No thrilling find in this raid

Raid

Hindi (U/A)

Cast: Ajay Devgn, Saurabh Shukla, Ileana D'Cruz

Director: Raj Kumar Gupta

Rating: **

He broods. He stares. He deadpans. He is Ajay Devgn, doing business as usual.

Here, he does it all through the supposedly longest ever income tax raid in the country, in 1981.

Devgn plays Patnaik, the honest, righteous, courageous (choose your superlative) income tax officer out to recover all the black money stashed away by wealthy defaulters. Even the prime minister (here, Indira Gandhi) can't stop this man from discharging his duty.

He is also a husband to die for. At work, he seeks motivation from dear wife's (Ileana D'Cruz) photo tucked inside his wallet. D'Cruz, by the way, is the only one who disrupts the raid, sauntering in with ill-timed songs.

To give credit where it's due, Raid has an engaging first half. Also, it's bold of director Raj Kumar Gupta to make a movie out of a single raid, in a limited environment with the same set of characters.

But the raid loses some grip as it progresses, blame it on loose editing. The face-off between Devgn and Saurabh Shukla (an absolute hoot as the corrupt, menacing politician) would have produced more sparks with a taut script.

What the raid yields is a bling-bling sight to behold. Currency notes, jewellery, gold biscuits - they fall off roofs, walls and cattle feed!

The heavy moralistic tone and lovey-dovey domestic affairs also dilute the proceedings. And when the pace drops, only Saurabh Shukla manages to pick up the threads.

Angel Rani