Race 3: A crawl to colossal damage

Race 3

Hindi (U/A)

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Salman Khan, Bobby Deol, Jacqueline Fernandez, Daisy Shah

Director: Remo D’Souza

Rating: 1 (out of 5 stars)

On your marks, get set, phut!

Race 3 begins with a flat tyre, but is bent on a Grand Prix. It doesn’t help either that all the men in the franchise are pyromaniacs on the loose, setting on fire everything from pens to swanky cars.

The women, though, seem to have mistaken the movie for a fitness challenge. So, there’s a parallel who-stretches-it-better going on, with Jacqueline Fernandez perched atop a pole and Daisy Shah slithering down a fabric in aerial acrobatics. And who wins? Salman Khan!

That’s a no-brainer because our man Sikander is an expert at stealing everybody's and his cousin’s thunder. So, however high and hard the ladies kick and punch, Salman holds the sole rights to catcalls.

Matching him step to step, bare-chest to bare-chest is Bobby Deol. And surprise, Deol betters Salman’s art of shedding shirts. He boasts a better bod too.

But the man with the maximum movie is Anil Kapoor. As the rich and ruthless arms dealer, Kapoor is the only one who makes sense in this turkey. Saqib Saleem (the hotheaded prodigal son) seems to have just added “bro” to his glossary and uses it with the glee of a nursery child.

Now, the plot. That needs a magnifying glass of high power. Like its predecessors, Race 3 also has a bunch of cheats in the family and nobody knows who is crossing who. Then comes a heist where the gang tries to steal a hard disk from a bank locker that contains sexcapades of politicians. The result: silly songs and sillier stunts (wingsuits, anyone?).

Director Remo D’Souza spends a bomb on blowing up cars (and all other modes of transport), laying bare a skeleton of a story. And it takes Race 3 almost three hours to crawl to its climax. A wreck of a movie.