Saaho is overly long and low on content.

Common sense is the most limited of all resources. Clearly, because if you were to add up the budgets that it took to blow up cars, trucks and tanks in this week’s Saaho, you could probably fund 8-10 mid-budget films, those that exist in the Aanand L. Rai-Rajkummar Rao universe. One might argue that you’d miss the gloss and glamour that a reported 350 crores can bring, but in all honesty, given this film’s story, it feels like a fair trade-off.

Saaho, directed by Sujeeth, is one of the most infuriating, and mind-numbingly dull films, that it’s not only shocking that it ever got made, but that it got the budget it did. It centres around the fictional city of Waaji, which is described as ‘Hindustan se door, crime ke paas’. Think Dubai meets every Disney animated sci-fi film ever. We get these gorgeous buildings with this swerving designs. At one point, I even started thinking how the stunning the skyline of a city like Waaji would be.

The film follows this crime syndicate grappling with an immense loss, while everybody tries to wrest power so that they can be the boss and control what seems to be a global monopoly. From Mandira Bedi as Kalki, a legal advisor always armed with earthy sarees and a perplexed look, to Arun Vijay as Vishwank, an illegitimate son who’s come to stake his claim, we get these baddies who constantly smoke cigars while lounging around in bubble baths.

At one point, Chunky Pandey as the villainous yet grossly inept Devraj, who speaks as humanly slow as possible, is getting his feet soaked in rose petal-infused water while the building he’s in slowly collapses. In another, he feeds his father miso soup, and then proceeding to choke him. It’s incredibly bizarre, and absolutely nutty.

There’s also Prabhas, high off the success of 2017’s mammoth Bahubali 2: The Conclusion, who plays Ashok Chakravarty, an undercover agent, assigned to lead a taskforce who are carrying out a manhunt for the mysterious Shadow. On his team is Amritha Nair, played by Shraddha Kapoor. Amrita always has this perfectly in-place hair and just the right amount of highlight on. She always looks ready for her close-up, and after an interesting subplot about sexism in the workplace is conveniently relegated to the background, she becomes the damsel in distress who needs saving.

Take Prabhas’ entry. He walks into this chaul where this man in a ridiculous hairdo is about to be hung. Ashok must reach the top floor before the man dies. So we watch as Prabhas kicks ass, floor by floor. In one room, he encounters a python, in another a panther. In soft focus, no less, we see an ostrich being taken around (that looks left-over from Alauddin Khilji’s opening scene in Padmaavat). Who signed off on this?

The action, mounted at an enormous scale, which is supposed to be the main draw for a film like this is inert. For the most part, it seems ripped off from Mission Impossible, Fast & Furious and even Mr. & Mrs. Smith - which plays in the background while Ashok and Amritha dodge bullets in this hotel room. Over 3 hours, under the pre-text of a ‘twisty and dark story’, Sujeeth takes us from one place to another, only to make us realise that we’ve been in the wrong place the whole time.

The problem is that these twists are less Sriram Raghavan, more Abbas-Mastan in their nature. In this one weird scene, Mandira Bedi is in a car in Mumbai traffic. Goons encircle her car and start shooting. She’s scared so she ducks, but the surprisingly calm driver chuckles and remarks that the car is bulletproof. So, we get this three minute long montage where Mandira Bedi is frantically using her inhaler while her driver is sitting calmly, as huge machine guns try to penetrate this fortress of a car.

How or why someone signed off on a scene or a film like this, baffles me, honestly. Because the problem is that Saaho could’ve worked if it was just content being a mediocre thriller. But Sujeeth is determined to turn it into this hyper-intellectual beast, that in the last fourty-five minutes, the action completely derails and what is mean to be a crescendo ends up falling completely flat. I just watched Saaho and I remember very little of it, mainly because it beat me into submission with its incredible length.

It’s also not helpful that there are four songs - Tanishk Bagchi’s horrid Psycho Saiyyan (which becomes Kaiko Saiyyan as a result of the Mental-Judgemental Hai Kya feud), Badshah’s abysmal Bad Boy, with Jacqueline Fernandez gyrating on a tank which crushes two cars as Prabhas smokes a cigarette. There’s also Guru Randhawa’s odd Enni Soni, and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s Baby Won’t You Tell Me, which remains visually stunning but oddly plastic.

Saaho is a film that will weigh you down. You’ll lose track of the multiple storylines, plot twists and characters in the first fourty-five minutes. And there’s a good 130 to go, from there on out.

In one scene, Neil Nitin Mukesh says, kahaani bahut lambi hai kaha se shuru karoon? My sentiments exactly.