Because it’s the old masala entertainment genre, we sit back and enjoy a few familiar guilty pleasures — the item song (Sunny Leone shaking it), the ‘seeti-maar’ dialogues (the deep-seated misogyny in a few make you cringe, even as you hear, without a shred of surprise, bunches of young men guffawing), the cheerful absence of logic (what’s that), and coherent plot points.

Nawaz is fully immersed in his role; as is Goswami. The banter between Babu and Banke makes you smile. And then you are back to the film playing out the beats of the genre. It’s all there, but we’ve seen it all, or variations of it, before.

Sidharth Malhotra who helms this enterprise plays a good guy who can also be bad. Now while the handsome Sidharth is perfectly pitched as the ‘sundar’ and ‘susheel’ fella of the title, he isn’t quite as convincing in his ‘risky’ avatar.

Rajkummar Rao blows away the weaknesses of this film with his consummate act, playing the timid ‘chota shehari’ on the one hand, and the loud ‘rangbaaz’ on the other. He sweetens the pot, and makes up for the rest of it.

It’s fitting that Akshay Kumar has greenlit and played the lead in this film, which is more a primer of How To Break Social Taboos and Make Toilets rather than a powerful social drama. The moment a film succumbs to being the carrier of a Message as opposed to a message, it becomes burdened.

‘Sweet si, ‘sister-type’ Sejal aka Anushka Sharma and the ‘chalu, chalta-hua, cheap’ Harry aka Shah Rukh Khan are much too fraternal with each other. We do see that fire, but much too briefly.

Indu Sarkar is set during the Emergency, and shows us the horrific violation of freedom put into motion by then prime minister Indira Gandhi, aided and abetted by her younger son Sanjay.

Post-interval, the film’s funny bone gets lost. It becomes a long, maudlin harangue on family values and good sisters and brothers, while slipping in a few distasteful jokes about wives and women.

Given Onir’s experience in creating interesting characters grappling with the kind of personal demons not usually seen in Bollywood, especially in his last outing I Am, Shab should have been a far more accomplished film. All these are characters, fleshed properly, could have given us a film.

In the near-three hours of the run time of the film there’s everything else, with Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif chasing bent spies, arms dealers, and sundry other smaller fry, while, of course, saving the world but it forgets to give us a story.