Film Review | Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara!
A ham of a don, his lifeless protg and a brain-dead heroine Milan Luthria's new film is a disaster
A triangle with no points
The Dawood prototype in Milan Luthria’s new film, mindlessly titled Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara!, is a raunchy playboy who transforms into a wrathful and obsessive lover. Not a diabolical underworld don by miles. There is something incongruous about a Dawood remotely akin to Rahul in Darr. That Akshay Kumar plays the role with a lot of relish does not really help. The ersatz, 1970s-style dialogue-baazi, many notches worse than those in Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai (2010), combined with Kumar’s hammy, monotone performance—his tricks for the role include craning his neck to the left and a swagger that works only in slow motion—add to the banal claptrap that it is.
Shoaib (Kumar) returns to Mumbai from Dubai—after realizing that a rival, Rawal (Mahesh Manjrekar) is trying to kill him. He hoodwinks the Mumbai police immediately upon entry and gets to the job. Twelve years ago, Shoaib had hired two teenaged boys, Aslam (Imran Khan) and his friend Dedh Taang (Pitobash Tripathy), who are now petty robbers on local trains. The don summons the boys and entrusts Aslam with the job of killing Rawal.
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