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.

There’s absolutely no dearth of glossiness in the Milan Luthria directorial but then, there’s nothing else noteworthy in the film.

Baadshaho has too many ordinarily written characters jostling for whistle-worthy one-liners for 136-minutes. Eventually they run short of the steam and Baadshaho becomes a rehashed ‘90s story with some gloss and a lot of disappointment.

The action drama definitely has an interesting premise, but execution of the plot turns out to be the big hurdle.

Things get truly down and dirty towards the end. Which is to say the concluding 20 minutes of Baadshaho are so hazy and dusty, I found myself mentally vacuum cleaning the screen.

I wish to do the same to the memory of this movie.

One is sure that there will be takers for this piece of cinematic tripe, but the audience deserves better. There can be no two ways about that.

The climax is the weakest portion of the whole film. An open ending for a heist film is just weird. Unless you are a huge Ajay Devgn fan, you can skip this one.

Considering that the film has been marketed as an ‘Ajay Devgn- Emraan Hashmi’ starrer (the duo whose camaraderie meant fireworks on the silver screen), Baadshaho will have viewers watching it purely for the same, with an expectations of being treated with the duo’s one liners. The film, which is expected to do good business during the weekend because of the aforementioned factors, will really have to prove itself in the acid test during the week which follows.

The nonstop action is a distraction for a lack of narrative. Luthria’s great truck robbery is a thriller without thrills.

The thing is there doesn’t seem to be a single tangible plot point that seems to make sense in the entire scheme of things. The protagonist’s manipulations seem contrived and superfluous. And despite, the dialoguebaazi and the Bollywood masala, the end product is bland and completely forgettable.

BAADSHAHO (meaning Emperor/King in Hindi) may not be the promised ‘King’ size action drama but we hope the chautha (read fourth) collaboration of Milan Luthria and Ajay Devgn turns out to be the last disappointment from Milan Luthria who has churned out entertainment, entertainment and entertainment starting from KACHCHE DHAAGE, TAXI NO. 9211, ONCE UPON A TIME IN MUMBAAI & DIRTY PICTURE. We hope Milan Luthria starts entertaining us DOBAARA (again) in near future.

Far from an exciting film that would have me glued to my seat, this one made me look for the nearest exit to run. Instead of Baadshaho, one could well call it ‘Bhaag jao’.

The screenplay of Baadshaho is unduly non-linear and includes indulgent scenes like one of police torture. Baadshaho’s finale unfolds in a sandstorm and is the one scene that is visually arresting, though the story loses itself somewhere within the vortex.

The story of Baadshaho is that of the heist in the desert, where everyone double-crosses each other and by the end you wish they were all dead in the cross-firing.

Overall, the film is an opportunity lost, despite Ajay Devgn’s aura, Emraan Hashmi’s charisma and Ileana D’Cruz’s great performance, it’s a botched up job at best.

So pretentious and hammy are the actors it would be an insult to good taste to call them actors

Overall, the film is an opportunity lost, despite Ajay Devgn’s aura, Emraan Hashmi’s charisma and Ileana D’Cruz’s great performance, it’s a botched up job at best.

High on machoism and low on logic or reason, Baadshaho unfortunately remains a BAD SHOW.