R... Rajkumar Review

One Line Review: The "height kam fight jyada" action-saga loses the steam midway and rajkumar turns into naachkumar.

Positive Points: Power-packed action sequences, Shahid Kapoor's dazzling dance moves, Delicious music.

Negative Points: Not-so-engaging direction, Poor screenplay, Dearth of fresh elements in the story.

Plot: Romeo Rajkumar (Shahid Kapoor) is a guy from Bhagalpur. He is a man with good heart, but has a small time crook image. This macho-lad calls himself as Rajkumar and desires to make it big in his life and arrives in Dhartipur. The ultimate aim of Romeo Rajkumar is to get assimilated in the gang of Shivraj Gurjar (Sonu Sood), a powerful local drug mafia and be the face of his gang. Dhartipur also has another similarly influential player in drug business called Manik Parmar (Ashish Vidyarthi). Parmar and Shivraj share a strong degree of enmity and they don't see eye to eye, being the competitors in the same business. By winning over the heart of Shivraj, Rajkumar finally joins his gang and becomes his right hand. Shivraj intends to use Rajkumar to eradicate Parmar and become the ultimate king of drugs business in his land.

Rajkumar goes on working for Shivraj and one day, he stumbles upon the charming Chanda (Sonakshi Sinha) and sees his life-partner in her. Rajkumar does not know that Chanda is the niece of the rival local biggie Parmar. Gradually, Chanda also starts loving Rajkumar, thereby beginning a lovey-dovey tale. On the other hand, Parmar gets weaken day by day at the hands of Shivraj, who continues to kill the powerful men of Parmar. To save the image, Parmar decides to join hands with Shivraj and declares his decision among the villagers. Shivraj greenlights Parmar's decision, the only condition being Parmar's niece Chanda will marry him. The world of lovebirds Rajkumar and Chanda, gets upside down, when they come to know about this. Though Shivraj possesses immense power, Rajkumar admits his love for Chanda in front of everyone in the village and openly challenges Shivraj, inviting the further hurdles for himself and Chanda.

Direction And Other Technical Aspects: The director Prabhu Deva has conceptualized an original narrative this time, unlike his earlier movies being remake of South Indian films. Agreed that 'R... Rajkumar' offered not a single pinch of novelty to the viewers, it contained the essential ingredients for making a film an authentic light-hearted masala entertainer. This out and out action-comedy-drama is loaded with a huge dose of "dhishum dhishum" done by our protagonist Shahid Kapoor to all ardent action lovers. However, sometimes over-the-top action sequences endow the feel of watching a Tollywood film to the viewers. After a certain point of time, it becomes hard to digest the lean Shahid alone performing "jabardast" hand to hand fight in one go with a big gang of goons looking stronger than him and armed with weapons. One more thing that did not go well is that Shahid Kapoor bounces back from about-to-die condition of him at the hands of Sonu Sood and stands straight to lock horns with Sonu for marrying with Sonakshi. The reason being if there would have been any other man in his place, he would have easily died after so much deep injuries.

The pairing of Shahid and Sonakshi does not go well, as Shahid looks lean and Sonakshi appears a bit chubby. Well, a comic punch between the lead actors from the film attests the statement better. The direction is average and the story becomes much predictable especially in the second half, leaving the action part as the sole soul of the film. The crunchy and quirky dialogues assist the film to sail considerably well. Sonakshi doing the fighting with some road-romeos, who harass the girls, is spectacular as well as Sonu Sood showing his comic side by doing weird dressing while playing a villain, bring some amount of laughter. The other factor to praise about is the slow motion action sequences captured by the lenses, increase the beauty of the scenes. The movie can be summed up as a package containing romance, action and comedy with a dash of spice generated by the brand new Shahid-Sonakshi jodi on the celluloid. In all, the film entertains one in bits and parts and loses the grip in the midway. Proving Rajkumar as the only hero in the story seems the eventual intention of the director. The director's other focus seems to be on the music and dance part in the film, as he makes his hero dance at his best by performing some engaging dance moves. The good background score makes the film win some brownie points.

Performance: The actor with chocolate boy onscreen image, Shahid Kapoor seems to have worked really hard to essay his role with utmost perfection. However, the not-so-engaging script does not provide justice to the talent of Shahid. Nevertheless, the wonder boy Shahid has again attested himself as one of the proficient dancers in the industry and talking about his action scenes, the macho-actor with rugged looks had given his best. Sonakshi Sinha looked good and played her part well, but somewhere it seems that the actress is still in her "Dabangg" zone and exudes similar expressions.

The muscle man Sonu Sood becomes the beef-cake by performing maar-dhaad with a touch of realism. The actor got to play a meatier role and he has grabbed it very well by playing a villain with a bit of comic side. Ashish Vidyarthi suits well as the hapless antagonist. Mukul Dev and Asrani lent a good support in their respective roles.

Music: Apart from action element, the music forms another soul of this flick. The music composer Pritam Chakraborty had very well composed the songs like "Saree ke fall sa", "Gandi Baat" and "Mat Maari" and are evidently delighting the youngsters to a great extent. The other prominent reason for watching these tracks is seeing Shahid Kapoor's brilliant dance moves. The track "Kaddu Katega" is watchable just for the sake of Sonu Sood grooving on its tunes. "Dhoka Dhadi" sounds soothing and is hummable.

Final Verdict: Albeit, this action-love-saga does not dish out anything new, the film is one-time watch for Shahid Kapoor's daredevil look and high-voltage action sequences. To conclude, the film contains a Prabhu Deva stamp on it, where the action seeks all your attention.