This loud movie predictably offers kindergarten representations of Indian corruption, and even the execution is awful. Buildings that resemble Jenga towers collapse in a camera-trembling earthquake, while tired combat scenes show Kumar barely touching his opponents.

Don’t take your children to this film, lest they watch Sholay later and exclaim that Amjad Khan shamelessly apes the original Gabbar played by Akshay Kumar.

I’m usually a sucker for stories about frustrated artists. But this one is presented in a dated and garish manner that makes you wonder if the filmmakers think this is actually a groundbreaking concept.

Our filmmakers have milked the cross-border eternal romance angle dry. It’s hard to tell if it’s Indo-Pak tension that provides fodder for these done-to-death stories, or the stories that actually create tension between the nations.

…the digs become so obvious, and the intention to frustrate viewers so desperate, that the message of Indo-Pak brotherhood and procrastinating politicians is lost in an absurd haze of theatricality.

Mr. X is a tremendously unimaginative film about a wronged ATT Cop who uses his accidentally acquired invisibility to exact revenge on his colleagues. More than Emraan Hashmi’s hollow man Raghu, the script remains invisible with greater authenticity.

Though it combines my favourite cinematic devices—senior citizen, kids, road trip-I’m quite sure most kind-hearted adults would first dump the runaways at the nearest police station. But here, hitchhiking is eerily simple, and any stranger displaying concern comes across as a responsible pedophile. Performances largely involve walking and using different modes of transport.

With the showboating Broken Horses, he joins the growing herd of Indian cinema’s finest filmmakers who surprisingly find more merit in adapting and remaking old literary and film works. Perhaps it’s time to stop romanticizing the past, and create a more original legacy-original stories, new visions, enduring cinematic memories that can be frequented with admiration by future generations. Instead of recreating Parinda, perhaps it is time for someone to create a new Parinda.

Ek Paheli Leela is just an insincere, lavish and titillating compilation of every item song ever made.

Invariably, Hindi cinema’s depiction of bar dancers is straightforward: trash-talking roadies by night, virginal white-salwaar angels by day. There is such a vast difference between these two avatars that it becomes more difficult to digest than Puneet Issar playing a respected lawyer.

Perhaps it is the filmmakers’ intention to irritate viewers with irritable characters and existential rants, but it soon becomes an irritating watch. Pankaj Awasthi’s cool fusion score makes their personal journey worth hearing, but there is little else that makes it worth watching.