bhola movie review rating

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After getting out of prison with the desire to meet his daughter, Bholaa's plans are interrupted by a well-orchestrated drug bust. After getting out of prison with the desire to meet his daughter, Bholaa's plans are interrupted by a well-orchestrated drug bust. After getting out of prison with the desire to meet his daughter, Bholaa's plans are interrupted by a well-orchestrated drug bust.

• Lokesh Kanagaraj
• Ankush Singh
• Aamil Keeyan Khan
• Abhishek Bachchan
• 225 User reviews
• 22 Critic reviews
• 1 nomination

• SP Diana Joseph

• Chomu Singh

• Constable Angad Yadav

• IG Jayant Malik

• Devraj Subramaniam

• Special Appearance in song 'Paan Dukaniya'

• Rajesh Doshi

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia The film was earlier to be directed by Dharmendra Sharma. Ajay Devgn stepped in as director after receiving appreciation for his direction in Runway 34.
• Connections Remake of Kaithi (2019)
• Soundtracks Nazar Lag Jayegi Music by Ravi Basrur Lyrics by Irshad Kamil Vocals by Javed Ali

User reviews 225

• Mar 31, 2023
• How long is Bholaa? Powered by Alexa
• March 30, 2023 (India)
• Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
• Ajay Devgn Ffilms
• Dream Warrior Pictures
• Reliance Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• ₹500,000,000 (estimated)

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 24 minutes

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Bholaa Reviews

Trishul in hand, his forehead smeared in sacred ash, Ajay Devgn looks menacing in Bholaa, but otherwise struggles to convey the mythic qualities of his character.

Full Review | Sep 12, 2023

So overwhelming is the film’s commitment to be fan service that the urgency embedded in the premise gets diluted swiftly and then all at once.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2023

To be clear, Bholaa isn’t a good film. But when the movie stops in its tracks (quite literally, as it turns out) and unleashes an action sequence, it’s undeniably glorious.

Full Review | Jun 3, 2023

The screenplay (there are a number of writing credits) is confusing and chaotic with choppy timelines.

Full Review | Jun 1, 2023

All you have at the end of Bholaa is an audience that’s bored and, thanks to the film’s terrible sound design, hard of hearing.

Full Review | Apr 3, 2023

Instead of a taut thriller, we get a listless action ballad that manages to invisibilise Tabu.

Bholaa packs in quite a punch with his strength, grit and charisma.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 3, 2023

Ajay Devgn delivers a no-holds-barred, bang-for-your-buck actioner.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 3, 2023

Bholaa is Kaithi on steroids.

Full Review | Mar 31, 2023

Bholaa takes all the worst elements of bloated action flicks and puts them into this overly long, messy, and idiotic film. The police in this movie are so stupid, they leave their police station unlocked and unstaffed while prisoners are inside.

Full Review | Mar 30, 2023

Ajay Devgn’s remake of the Tamil hit retains the original’s life or death urgency but revises its raw, massy momentum for a freakish tone that works wonders for Bholaa as long as it lasts.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 30, 2023

Diana is among a handful of pleasant surprises in the area of diversity and cultural heterogeneity that Bholaa throws up. Having done some things so right, (Ajay) Devgn and his crew get so much else so wrong that they completely wreck the film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 30, 2023

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Bholaa Review: Ajay Devgn shines bright in gripping remake of Kaithi

Bholaa, starring and directed by ajay devgn, is a well-packaged actioner that caters to the mass audience. the film features a good mix of elevation sequences and emotional scenes..

Listen to Story

• Bholaa is directed by Ajay Devgn.
• It is a remake of Karthi’s Kaithi.
• Bholaa features Ajay Devgn and Tabu in the lead.

Cast & Crew

Release Date: 30 Mar, 2023

Bholaa, this week’s only major Hindi release, is a well-executed actioner that hits the right notes because of Ajay Devgn’s intense performance and grand vision.

The movie, a remake of Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Tamil blockbuster Kaithi, revolves around an ex-convict who is roped by IPS Diana Joseph (Tabu) to carry out a task for cops during a major crisis. He reluctantly agrees to assist them after she promises to help him meet his daughter, who is in an orphanage.

The protagonist soon finds himself in the middle of a war between the police and a drug trafficking mafia. The rest of the narrative revolves around his attempts at fighting off menacing foes to unite with his child.

Bholaa stays faithful to Kaithi as far as the core storyline is concerned. The difference between these films, however, lies in the execution. Lokesh Kanagaraj took his time to build Kaithi's world. Moreover, its action scenes felt realistic.

Ajay Devgn, by contrast, treats Bholaa as a star vehicle. Each scene builds an aura around the lead character. This sets the stage for several whistle-worthy moments. Moreover, the action scenes feel grand and stylish. The decision to cast Tabu in the role originally played by Narain too proves to be a smart one as it changes the dynamics at play.

Tabu’s sequences with the Shivaay actor too are a highlight of Bholaa. The ace performers complement each other quite well. In a touching scene, they talk about their sad pasts.

The track involving Devgn and his reel daughter adds a touch of tenderness to the inherently violent and dark film.

A crucial sequence set in a police station too works reasonably well and gives us a proper look at the menacing Nithari (Vineet Kumar)

The action scenes are Bholaa’s backbone. They do a good job of taking the narrative forward. The Paan Dukaniya number too has been integrated into the plot quite intelligently.

On the flip side, the flashback portions fail to add much to Bholaa. They feel rushed and predictable. This is quite unfortunate as they had the potential to add another layer to the film. Similarly, a few characters feel half-baked as they don’t get enough scope. The makers could also have tried to examine Tabu’s tragic backstory.

Ajay Devgn’s performance is the heart and soul of Bholaa. He excels in the action scenes, the way he had in the Singham series. The actor is equally good in the emotional scenes as he uses his eyes to express the character’s anguish. Watch out for his heartwrenching expression in a scene where he hears his daughter’s voice for the first time.

Tabu is good in a role that requires her to be tough and vulnerable in equal measure. She also makes a decent impact in a couple of action scenes.

Deepak Dobriyal shines in some of Bholaa’s most unnerving scenes. He, however, deserved a meatier role.

Vineet is at his wildest best in a disturbing scene where threatens to eliminate a policeman. He too deserved more screen time.

Sanjay Mishra proves to be the surprise package of Bholaa. The actor, who has often been burdened with one-dimensional comedy roles, received praise for his work in Vadh. This too is a fine outing for him. The actor delivers a natural and subdued performance. This makes it easier for one to relate to his character,

The rest of the cast serves its purpose.

Bholaa features dialogues such as ‘pandav bhi paanch the’ and ‘shakal dekh kar chargsheet banane lagi hai police’, which cater to the masses. The music, sadly, is not up to the mark. None of the songs, barring the soulful Nazar Lag Jayegi, make any impact. This is quite surprising given the fact that the tunes are composed by Ravi Basur, who rose to fame with his work in KGF.

To conclude, Bholaa is a treat for Ajay Devgn’s fans. It has everything, right from action scenes to punch dialogues, that one would expect from a big-screen spectacle meant for the mass audience.

We are going with 3 stars out of 5 for Bholaa. Published By: Grace Cyril Published On: Mar 30, 2023 --- ENDS --- ALSO READ | After Drishyam 2, will Ajay Devgn spread magic on screens with Bholaa? Trade experts talk

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Bholaa movie review: Ajay Devgn delivers no-holds-barred, bang-for-your-buck actioner

Bholaa movie review: ajay devgn-tabu's all-out action film is not for the faint-hearted but it is bang for your buck..

Action junkies, rejoice. ‘Bholaa’, in which Ajay Devgn does double duty as the eponymous lead actor and director, is the kind of all-out, no-holds-barred, high-octane actioner we haven’t seen in Bollywood in a long time.

Here’s what we get in the film, which runs through the course of a night. A massive drug bust. A vicious mobster (Deepak Dobriyal) leading an army of goons laden with impressive fire power. A police station under attack, with only an elderly custodian (Sanjay Mishra) in charge. A bunch of cops hanging on to their lives by a thread. An ex-convict (Ajay Devgn) heading out to meet his ten year old daughter whom he has never seen. And an injured cop (Tabu) corralling the convict into a rescue mission with a hapless fellow (Amir Khan) riding along, strictly to provide the laughs.

The biggest problem Bollywood has faced with this genre has been the inability to keep everything else in the film subservient to the action: bunging in song and dance and other irrelevant details, causes things to come to a standstill. Here Devgn, who now seems to have settled into his dual role, having had considerable practice (his last was ‘Runway 34’), makes sure, for the most part, that the set-pieces keep coming. And he keeps slaying, single-handedly keeping the monsters at bay.

And that’s got to do with ‘Bholaa’ being an official remake of ‘Kaithi’, Lokesh Kanagaraj’s 2019 blockbuster starring Karthi. The film introduced us to elements that make up the director’s universe, which melds action and emotion, splitting the screen between charismatic good guys and even more charismatic bad guys. In Kanagaraj’s last outing ‘Vikram’, the powerhouse ensemble which included Kamal Haasan , Fahad Faasil, Vijay Sethupathi, was trumped by the climactic glimpse of Suriya, who plays A Very Bad Guy.

The plotline of ‘Bholaa’ is nearly the same as Kaithi, with a few additions and tweaks. The biggest is to change the injured male cop into a female, and that’s a smart move. Tabu takes on the part with great gusto, making an effective dent in this all-male universe, nailing the power that a cop yields yet showing a softer human side. Without her, the film wouldn’t have been as watchable. And that goes for two other actors here, Dobriyal and Rao: the former, nearly unrecognisable as the manic-murderous hood, is scarily good; the latter plays bad well, too.

The trouble with keeping this kind of action sustainable over two hours forty minutes is evident every time the film goes off the main track. A flashback featuring Bholaa’s past, which includes a romance (Amala Paul), slows things down, as do the numerous instances when his distraught daughter is shown. Also, because this is a Devgn enterprise, the hero has to have enough time to flex solo. Unlike Karthi, whose ‘aam aadmi’ feels like one of us, Devgn’s Bholaa is mythologised as an indestructible superhero. The challenge of making each set-piece different is clear when, for the nth time, Bholaa is alone, on the road, facing a swarm of killers. And it all starts looking the same; the greed to extend action sequences never works out well.

Fortunately, there’s enough going on to keep everything going, as Shiv bhakt Bholaa, aided by holy ‘vibhooti’, his valiant cop companion pointedly named Diana, and a brave informer called Aijaz, makes sure that he is the last man standing. Again, fortunately, we aren’t left too much time to dwell on the power-sharing in the trinity– obviously, our Bholaa has pole position– as the plot gets back to its relentless cracking of bones, showering of blood, skewering of bodies, and parts thereof.

For the faint-hearted? No way. Bang-for-the-buck? Oh yes.

Bholaa movie cast: Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Deepak Dobriyal, Sanjay Mishra, Gajraj Rao, Vineet Kumar, Kiran Kumar, Makarand Deshpande, Amir Khan, Amala Paul Bholaa movie director: Ajay Devgn Bholaa movie rating: 3 stars

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Bholaa Movie Review: Ajay Devgn, Tabu Excel In Action Extravaganza Despite Weak Script

Updated Mar 30, 2023, 10:11 IST

Bholaa movie review: Ajay Devgn, Tabu film is an excellent action-entertainer

• Bholaa Movie Director: Ajay Devgn
• Bholaa Movie Actors: Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Deepak Dobriyal, Sanjay Mishra
• Bholaa Movie Rating: 3.5/5

Bholaa: The Premise

Bholaa: a review, bholaa: acting, bholaa: in conclusion.

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Bholaa Movie Review: Ajay Devgn's BHOLAA is a massappealing film with scale, grandeur, breathtaking action.

Bholaa is a mass-appealing film with scale, grandeur, breathtaking action., bholaa review {3.5/5} & review rating.

BHOLAA is the story of one crazy night involving drugs, gangsters and a father dying to meet his daughter. ACP Diana ( Tabu ) fights a gang of thieves and confiscates 900 kgs of drugs from them, worth Rs. 1,000 crores. She hides the drugs in the basement of the sprawling Lalganj Police Station. At night, she attends the retirement party of I G Jayant Malik (Kiran Kumar). In a strange turn of events, all the 50 cops at the party faint one by one after drinking the spiked drink. Diana, who was injured, didn’t consume alcohol and she’s the only one on her feet. Her undercover cop Bhoora (Arpit Ranka) informs her that Ashwathama aka Ashu ( Deepak Dobriyal ), whose drugs she has confiscated, is determined to finish off the cops. He’s also all set to take back his drugs consignment. Diana has only one choice – ask Bholaa ( Ajay Devgn ) to help her ferry the unconscious cops to the hospital before they die. Bholaa has just got released from jail after 10 years. He is all set to go to an orphanage to meet his daughter Jyoti (Hirva Trivedi) whom he has never seen before. Diana, however, spoils his plan as she asks him for help. Bholaa agrees when she promises to secure Jyoti’s future in return for his services. The truck journey begins. Sadly, Ashu and his gang put several roadblocks in the 80-kilometer-long journey. What happens next forms the rest of the film.

BHOLAA is the official remake of KAITHI [2019]. Lokesh Kanagaraj's story is promising and has all the trappings of a full-on commercial entertainer. Ankush Singh, Aamil Keeyan Khan, Sriidhar Rajyash Dubey and Sandeep Kewlani's screenplay could have been more impactful. A few scenes, however, are well thought of. Ankush Singh, Aamil Keeyan Khan, Sriidhar Rajyash Dubey and Sandeep Kewlani's dialogues are meant to induce claps and whistles.

Ajay Devgn's direction is praiseworthy. He has handled the grandeur well. A few action scenes will take your breath away. It’s also heartening to see that the focus is not just on him and the supporting characters also get a chance to shine. He has also put the effort in making the villains seem menacing while also providing them ample screentime to create an impact on the viewer.

On the flipside, the film is visually quite dark for the commercial audiences. The emotional angle is a bit weak and it hampers the impact to some extent. Also, the narrative involves Bholaa being confronted by various gangs. It leads to predictability as you know that once he finishes off a gang, he'll soon be attacked by the next.

Bholaa: Official Trailer | Ajay Devgn | Tabu

Speaking of performances, Ajay Devgn is in great form. He looks very dashing and scores in the action scenes. His entry is a bit late though. Tabu gives her best and her introduction scene is rocking. Amala Paul has a fine screen presence but is hardly there in the film. Deepak Dobriyal is quite nice as the hysterical antagonist. Vineet Kumar (Nithari) is passable. Gajraj Rao (Devraj) is disappointing as it’s not properly established who exactly he is. Sanjay Mishra (Angad Yadav) is likeable. Lokesh Mittal (Corrupt cop) leaves a mark while Arpit Ranka, Amir Khan (Kadchi), Chetan Sharma (Chashmish), Deepali Gautam (Naina) are decent. Kiran Kumar is fair. Raai Laxmi looks sizzling in the item song.

Ravi Basrur's music is alright. 'Nazar Lag Jayegi' is catchy. 'Aadha Main Aadhi Vo' fails to entice. 'Paan Dukaniya' is well choreographed. The title song is nicely tuned. Ravi Basrur's score is massy and enhances the impact.

Aseem Bajaj's cinematography is breathtaking. Ramazan Bulut and R P Yadav's action is one of the high points. A few shots, however, are too violent. Navin Shetty, Radhika Mehra and Divyak D’souza's costumes are realistic. NY VFXWaala's VFX is rich. Dharmendra Sharma's editing could have been sharper as the film is quite lengthy.

On the whole, BHOLAA is a mass-appealing film with scale, grandeur, breathtaking action, and Ajay Devgn and Tabu's mind-blowing performances as its USP.

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Bholaa Review: Slapdash Rehash That Rides Solely On Ajay Devgn's Star Power

Bholaa review: tabu, of course, makes the most of the footage that she gets but still has to settle for second-fiddle treatment..

Ajay Devgn in Bholaa . (courtesy: ajaydevgn )

Cast : Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Raai Laxmi, Amala Paul, Deepak Dobriyal, Sanjay Mishra

Directo r: Ajay Devgn

Rating : 2 stars (out of 5)

A remake that makes exceedingly heavy weather of an old formula. Bholaa , produced and directed by lead actor Ajay Devgn, is unlikely to have you shouting bumm bumm bhole in joy. The film is a bummer. Loud, prone to excess and wilting under its own weight, its creaks and croaks its way to a climax that issues a threat - there is more on the way.

Bholaa , official remake of the Tamil hit Kaithi (of which, too, there is a sequel in the works), sucks out whatever air there was in Lokesh Kanagaraj's film and delivers a stale, slapdash rehash that rides solely on Devgn's star power. He gives it his all, but that is hardly enough to paper over the massive creases.

The screenplay by a quartet of writers (Aamil Keeyan Khan, Ankush Singh, Sandeep Kewlani and Shriidhar Dubey) puts the actor front and centre. That is all there is to the film apart from the visual veneer that Aseem Bajaj's cinematography imparts to it.

Bholaa deviates from the Kaithi script in significant ways. But barring the replacement of a male Indian Police Service officer with a tough woman in uniform, the tweaks do not count for much. Worse, they damage the film's chances of being passed off as a middling thriller.

One key respect in which Bholaa differs from Kaithi is in the way the hero is projected. In the original screenplay, he was a tough guy who never lost his corporeal qualities. He felt hunger, was wracked by doubts and experienced physical pain while going about his job.

In Bholaa , the just-freed prisoner is sought to be raised to the level of an all-powerful deity - to the status of Shiva the Destroyer and the Protector, no less. He is a man of few words but when he speaks, he delivers stuffy homilies rather than take recourse to the believable language of a man desperate for a fresh shot at life.

The emotional quotient of the story - a convicted father who has never seen his daughter is granted a remission of his life sentence and is on his way to meet the girl who lives in a Lucknow orphanage - is severely undermined by the projection of Bholaa as an invincible larger-than-life figure endowed with the power to return at will from the jaws of death any number of times.

He is just the sort of superhuman that superintendent of police Diana Joseph (Tabu) is looking for as the force faces double trouble. One, nine hundred kilos of cocaine seized in a major drug bust and kept in a secret bunker is in danger of being taken back by a vicious gang led by a coke-snorting sadist Ashwathama alias Ashu (Deepak Dobriyal). He is the younger brother of an elusive drug kingpin (Vineet Kumar) nobody has ever spotted in public.

Two, 40 policemen, knocked out cold by alcohol spiked with Rohypnol, are being ferried to a medical facility 80 km away. The angry criminals are out to waylay the rundown lorry and kill the five cops who intercepted their truck and seized their contraband consignment. Diana enlists Bholaa's support to save the cocaine and the cops. The action unfolds in the course of one night that sees a series of explosive action set pieces on the road, in a forest and inside a police station.

In the police station, an ageing havildar, Angad Yadav (Sanjay Mishra), finds himself in the thick of the action. Stranded with three students who have been arrested for drunken behaviour and a girl who is love with one of the boys, the policeman is charged with keeping Ashu and his murderous men at bay until Diana, Bholaa and Kadchi, a biryani caterer roped in to guide the cops out of the woods.

With Bholaa firmly on her side, Diana has nothing to fear. The guy is more than a handful for the armies of menacing men deployed to stop him in his tracks. He can fight them off with his bare hands, cleavers and daggers with the same ease with which he wields a trishul and a rapid-firing multiple-barrel gun.

The trident, which had no place in Kaithi , is brought in for the purpose of endowing the hero with a divine aura that instantly dwarfs the bad guys. But no matter what he does to establish his insuperability, the dance of death that Bholaa unleashes across several action sequences is monotonous and laboured.

With Devgn towering over everything else (and that includes the screenplay) characters who mattered in Kaithi are reduced to complete nonentities. Among the worst sufferers are an undercover cop who infiltrates the gang of drug peddlers and a compromised police officer (Gajraj Rao), who strikes a deal with the drug dealers. They languish on the fringes of the plot.

No different is the fate of Kiran Kumar, playing an inspector-general of police whose retirement bash is where his subordinates consume the poisoned potion that leaves them sedated and dangling between life and death, and Makarand Deshpande in the guise of a jail inmate who tells everyone within earshot stories of Bholaa 's legendary exploits. He is no ordinary bloke, the raconteur insists. Jab yeh bhashm lagata hai pata nahin kitno ko bhashm kar deta hai (when he applies holy ash to his forehead there is no count of how many he sends to their doom).

The secondary and tertiary characters are given no space at all to develop because Bholaa , which is precisely the same length as Kaithi , is focussed squarely on ensuring that the lead actor does not cede any ground to the others in the cast. Tabu, of course, makes the most of the footage that she gets but still has to settle for second-fiddle treatment. Only two other actors are allowed their moments - Deepak Dobriyal (oozing menace) and Sanjay Mishra (exuding simmering doggedness).

Amala Paul, in a non-speaking part, makes a fleeting appearance in a flashback meant to explain why Bholaa 's life has turned out the way it has. It is a gratuitous addition that only slows down the film and does no justice to the actress.

Kaithi was a songless film with a near-perfect background score by Sam C.S., who factored sounds emanating from within the frames into the film's musical spine and created ample room for evocative variations in pitching and decibel levels to accentuate the action sequences.

Promoted Listen to the latest songs, only on JioSaavn.com

Bholaa has its share of songs, including an item number performed by Raai Laxmi. But the background music, obstreperous and overwrought, does not take a backseat. Composer Ravi Basrur gives Bholaa the KGF treatment and rustles up what amounts to an assault on the eardrums.

The relentless cacophony is, of course, of a piece with what Bholaa is out to achieve. It is a film that goes the whole nine yards and loses its way.

Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Raai Laxmi, Amala Paul, Deepak Dobriyal, Sanjay Mishra

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• What is the release date of 'Bholaa'? Release date of Ajay Devgn and Tabu starrer 'Bholaa' is 2023-03-30.
• Who are the actors in 'Bholaa'? 'Bholaa' star cast includes Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Amala Paul and Sanjay Mishra.
• Who is the director of 'Bholaa'? 'Bholaa' is directed by Ajay Devgn.
• Who is the producer of 'Bholaa'? 'Bholaa' is produced by Ajay Devgn.
• What is Genre of 'Bholaa'? 'Bholaa' belongs to 'Thriller,Action,Drama' genre.
• In Which Languages is 'Bholaa' releasing? 'Bholaa' is releasing in Hindi.

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Bholaa Movie Review: Ajay Devgn Retells Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Story In The Most Histrionic Way Possible

This is all about ajay devgn's grand vision for cinema, and he continues to hunt for that one perfect film - bholaa movie review out.

Star Cast: Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Deepak Dobriyal, Gajraj Rao, Sanjay Mishra, Vineet Kumar, Makarand Deshpande, Amir Khan

Director: Ajay Devgn

What’s Good: It’s Ajay Devgn’s bewildering passion for creating that one perfect actioner & this is a step in the right direction

What’s Bad: Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Kaithi ran, so Ajay Devgn’s Bholaa could walk!

Loo Break: Not at all in the first half & climax; you still have a choice!

Watch or Not?: Only if you have the appetite to digest a loud masala entertainer

Available On: Theatrical Release

Runtime: 144 Minutes

IPS Diana Joseph (Tabu), through an exhilarating truck chasing scene, manages to catch cocaine worth 1000s of crores which was being transported by Sikka Gang’s Nithari (Vineet Kumar) & his younger/crazier brother Ashwathama (Deepak Dobriyal). Ashwathama goes crazy as it’s not just the drugs captured by the police but also his brother. Diana escapes Ashwathama’s trap of getting intoxicated at a higher rank official’s retirement party. Still, many of her colleagues are drugged at the risk of losing a life if not treated in a couple of hours.

She takes up the task of transferring all the officers to a 3-hour far hospital along with Bholaa’s (Ajay Devgn) help because he’s the only one who can drive a truck. Also, Bholaa got arrested just for looking suspicious after he spent ten years in jail for the reasons only to be revealed in the film’s further parts (or when Lokesh Kanagaraj decides to write it). He, for his personal reasons, decides to help Diana cover the highway full of death traps trying to keep the officers alive and detained drugs safe.

Bholaa Movie Review: Script Analysis

Ajay Devgn retells Lokesh Kanagaraj’s story in the most histrionic way possible, absolutely nailing the ‘action’ bit of actioner but making an ‘err’ in attaining ‘er’ (entertainer) bit of the same. Following the template of keeping the crux the same and adding some unwanted clutter which was never required in the first place, Bholaa’s narrative relies extremely heavily on VFX-filled action sequences.

Totally not complaining about them, as the film’s action is its soul holding back your attention till the end. Be it the very John Wick -like ‘open contract’ against the protagonist action sequence or Ajay’s Bholaa thrashing the life of baddies using ‘Trishul’, when it roars, it roars ‘oh so good!’. It’s the additional love track, a love song and a long dramatic drag of the father-daughter sub-plot that holds Bholaa back. I still have a strong belief Ajay Devgn along with his trusted cinematographer Aseem Bajaj will one day make a film that will not only stun his fans but each and every cinema fan.

Bholaa Movie Review: Star Performance

Ajay Devgn’s Bholaa is a silent hero who doesn’t have some heroic one-liners to win toh over, and he instead follows his regular ‘mode of communication,’ i.e. his eyes to do the serious talking. This characteristic has been mastered by him not once but multiple times, and it’s the same level of swag here. Tabu, as always, is mind-blowing and inaugurates the warfare getting red-faced with a brilliantly choreographed action scene blasting a container filled with dust.

Deepak Dobriyal’s Ashwathama gets the quirks on point, and despite doing all the bats*it crazy things (like killing someone while dancing on an item track), he never gets too crazy to cringe you out. Gajraj Rao is almost unrecognisable with the kind of get-up he has and the accent he nails, and he gives his best. Sanjay Mishra’s role could’ve been meatier with funnier lines to be the comical relief this film needed. Though, the actor playing Kharchi (Amir Khan, as per Wiki) would surely make you chuckle amid all the chaos. Vineet Kumar as Nithari almost had me believe that it’s Piyush Mishra playing his character, and that’s the best compliment I could find for him.

Bholaa Movie Review: Direction, Music

Ajay Devgn, the director, will always have a fan in me. From his first film U, Me Aur Hum, I’ve always respected his vision for cinema which he only cemented with Shivaay and now Bholaa. He’s just one good script away from being a director to remember.

KGF fame Ravi Basrur scores the background score of the film, which goes over the board and loud, similar to what happened to him in the Yash-led franchise as well.

Bholaa Movie Review: The Last Word

All said and done, Bholaa is all about Ajay Devgn ‘s grand vision for cinema, and he continues to hunt for that one perfect film.

Three stars!

Bholaa Trailer

Bholaa releases on 30th March, 2023.

Share with us your experience of watching Bholaa.

For more recommendations, read our Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar Movie Review here.

Must Read:   Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway Movie Review: Rani Mukerji Is As Natural A Natural Can Get In Displaying The Pain Of A Helpless Mother!

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Bholaa review: Ajay Devgn brings some slick but mindless action in this 'dark' thriller

Bholaa movie review: ajay devgn directs and stars in this less than impressive kaithi remake high on vfx and adrenaline..

Remember the iconic scene from Ajay Devgn's debut Phool Aur Kaante (1991) when he did that iconic split on top of two bikes? Cut to 2023, bikes are back but instead of balancing on them, he is flipping them in the air, setting them on fire, beating bikers left, right and centre and serving some high-octane action. Bholaa is undoubtedly an exhilarating watch. Slick action with the hero single-handedly beating 100 bad guys, Bholaa is nothing short of a full-on mass entertainer that turns a theatre into stadium with the public cheering and clapping each time the hero shows a gravity-defying move. Is that all realistic? No. Do you enjoy watching it? It depends on whether you're a fan of well-choreographed stunts. (Also read: Maidaan teaser: Ajay Devgn 'Lassos' in the golden era of Indian football to big screen in impressive first look )

Bholaa will give you adrenaline rush, but if you also look for an equally meaningful story or at least a narrative that brings some value, Bholaa will disappoint you at many levels. A Hindi adaptation of Tamil film Kaithi (2019), Bholaa tries to recreate the same magic albeit with its share of flaws. And there are many! Once again wearing the director's hat, Ajay Devgn ensures he brings larger-than-life action on screen which is not seen before, or at least not on this level. But in the process, the story is so side-lined that you actually wait for something to make sense. After a point, it's literally a montage of one brilliant action sequence after the other, but the mindless stunts can impress you only till they last.

Bholaa chronicles the tale of a night when a just-released prisoner, ex-conman Devgn (Bholaa) is waiting to meet his daughter for the first time in 10 years. But his journey turns out to be a rather difficult course when IPS Diana Joseph (Tabu) asks him to drive a truck full of 40 unconscious police officers who fell prey to a conspiracy at a farewell party of a senior officer (Kiran Kumar in a cameo). Parallelly, there is a drug mafia being run by Sika Gang - Ashwathama aka Ashu (Deepak Dobriyal) and his elder brother Nithari, who would go to any extremes to get their cocaine back that Diana has seized and kept in a jail. They send out multiple gangs to kill the cops in the truck and capture Diana, but Bholaa turns into an undefeatable force and fights them all. That's basically the plot, which keeps you busy, if not hooked, for some 2.5 hours.

Amid all this, several questions remain unanswered and very little is shown, told or revealed about Bholaa's past. Who is Bholaa? How did he become this strong? Why was he sentenced in the first place? There's a blink-and-miss kind of love angle between Bholaa and Amala Paul, but that's about it. How that love blossoms and becomes the catalyst for a lot of things is never touched upon. That somehow put me off. Of course, the cliff-hanger in the climax gets you super curious and the film ends on a 'to be continued' note, but this is a bit much of a tease for audiences to wait for the truth to be revealed. Yes, it's like pulling off a Baahubali kind of craze and hype. Not sure if the sequel would come back with all the answers or would again focus on just the adrenaline factor.

Bholaa is so fast-paced that one actually needs time to sink in an action sequence unfold onscreen before the next one comes up. Here, an engaging screenplay by Aamil Keeyan Khan, Ankush Singh, Sandeep Kewlani and Shriidhar Dubey does the trick. The action scenes one after the other don't look like disjointed pieces of a puzzle but cleverly placed to keep up the excitement high. Lokesh Kanagaraj, who has also written the original, is strong with an intriguing plot, but if you haven't seen Kaithi, then Bholaa ends up looking like a cat-and-mouse-chase between this truck being driven on endless roads across the state, and criminals lurking every few kilometres only to be evaded by Bholaa's might. Aseem Bajaj's cinematography has a lot to do. Given that the film is entirely shot at night and is mostly dark, highlighting the imagery and graphics isn't an easy feat in this case, so it does get a bit messy there.

Devgn as the actor is in top form and when he rolls up his sleeves and perform stunts, you can expect the unexpected. I mean, come on, isn't it very 70s' to watch the hero beating 100 men and continue to stand up and fight with the same stamina every single time? Yes, he channelises his inner Shiva in the best possible way, but it's all far from reality. I wanted to see more of him talk and even the emotional bits which just come and go should have stayed for a bit longer. Tabu seems to be becoming a pro at playing a cop. After two parts of Drishyam, Kuttey and now Bholaa, she looks confident and convincing in uniform more than any other female actor. Though in Bholaa, we hardly see her in the police uniform as most of the time she is made to disappear as Devgn takes spotlight while fighting the bad guys. Dobriyal in a completely psychotic and menacing role is unbelievably brilliant. For once, I thought it was choreographer Terrence Lewis making his acting debut, but when you look closer to find Dobriyal, and he just bowls you over with his performance. Yadav ji (Sanjay Mishra) and corrupt home minister (Gajraj Rao) in lend able support to the story and impress with their acting chops.

The heavyweight dialogues in Bholaa are so passable that you wonder why were they there in the first place. Sample some of these: Bandook ki naukri ki hai, goli toh khani padegi. Hum dikhe hote toh tum nahi dikhte. Yeh dharti banjar hokar bhi budzil paida nahi karti. Ladaiyan honslon se jeeti jaati hain sankhya, bal aur hathiyaron se nahi. They sound so cliched and stylised that when characters actually say these onscreen, you just yawn and say, 'Ok, next, please!'

Bholaa can sure be touted to be that typical mass entertainer with action that is totally paisa vasool, but again, we need to see something beyond just the heroic deeds.

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Review: Bholaa Is Quite A Trip

The real scene stealer of Ajay-Tabu's Fury Road is Deepak 'Deadly' Dobriyal, applauds Sukanya Verma.

It's one of the oldest stories in the book.

Yet, things take an exciting turn when Lokesh Kanagaraj's clash of cops and crooks in Kaithi opts for a reversal of roles wherein the target of a manhunt is a policeman not a perpetrator.

Ajay Devgn's remake of the Tamil hit retains the original's life or death urgency, but revises its raw, massy momentum for a freakish tone that works wonders for Bholaa as long as it lasts.

Diving right into action like a high-octane game of need for speed, roles are laid out and roadblocks are set in motion.

Uttar Pradesh's lawless landscape replaces Tamil Nadu as backdrop and in place of a male officer, Tabu takes charge as the multitasking daredevil Diana, whose seizing of Rs 1,000 crore worth of cocaine has drawn the wrath of crime lords.

Compelled to make allies out of a convict (Devgn) and a caterer (a droll Amir Khan), she must ferry a lorry full of folks in desperate need of medical attention to its destination while dealing with a mountain of hurdles and moles on either side of law.

There's a serious shortage of police force, her injured arm's in a sling, her designated driver is in a hurry to reunite with a daughter he's never met, the police station she's coordinating with is defended by a lone elderly constable (Sanjay Mishra) and a handful of youngsters detained for roadside hijinks even as the demented junkie, Ashwatthama (Deepak Dobriyal) and his battalion of burly thugs breathe down her neck.

Nail-biting possibilities lie ahead but nothing her strong, silent accomplice cannot handle.

Going by the aggrandising claims of Makarand Deshpandey's awe-struck inmate, Devgn is a superhuman of sorts -- baahar se khamosh, andar se toofan -- and finds a way to squeeze his Shiva bhakti into the picture as usual (but it's the jabs on desh bhakti that hit an amusing chord).

Once he smears a fistful of ash on his forehead, he transforms into a weapon of mass destruction.

Devgn has participated in countless clobbering sessions to add any novelty.

Rather, it's the violence unleashed by his aggressors that lends the contest fire and fury, captured with furious imagination by Cinematographer Aseem Bajaj.

His sly touches are equally admirable, like, when the camera pans over a fancy chess board and its pawns during a conspiring phone call between Gajraj Rao's corrupt Narcotics Control Bureau agent and Ashwatthama.

Watching movies in 3D is never comfortable, but Bholaa 's galloping visuals and effects add to the immersive frenzy.

Well begun is half done.

Except Devgn’s fourth film as director falls short of cutting it and dumbs down its edgy masala for an exhausting exercise in excess.

A needless flashback dilutes whatever myth or mystery it builds around the titular character.

Bholaa becomes disappointingly generic when it panders to a preconceived audience, dishing out the obligatory heroics and predictable narrative -- Devgn will rise. Devgn will fight. Devgn will win.

There is not one subtle bone in Bholaa 's body whose hero wolfs down a plateful of chicken and then proceeds to burn all those calories by walloping every biker, body builder, gangster or hitman he encounters on Fury Road marked by traps and remote jungles, against Ravi Basrur's background score.

One half of this journey had all my attention.

Be it the Korean style rumble or masked punks of heartland propelling relentless action or the hand-to-hand combat at a deserted police station, I found Devgn's assured execution and Bholaa 's bizarre energy surprisingly fun.

Deepak Dobriyal is key to this response.

This is an inspired piece of casting.

If Bollywood's renewed love for bombastic dialogues and far-fetched scenarios also leads to the re-emergence of the flamboyant villain, I can live with it.

Bholaa goes wild around the kohl-eyed Dobriyal or is it the other way round?

Devgn taps a deadly side of this hugely talented actor. A picture of menace and mania, he completely disappears in the character.

My stomach was in knots even when I knew exactly what was coming. One extra star purely for his evil shenanigans.

It's a change of pace from Sanjay Mishra as well.

One is so used to seeing him in facetious fare, you half expect a goofball.

But the level of grace he brings in a short but significant role, juggling between naivete and sense of duty is telling of his calibre.

If only the movie wasn't preoccupied with body count of baddies, his arc would be a worthy parallel to Devgn and Tabu.

Bholaa leaves all the fieldwork to Devgn while Tabu brings in personality, pulling off lines like, ' Vardi bandook nahi bahaduri ke saath pehni jaati hai ', like a pro.

Given their onscreen history , the movie saves time on chemistry and solidarity.

A gentle moment shared between the duo as parents bonded by pain is enough to assert Tabu's confidence and Devgn's softness.

Unnecessary exposition revealing more loopholes than information, bombshells lacking a wow factor and an exhausting monotony of over-the-top onslaught after onslaught launching Bholaa in Rambo mode turns the third act into a full blown mess.

Until the going is good though, Bholaa is quite a trip.

A teasing touch at the end hints Devgn has another ace up his sleeve. Or another franchise like Golmaal, Singham and Drishyam .

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‘Bholaa’ Review: A Super-Boring Film Whose Plot Twist Involves Antibiotics and 40 Unconscious Cops

The Ajay Devgn-directed Bollywood film is innocent of even a hint of intelligence, wit, logic or originality

Ajay Devgn in a still from 'Bholaa.' Photo: Courtesy of Ajay Devgn Films

Cast : Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Deepak Dobriyal, Gajraj Rao, Sanjay Mishra, Vineet Kumar, Kiran Kumar, Makrand Deshpande

Direction : Ajay Devgn

Showing in theaters

Bholaa is a film innocent of even a hint of intelligence, wit, logic or originality. 

A Hindi remake of the 2019 Tamil film,  Kaithi  (Prisoner), Bholaa falls in that special category of exceptionally stupid films. Bholaa , is in fact so stupid that it keeps the most exciting thing about itself as a blink-and-miss reveal at the absolute end, promising after an excruciatingly boring 144 minutes, that the sequel will be interesting.

That’s a bit like getting invited to a dinner where last weekend’s dry, congealed leftovers are served. And just as we are making our escape, we are shown photos of the exciting dishes that will be served at the next dinner. It’s the classic trap of toxic relationships and we seem to be caught in one with Bollywood.

Bholaa , produced and directed by Ajay Devgn, opens in Uttar Pradesh with a hectic, urgent action sequence. As several police vans are chasing a truck, bullets are going  thain-thain  in all directions, our focus is on a female cop, SP Diana (Tabu). Even as cars are crashing and she’s taken a hit, Diana pulls off some super stunts and detains the truck and the men inside it. 

It’s a massive drug haul involving one Sikka Gang. Diana and her boss are pretty sure that they will try and take it back and free their men. So, the arrested men are locked up in the secure Lalgunj Thana and drugs are hidden in its basement.

All is well and the film could have ended here. But since Bholaa is an expensive enterprise in the service of keeping alive the stardom of Devgn, the plot must twist to bring him in. But not in a million years could I have imagined the items that demand his presence — antibiotics and 40 comatose cops. 

We meet Bholaa in a jail where he is reading the Bhagwat Gita. We don’t know who he is, but as Bholaa walks out of jail, we hear a mildly unhinged prisoner talk about him being a killing machine who may have some superpowers. 

Meanwhile, an entire party of cops — 40 of them, including the IG Police — are drugged and they all fall unconscious.

Diana, the only one standing, treats this incident with the calm of someone who has been dealing with this annual irritating affair for a while.

She loads them onto a truck but since her arm is in a cast, she requests Bholaa, who just happens to be there, to drive them to a hospital. He is reluctant, but after eating many large pieces of tandoori chicken, he agrees. 

But as they take off with one small man, Kadchi (Amir Khan), squished between them, the No. 2 of the Sikka Gang, Ashwathama aka Ashu (Deepak Dobriyal), announces to his resident lumpen elements: Whoever gets hold of the truck with the unconscious cops and Diana will get ₹10 crore. They all record this on their phones, and like good colony uncles, share the video on their many WhatsApp groups. 

Ashu himself sets off to secure the release of his bade bhaiyya , who is lodged in Lalgunj Thana which is being guarded by one aged cop — Angad Yadav (Sanjay Mishra) — and four bored youngsters.

Meanwhile, a little girl in an orphanage, Jyoti, is waiting with nervous excitement because she has been told that someone is coming to see her in the morning.

This needlessly convoluted story is made even more torturous by a large number of moles and their many phone calls. 

In fact, so disinterested is Bholaa in its own story and characters that though it wants us to believe that Diana and Ashu are smart, none realize who the mole is, even as the moles pretty much dance in front of them screaming, “ Main hoon mole, main hoon mole …”   

I watched Bholaa in 3D and apart from a few teeth and a bullet that came flying at me, the effect only enhanced my ordeal and headache.

The film is plotted like a video game where Bholaa is repeatedly confronted by all sorts of men and weapons, including a gang of burly men wearing baseball shorts, their bare torsos oiled and man-boobs proudly pert.

Some of these  dhishoom-dhishoom  scenes are so juvenile — like a fight scene where men are being slashed and killed but the song that plays in the background is “Aaj Phir Jeene Ki Tamanna Hai” — it would have made me laugh uncontrollably were the film not so damn dull and annoying.

Bholaa has a lot of Hindu religious iconography. Symbols and chanting are used to embellish Bholaa as the avatar of Hindu god Shivji, and all the bad guys are bearded.

There is a flashback to explain Bholaa and his past, but the film’s interest is really in his superpower that he carries in a small plastic pouch, similar to the cocaine pouch that Ashu carries and snorts from. 

Imagine Superman or Batman wearing a cross around their necks and every time they need to save the world or Gotham city, they rush to a church to gobble up a wafer dipped in wine to acquire superpowers. That’s how ludicrous Bholaa’s character and his superpower is.  

Action is Ajay Devgn’s thing. Always had been. And he can project rage, anger,  bachchu-tu-toh-gaya  emotions in a second. But so can those small action figures, with muscles and one set-for-life expression.

Devgn seems to believe that is enough and throughout the film, he keeps a quarter of his face hidden behind a hair flick and all we get is a frown, much like the one we’ve been seeing on a widely-used car sticker for years.

There’s a lot of CGI action in Bholaa and all of it is soporific except the one involving Deepak Dobariyal. With Tabu reduced to making and taking phone calls while going “aah-aah” as she clutches her bleeding shoulder, he is the only interesting thing in the film.

Do you recall what Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan said at the end of Pathaan ? Something to the effect that, “ Inse na ho payega. Hamein hi karna padena. Desh ka sawal hai, bhai .”

Well, it seems now they may have seen the rushes of  Bholaa  and were talking about Ajay Devgn, among others.

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Bholaa movie review: Ajay Devgn's Kaithi remake is slower and louder than the original

Bholaa has consciously corrected the marginalisation of women in Kaithi and made other interesting tweaks. Sadly, this is not enough to overshadow the noise, the gore and the laughable sight of a wild beast cowering in the presence of Ajay Devgn.

Cast: Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Deepak Dobriyal, Gajraj Rao, Sanjay Mishra, Amir Khan, Vineet Kumar, Cameo: Amala Paul

Director: Ajay Devgn

Language: Hindi

As the Hindi film industry has struggled with a bankruptcy of imagination during the pandemic, it has resorted to remaking southern Indian hits for salvation. Directors, writers and producers have messed up even on this front, by either mindlessly cloning the originals (e.g. Vikram Vedha ) or, what’s worse, diluting their politics for fear of angering the establishment (e.g. Milli ). One film stands out from this crowd as an intelligent adaptation, not a Xerox: Abhishek Pathak’s Drishyam 2 starring Ajay Devgn and Tabu. Since the new Hindi film in theatres this week – Bholaa , a revisitation of writer-director Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Tamil blockbuster Kaithi – stars and is directed by Devgn, it is natural to be hopeful. The happy news is that Devgn and the writers of the adapted screenplay (Ankush Singh, Aamil Keeyan Khan, Shriidhar Rajyash Dubey and Sandeep Kewlani) have indeed made some interesting changes in their version of Kaithi . The unfortunate news is that it’s just not enough.

The story remains the same, transposed to north India. In Bholaa , the UP Police capture a huge cache of cocaine and thus become the target of dangerous gangsters. Soon after, all the police personnel present at a party, except SP Diana Joseph (Tabu), consume alcohol. As the men are knocked out one by one, Diana realises their drinks contained a drug. She is injured from an encounter with criminals and therefore needs help to get her colleagues to a hospital in addition to protecting the distant police station where she had hidden the seized contraband. For this she turns to a recently released convict who is on the premises, the mysterious Bholaa (Ajay Devgn). He agrees, after some bullying and emotional blackmail, to drive a truck carrying the unconscious men through the night, navigated by a chap called Kadchi (Amir Khan).

All we know about Bholaa at that point is that the first thing he intended to do with his freedom was visit his little daughter who has been living in an orphanage. Diana and Bholaa’s truck is intercepted along the way by several raging outlaws who have been alerted by Ashwathama a.k.a. Ashu (Deepak Dobriyal), a leader of the gang whose cocaine was taken by the police.

The most noticeable revision wrought by Team Bholaa in their take on Kaithi is the inclusion of Diana. Kaithi was suspenseful when it was focused purely on the primary characters and their allies fighting off ruthless crooks, but it took the marginalisation of women to a shocking extreme by featuring not a single primary or even secondary female character in its storyline. Diana in that film was a man called Bejoy. By consciously correcting this aspect of the script, the writers of Bholaa reveal themselves to be more thoughtful than the entirety of the film might suggest. The fact that this woman has a Christian name, and her religious identity is normalised instead of being underlined, is also noteworthy in a Hindi film industry that has for long scored poorly in the matter of minority representation.

Bholaa comes in the post-2014 era when a steady stream of Hindi films have sought to villainise Muslims, while the Christian minority, largely ignored for decades by Hindi cinema after earlier decades of stereotyping, has been unexpectedly revived in a trickle of recent films, perhaps most prominently in the person of a terrorist (Jim from Pathaan ) and a sexually promiscuous blackmailer (Monica from Monica, O My Darling ). Diana is among a handful of pleasant surprises in the area of diversity and cultural heterogeneity that Bholaa throws up.

Having done some things so right, Devgn and his crew get so much else so wrong that they completely wreck the film.

Kaithi was OTT to the extent that commercial cinema, especially mainstream Indian cinema, tends to be when it serves up an omnipotent hero, but its main plot nevertheless stayed engaging till the end. Bholaa is so over-the-top, its volume so high and music so manipulative, that by the second half its loudness becomes unbearable. Kaithi ’s portrayal of the protagonist’s longing for his daughter was maudlin, Bholaa stretches the heartstrings to breaking point.

The death knell for this film’s appeal though is the slowing down of the pace in comparison with Kaithi , particularly in the first half, and the use of 3D, which is a distraction rather than elevating the experience. Even where the visuals are impressive, they are drowned out by the deafening, overwhelming sound post-interval.

Initially, Bholaa rolls along quite well as it establishes its characters. This is largely because of a high-adrenaline guns-and-speeding-vehicles sequence of the sort that is usually reserved for major male stars in India, this one toplined by Tabu looking so cool in action mode that my new fantasy is to see a gangsta drama in which she is part of a criminal squad comprising Taapsee Pannu and Deepika Padukone, led by Vidya Balan as their evil mastermind.

The space given to Tabu’s Diana in Bholaa is quickly offset though by the crude choreography during a song and dance segment in Ashu’s den in which a sparsely clad woman moves rhythmically with a lascivious partner. Please note that a certain kind of Indian film will still not show actual sex on screen, but has no qualms about persisting with what is called an “item number”, which, in the case of Paan dukaniya in Bholaa involves a woman inside a horizontally placed drum thrusting the lower half of her body in and out of the container, swinging herself back and forth as a lecherous Ashu holds her by the calf and creepily stares up her legs, his own body placed between them just so. It’s laughable and crass rolled in one.

This intrusion aside, the actual downhill slide in Bholaa begins later when a group of villains bar Diana and Bholaa’s road trip. One set of men in this horde wear only shorts on their muscular, oiled-up bodies, while the other is accompanied by a leopard that cowers and then flees at the sight of Bholaa. I am serious. To this film must go the credit of coming up with a scene that closely rivals Sunny Deol’s handpump-uprooting stunt in Gadar and Pakistan’s security forces running away on hearing him roar. Next in Bholaa , a snarling goonda is forced to give his shirt to Bholaa and he whimpers while covering his nipples in shame.

From here on, everything gradually becomes a blur. A lone policeman called Angad Yadav (Sanjay Mishra) and a group of students struggle to protect the police station that Diana is so desperate to reach, but their efforts do not generate the tension that Lokesh Kanagaraj built up in the same scenario in Kaithi . Ashu has a brother called Nithari whose name floats around like so many others whose significance I didn’t feel inclined to decipher. Among them is a Machiavellian background figure called Devraj Subramaniam played by Gajraj Rao doing his interpretation of a Tamilian accent that is, thankfully, not caricaturish as we have seen in Hindi films of an era gone by. Devraj and sundry antagonists wander in and out of the plot.

When Nithari is finally unveiled after much talk about how lethal he is, his personality turns out to be a whisper in comparison with the hype. This for me was Kaithi ’s undoing too, along with the hero’s background that was as much of a damp squib in the original as it is in Bholaa .

The hero’s name in this film is obviously an invocation of Bholenath, Lord Shiva, the most fascinating deity in the Hindu pantheon. There is no depth in the Shiva reference though, it is simply slapped on because because. Lest we miss the point, Bholaa repeatedly smears ash on his forehead, a giant statue of Shiva is visible for a considerable length of time near him, and in the film’s most gruesome scene, he takes up a trishul.

That was the last straw for me. I have a high tolerance level for violence on screen, but seeing men being impaled on or stabbed with a trident from all angles for endless minutes, and a shot of a man’s face being pierced with this weapon is more than I can take.

Kaithi had something to offer even a viewer who prefers noiseless, understated cinema, but Bholaa kills that potential by taking the pace of the Tamil film down by several notches and revving up the noise. I don’t have the heart to write off this team though. Not after the unanticipated pleasure of hearing the phrase Aaraaro aariraaro – so familiar from lullabies in southern India – woven into this soundtrack. It is rare for a Hindi film to acknowledge the existence of an India beyond the Hindi belt and Mumbai, or to make cultural references to other regions, unless it is to stereotype, sermonise or get a laugh. Clearly then, the people who created Bholaa are not an unthinking lot. The question is: what on earth were they thinking when they reduced their film to a ear-splitting, thundering mess?

Rating: 2 (out of 5 stars)  

This review was first published in March 2023 when Bholaa was released in theatres. The film is now on Amazon Prime Video.  

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

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