‘Bholaa’ Review: A Super-Boring Film Whose Plot Twist Involves Antibiotics and 40 Unconscious Cops

Bholaa

Cast: Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Deepak Dobriyal, Gajraj Rao, Sanjay Mishra, Vineet Kumar, Kiran Kumar, Makrand Deshpande

Direction: Ajay Devgn

Rating: *

Showing in theaters

Bholaa is a film innocent of even a hint of intelligence, wit, logic or originality. 

A Hindi remake of the 2019 Tamil film, Kaithi (Prisoner), Bholaa falls in that special category of exceptionally stupid films. Bholaa, is in fact so stupid that it keeps the most exciting thing about itself as a blink-and-miss reveal at the absolute end, promising after an excruciatingly boring 144 minutes, that the sequel will be interesting.

That’s a bit like getting invited to a dinner where last weekend’s dry, congealed leftovers are served. And just as we are making our escape, we are shown photos of the exciting dishes that will be served at the next dinner. It’s the classic trap of toxic relationships and we seem to be caught in one with Bollywood.

Bholaa, produced and directed by Ajay Devgn, opens in Uttar Pradesh with a hectic, urgent action sequence. As several police vans are chasing a truck, bullets are going thain-thain in all directions, our focus is on a female cop, SP Diana (Tabu). Even as cars are crashing and she’s taken a hit, Diana pulls off some super stunts and detains the truck and the men inside it. 

It’s a massive drug haul involving one Sikka Gang. Diana and her boss are pretty sure that they will try and take it back and free their men. So, the arrested men are locked up in the secure Lalgunj Thana and drugs are hidden in its basement.

All is well and the film could have ended here. But since Bholaa is an expensive enterprise in the service of keeping alive the stardom of Devgn, the plot must twist to bring him in. But not in a million years could I have imagined the items that demand his presence — antibiotics and 40 comatose cops. 

We meet Bholaa in a jail where he is reading the Bhagwat Gita. We don’t know who he is, but as Bholaa walks out of jail, we hear a mildly unhinged prisoner talk about him being a killing machine who may have some superpowers. 

Meanwhile, an entire party of cops — 40 of them, including the IG Police — are drugged and they all fall unconscious.

Diana, the only one standing, treats this incident with the calm of someone who has been dealing with this annual irritating affair for a while.

She loads them onto a truck but since her arm is in a cast, she requests Bholaa, who just happens to be there, to drive them to a hospital. He is reluctant, but after eating many large pieces of tandoori chicken, he agrees. 

But as they take off with one small man, Kadchi (Amir Khan), squished between them, the No. 2 of the Sikka Gang, Ashwathama aka Ashu (Deepak Dobriyal), announces to his resident lumpen elements: Whoever gets hold of the truck with the unconscious cops and Diana will get ₹10 crore. They all record this on their phones, and like good colony uncles, share the video on their many WhatsApp groups. 

Ashu himself sets off to secure the release of his bade bhaiyya, who is lodged in Lalgunj Thana which is being guarded by one aged cop — Angad Yadav (Sanjay Mishra) — and four bored youngsters.

Meanwhile, a little girl in an orphanage, Jyoti, is waiting with nervous excitement because she has been told that someone is coming to see her in the morning.

This needlessly convoluted story is made even more torturous by a large number of moles and their many phone calls. 

In fact, so disinterested is Bholaa in its own story and characters that though it wants us to believe that Diana and Ashu are smart, none realize who the mole is, even as the moles pretty much dance in front of them screaming, “Main hoon mole, main hoon mole…”   

I watched Bholaa in 3D and apart from a few teeth and a bullet that came flying at me, the effect only enhanced my ordeal and headache.

The film is plotted like a video game where Bholaa is repeatedly confronted by all sorts of men and weapons, including a gang of burly men wearing baseball shorts, their bare torsos oiled and man-boobs proudly pert.

Some of these dhishoom-dhishoom scenes are so juvenile — like a fight scene where men are being slashed and killed but the song that plays in the background is “Aaj Phir Jeene Ki Tamanna Hai” — it would have made me laugh uncontrollably were the film not so damn dull and annoying.

Bholaa has a lot of Hindu religious iconography. Symbols and chanting are used to embellish Bholaa as the avatar of Hindu god Shivji, and all the bad guys are bearded.

There is a flashback to explain Bholaa and his past, but the film’s interest is really in his superpower that he carries in a small plastic pouch, similar to the cocaine pouch that Ashu carries and snorts from. 

Imagine Superman or Batman wearing a cross around their necks and every time they need to save the world or Gotham city, they rush to a church to gobble up a wafer dipped in wine to acquire superpowers. That’s how ludicrous Bholaa’s character and his superpower is.  

Action is Ajay Devgn’s thing. Always had been. And he can project rage, anger, bachchu-tu-toh-gaya emotions in a second. But so can those small action figures, with muscles and one set-for-life expression.

Devgn seems to believe that is enough and throughout the film, he keeps a quarter of his face hidden behind a hair flick and all we get is a frown, much like the one we’ve been seeing on a widely-used car sticker for years.

There’s a lot of CGI action in Bholaa and all of it is soporific except the one involving Deepak Dobariyal. With Tabu reduced to making and taking phone calls while going “aah-aah” as she clutches her bleeding shoulder, he is the only interesting thing in the film.

Do you recall what Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan said at the end of Pathaan? Something to the effect that, “Inse na ho payega. Hamein hi karna padena. Desh ka sawal hai, bhai.”

Well, it seems now they may have seen the rushes of Bholaa and were talking about Ajay Devgn, among others.