simmba aren’t smart enough to combat these issues. With the combined IQ of Karan Johar and Rohit Shetty, the product is close to crashing, despite its leading man’s efforts to hold it steadily through everything.

He’s certainly not aided by his leading lady, who is given so little to do. Sara, who impressed me weeks ago in Kedarnath (2018), seems to have taken a step back. Shagun serves as nothing but comic relief to the story, and for the most part, she’s on the sidelines, cooking for her man. It’s a performance that just exists to serve no purpose to the story. Simmba brings up ugly memories of the past. I can’t recommend that you watch it. Even if we were to ignore the dangerous themes that it promotes, its plot is formulaic and ridden with cliches. The only reason you should watch it is a killer cameo by Devgan and another superstar.

Like Sangram Bhalerao so memorably put it - Bhau, je mala maahit naahi te sanga. Tell us something we don’t know.