Brothers: Lacks the punch

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sidharth Malhotra, Jacqueline Fernandez, Jackie Shroff
Rated: 5/10
 
Hollywood action with Bollywood emotions seldom go well and Brothers too falls into this big trap. Bhai meets chhota bhai in a league-style made-for-TV boxing contest and the punches just stop keep coming. A dead maa comes between them, a loser-killer-alcoholic father watches from the sidelines and a bevy of emotions flow out of the tight gloves instead of the punch the audience waits for.
 
The good thing about the film is that the fights, which are the mainstay of the film, come in a taut grip, leaving no breathing space for you to wonder about the viability of all this intensity. The bad thing is that there is too much intensity and too less fight left in Akshay Kumar once he meets his younger, seething brother in the ring. 
 
Based on the Hollywood boxing thriller Warrior, the film is a virtually a cut-to-cut of the English version with Nick Nolte being replaced by Jackie Shroff who plays the father. Shroff has done a good job as the repentant alcoholic and inadvertent killer of his wife but the film is a neither here nor there take on a dysfunctional family which has been long estranged.
 
Like in the original, Akshay Kumar, the elder of the brothers, is a teacher who is pushed into the ring to pay for the medical bills of his ailing daughter. He sports a much-tattooed body and goes through the role without his usual humour and swagger. He struggles with his punches due to age and disuse but is a veteran with strategy. His brother, played impeccably by Sidharth Malhotra, is a seething mess who channelises his anger and sense of betrayal (he is the son of Shroff’s mistress) to meet and defeat Akshay.In the middle of all this brother situation, there is also a contest which gets dispensed rather fast. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, August 16, 2015

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