Dhoom 3: Aamir's Dhoom vroom bloom show

Dhoom 3

Starring: Aamir Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Uday Chopra, Katrina Kaif

Rated: 8/10

You thought Dhoom3 would have a hard time competing with its predecessors; you thought there could not be anyone more dishy than Aryan of Dhoom 2; you thought the bikes couldn’t get slicker than the ones vrooming onto the big screen in Dhoom; you even thought that Uday Chopra would change, that Abhishek Bachchan would work a wee bit on his trademark swagger and that this YRF franchise, too, could not be anything more than bikes, bods and babes swishing from Mumbai to London and to Brazil.

Well, you thought wrong, entirely wrong. Because, the latest edition of this young speed wonder comes in a whole new avataar, this time all the way from a carefully filmed Chicago.

If the original Dhoom was a tentative experiment in importing Hollywood’s heist thrills to Bollywood, mounted on the muscle bubbling anatomy of John Abraham and his swish bike gang, Dhoom2 was self-assured and stylish cinema meant for the young and restless, showcased on the Greek God looks of Hrithik Roshan.

Dhoom3 is both of these and much more put together in a carefully crafted film where brawn gets clothed in delicate emotion, crime acquires a tantalising motive and those dizzying bikes speed up on Gen-X technology that makes them ride, fly and swim, all in one go, with applause-triggering elan. Though Dhoom has always been about serenading villainy in a modern kind of way, the journey it has taken from John Abraham to Hrithik Roshan to, now, Aamir Khan, is stunning — much like its cinematography, its pace and, of course, its breath-taking bike-stunts.

But all this and much more gets completely edged out in Dhoom3 with the absolutely stunning and all-pervasive presence of Aamir Khan. You can call him the superstar villain, the ultimate hero of this show. His mind-boggling histrionics, his towering screen presence and his unmatchable skills at holding the three-hour film tightly to himself, that too by the scruff of its collar, tell you how Dhoom3 is only, and only, about this perfectionist actor.

While John Abraham made an impact as a small-time thief in Mumbai scripting his own challenges quotient and then committing suicide rather than being nabbed, and Hrithik Roshan wowed his audiences as the ultimate escape artist with a celestial male oomph, Aamir Khan relentlessly dwarfs every bit of public scepticism around his pithy height — and he uses his searing eyes, his Adonis abs and his starched ears to do so to maximum impact.

If it had not been Aamir in this one, Dhoom3 would have been pretty close to being tagged run-of-the-mill, so common have CGIs become in Bollywood. In fact, you can indulgently accuse Aamir of bringing in a monopoly regime. He is breath-taking, with or without the twist in the tale. Indeed, he has worked hard — for two years we are told — on chiselling his body so relentlessly and meticulously that it emerges much like his BMW bike — chic, powerful and in top gear. All else, even the acrobatic and sexy Katrina Kaif, the same old Abhishek Bachchan and the incorrigible Uday Chopra are side-dishes to Aamir’s solo show.

If Dhoom was a surprise success of 2004 and Dhoom2 a perfect sequel going on to become the highest grosser that year (2006), Dhoom3 is giant leap of faith in building up a successful franchise.

You don’t go looking for a meaningful story in a bikes and bodies show. You go looking for style, you go looking for speed, you go looking for audacity and you go looking for paisa vasool cinema. With Aamir at helm, technology in tow and stunning cinematography to prop up the effort, Dhoom 3 delivers all this in style. For those who still have theirs eyebrows raised, well, they deserve R...Rajkumar! 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 22 December, 2013