Dhamaka Movie Review: This Kartik Aaryan’s Explosion Is Scattered All Over The Place!
Dhamaka Movie Review Rating: 2.5 out of 5.0 stars2.5
Star Cast: Kartik Aaryan, Amruta Shubhash, Mrunal Thakur, Vikas Kumar, Vishwajeet Pradhan
Director: Ram Madhvani
Dhamaka Movie Review Out! (Photo Credit: Still From Movie)
What’s Good: Kartik Aaryan, Music & you’ll get them both in the promos which are way superior to the final product (Jokes apart, Kartik is good and so is the music)
What’s Bad: A director like Ram Madhvani falling for his own trap overlooking way too many p(l)otholes
Loo Break: You’ll either watch it at a stretch or be done with it within the first hour
Watch or Not?: Give it a try for Kartik Aaryan without expecting anything extraordinary from the story
Available On: Netflix
Runtime: 104 minutes
User Rating:
We’ve our mentally messed-up Radio Jockey in Arjun Pathak (Kartik Aaryan) who just gets introduced after a song which will laugh-out-loud at how single you’re. The song is Kasoor and the reason why it makes you feel so single it’s a flashback montage of Arjun living his happy life with his wife Saumya (Mrunal Thakur). He’s now sitting in his office with divorce papers in hand and gets a call giving tips about a bomb blast on Bandra Worli Sea Link.
He ignores the call only to see a portion of Mumbai’s 1600-crore ‘Golden Gate’ bridge getting erupted through a blast. Arjun gets the call again which he then uses to get back his spot at prime time television but little does he know what’s in the store for him. No, seriously, little does he know because there’s very little in the store for him.
Dhamaka Movie Review Out! (Photo Credit: Still From Movie)
Dhamaka Movie Review: Script Analysis
The major problem Dhamaka faces is the template it chooses to execute. Forget international, Bollywood has given us toll many movies following a similar route, some brilliant (A Wednesday, Table No. 21), some good to just about decent (Madaari, Knock Out), and some bleh (The Killer). Yes, all of these aren’t exactly similar to each other but the major sub-plot of these films is about the antagonist forcing the protagonist/s to do certain things at the gunpoint.
Now that we’re clear how they are related to each other, if you see the good ones from the above list they all had one thing in common. Movies like A Wednesday & Table No 21 had a perfect balance of bad and good in them. Dhamaka misses that, the ‘bad’ is so average that no matter how impeccable the ‘good’ is, it just stays unexploded throughout. Haven’t seen the original (The Terror Live) so let’s not draw any parallels. Tweaked by Ram Madhvani & Puneet Sharma, the story leans on Kartik Aaryan’s side way too much than it should.
This does good for the actor and not-so-good for the film because of the lack of connect with the antagonist’s reasons for torturing Kartik. Makers cut corners by showcasing the bomb blast through either television or Aaryan’s office window, and this surely weakened the overall impact. Manu Anand’s cinematography required to majorly capture the lead in just one room. It’s not easy to not be repetitive while using a single location, and Anand through some slow-mo, BGM heavy sequences arrests your attention only to be broken by the weaker side of the film.
Dhamaka Movie Review: Star Performance
Kartik Aaryan visibly puts everything he has into this one and anyone would’ve given the director is coming straight out of intriguingly interesting projects like Neerja & Aarya. Though the news reporter’s shade of his character comes across as overworked at times, he balances it with its dramatic nuances.
With the lines & range he got to portray, there was a chance of overdoing at every next scene but thankfully he keeps the control avoiding crossing the line.
Amruta Shubhash plays the role of Kartik’s immediate cruel trp-minded boss in the film & she’s just about okay. It’s majorly because of the paper-thin arc her character gets. There’s no development at her end making her sound monotonous throughout the film.
Mrunal Thakur’s special appearance adds the necessary drama but the execution is poor. Was a love story amid all the thrills required? Not necessary but if you’re adding it, you’ve to stay honest to it even if it takes 10-15 minutes of your runtime. The emotional connection would’ve been way stronger if the makers could’ve taken just a little more than the song to develop the romance between the leads.
Dhamaka Movie Review Out! (Photo Credit: Still From Movie)
Dhamaka Movie Review: Direction, Music
I’ve been a fan of Ram Madhvani & this project had all my attention since its announcement because I loved Neerja. This one fails at the scriptwriting level itself as Madhvani fails to bring in someone like Jim Sarbh to balance the other side of the film. He puts all the white, black & grey on Kartik’s character making it exhausting by the end. The move of showcasing 90% of the bridge-blast portions on TV wasn’t the right one as it doesn’t really evoke any palpitations on seeing it.
There are two songs in the film & both click really well but have one contrasting difference (apart from the genre of course). Prateek Kuhad’s Kasoor is in the start to lay out the lead’s chemistry and it works. But, Amit Trivedi’s Khoya Paya, despite being a chilling track, leaves no mark because it’s in the climax where everything is already scattered. It’s just another thing that despite being good doesn’t connect because of the script.
Dhamaka Movie Review: The Last Word
All said and done, if it was released 10-15 years ago, it would’ve been an acceptable film but not in the world where better films than this in a similar category already exists.
Two and a half stars!
Dhamaka Trailer
Dhamaka releases on 19th November, 2021.
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