Aamir all the way, but not much else

Dhoom 3 
Hindi (U/A)  ¬¬¬
Cast: Aamir Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Uday Chopra, Katrina Kaif, Jackie Shroff, Siddharth Nigam
Director: Vijay Krishna Acharya

Sanjay Gadvi’s directorial venture – the flick that kicked off the Dhoom franchise – happened to be the first film of the “bikes and babes” genre in India. 

The next instalment was equally bike-y and babe-y, with a good dollop of heisting thrown in. However, with Vijay Krishna Acharya taking over the reins, it was only fair that the overall tone of the franchise change.

Change it does, thanks almost solely to Aamir Khan, of whom the audience get more than they bargained for. And that may be one of the only reasons to watch a film that fails to rise above a certain point, despite showing a lot of potential. 

The plot is a revenge saga instead of merely focusing on heists. It all begins with an ageing magician losing his “dream”, the Great Indian Circus, to a Chicago bank on whose loan he had defaulted. He commits suicide, and his son vows to destroy the bank. Grown up, the son hits branches of the bank, taking a lot of money, destroying or giving away the rest, and leaving behind not-so-cryptic clues.

Dhoom regulars Jay Dixit and Ali are called in only incidentally, because someone in the local police department attended a criminal conference with him.

There are a lot of things that could have been done differently, or better, but Acharya, whose sole directorial outing before this was a dud called Tashan, manages to keep the audience interested. Look past Aamir Khan hamming it up just a little more than expected, gaping plot holes, outdated magic, an insufferable Uday Chopra, an uninspired Abhishesk Bachchan and a no-acting only-dancing Katrina Kaif, and you get a film that keeps you interested till the end. 

This is an out-and-out Aamir Khan film, and he lets it known from the first scene to the last. It’s a pity the film does not live up to the standards of his earlier critical successes, thanks to the flawed message it delivers, and script and screenplay that could have gone in a hundred different and much better directions. Another potential hit, but film buffs will be disappointed.