At the beginning of Dhoom:3, a circus owner claims to present before his audience a spectacle never seen before. I’m all ready to be impressed. The show commences and I wait. I keep waiting. And then the show ends with me wondering what was I supposed to be impressed by. That scene, in a nutshell, is the whole Dhoom:3 experience.
Not that I was expecting anything pathbreaking from a Dhoom film. Some hunks, some femme fatales, some cool bike chases, and lots of fun is all one expects from this franchise. So Jai (Abhishek Bachchan) and Ali (Uday Chopra) return as the tough cops. The new antagonist Sahir (Aamir Khan) is a magician cum trapeze artist who robs banks to avenge the death of his father (Jackie Shroff). The femme fatale here is Aaliya (Katrina Kaif), Sahir’s trapeze partner. Add to that some cool foreign locales, spectacular sets, novel bike stunts, and one has the ingredients all ready for a perfect thriller. And yet, the end result is as fresh as yesterday’s newspaper.
Dhoom:3 gives frequent hints of a hidden promise but it never materialises. A small example – Ali brags about Jai’s bravery to a horde of goons and after such a build-up, Jai makes his entry breaking a brick wall driving an autorickshaw. Aamir is shown to rob many banks right under the noses of the cops but how he managed to do that is never explained. The only times the film comes alive is during the chase sequences and Katrina’s graceful dances. Most of these are in the first half. However, the film completely nosedives in the second half with a turn towards emotional drama which is not just poorly scripted but also badly acted.
Abhishek, Uday and Katrina are not known for their acting chops anyway, but the actor who disappoints the most is Aamir. His performance is so laboured that at times it is painful to watch. That he has neither the style nor the sex appeal of his predecessors doesn’t help matters. The rest of the cast goes about doing its job mechanically, with the only bright spot being Katrina with her graceful moves and Barbie-doll loveliness. Unfortunately, she gets to speak for about five minutes in the whole film.
The earlier Dhoom films may have put style over substance but they were still a lot of fun. This one has neither style nor substance, and is too tedious to be any fun. At a runtime of almost three hours, it is two hours too long.
