Review: Raees and fall of the Don – Rediff.com movies
Raees has a very bold Shah Rukh Khan who has stepped out of his comfort zone of crinkly eyes and dimpled cheek, says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
it would be so wonderful to get inside the head of shah rukh khan and find out his thought processes behind choosing a role or movie.
I would certainly like to know why you would choose a movie like, say, dilwale, at a time when your peers are doing much more interesting work. and after seeing rahul dholakia’s raees, i’m very, very curious as to what made the director’s narration agree to make the film.
was it the fact that the film transported you back to a time you left behind when you took a train from new delhi to mumbai 25 years ago?
Or was it the challenge of only playing the seventh Muslim character in his filmography of almost 100 people? by the way, raees alam is the most “muslim” role the khan has played so far, as well as being the first non-khan name out of these seven.
raees alam inhabits the world of mohallas, moharram and maatham, something actor shah rukh khan may have done a long time ago, but never ever on screen.
Or was it the idea to play a character based on someone you had read a lot about in your youth, one of the early “do-gooder” Muslim teachers, especially after idealizing the gang leader in movies like don and sir 2?
Or did the idea of playing a brave smuggler who pays the ultimate price grab the actor?
It was the charm of working with a director who has made offbeat, realistic films like parzania, occupying a world srk has rarely ventured into, especially after no-brainers like the said dilwale and happy new year? a world as far removed from that of shah rukh khan as the mannat of the mandwa?
Dholakia’s choice of khan to star in his film is easier to understand, but that is the director’s only success.
Raees, the film shows that he lacks the necessary skills to preside over the wedding of its realism and the mass appeal/commercialism of srk.
The story is as simple as it is now well known. The rise of Raees the smuggler is not to everyone’s liking, who try to prevent his success and finally manage to catch him. nawazuddin siddiqui is the majmudar policeman who shoots you with the concentration and patience of a sniper.
as rizvan khan in my name is khan, the ammi of raees alam is a kind soul who gets it into his head that no trade is below one, and no faith is above one’s trade.
his warning, which stands as long as he doesn’t harm anyone, immediately gives you a peek at the final reel.
shah rukh khan will never again play an outright bad guy, although he has shown us in the distant past that he can. that’s not the film legacy he wants to leave behind, so raees alam is a nice guy who sells alcohol in a state where it’s prohibited. not alcohol, but imfl, because you can’t be killed by drinking it, you just become an alcoholic, you see.
pull out the songs, even sunny leone’s laila or laila, the workings of the dhanda, the reckoning, and what you get is the verbal jousting between shah rukh khan and nawazuddin siddiqui. of which there are not enough.
when he tells the majmudar policeman that he was just doing his ‘dhanda’, nawazuddin politely replies that what he is doing is a crime and raees khan looks at him in disbelief. obviously it never crossed his mind that what is against the law is a crime; in his mind everything was well rationalized, he was just fulfilling a need and making money doing it, so what’s up?
after all, vyapar is on the air in gujarat, so the police will arrest him too, he asks innocently.
the gujarat that raees alam occupies, presumably in the 1980s, is an innocent place. for authenticity, raees rides a bsa motorcycle, there’s communal friendship, there’s mr india’s kaate nahi katte yeh din yeh raat playing on valve radio (whose song also introduces us to attractive pakistani actress mahira khan), shown to the people watching a black and white TV (although the rich had color TVs then).
Speaking of which, there are so many things in the movie that stand out like a bottle of johnny walker at a prayer session.
despite all the ode to realism, raees alam does a clever sequence of parkour, an exercise regimen that was taking shape at the time of the film; the villains’ bullets miss him as he always hits the target, even once in mid-flight; his newborn son disappears from the frame for so long that one wonders what the point of showing him was; raees alam becomes mla but that’s it, nothing else is shown of his political or legislative work, nor of him in the state assembly.
or take even something as basic as showing raees alam’s hairless torso at a time when chest hair showed machismo.
A little more baniye ka dimaag and less miyabhai ki daring wouldn’t have hurt the movie either.
I could go on, but you realize this is a star vehicle for both the lead actor and the director eager to level up a bit. And since the script and narration don’t grab you, you’re happy to let Shah Rukh Khan’s famous star power do the trick.
but this is not the romantic fame of crinkled eyes and dimpled cheeks. what you see is a brave man who wears kajal on his eyes and is the favorite of his mohalla, a duh who does not understand when his wife insinuates that she is pregnant, a defenseless vulnerable man who does not hesitate to curl up and cry, a man irrational man who almost raised his hand to his wife in a fit of rage. and a violent and cold-blooded killer if he believes he has been wronged.
As the title character, with the rest of the cast playing capable supporting roles, Shah Rukh Khan commands virtually every frame.
It’s a story whose outcome is clear almost as soon as the movie is shot, and yet if you sit through the movie it’s only to see the superstar play a character he’s never played. so fatally flawed that even the redeeming features aren’t enough.
He sure is a very bold shah rukh khan who has stepped out of his comfort zone. Will the audience do it too?
rediff punctuation:
