 and Chote Miyan (Tiger Shroff), elite soldiers, race against time to stop a masked villain's AI plot against India.){kind=link}
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Cast/ Actors: Akshay Kumar as Firoz, Tiger Shroff as Rakesh, Prithviraj Sukumaran as Kabir, Manushi Chhillar as Captain Misha, Alaya F as IT Specialist Pam, Sonakshi Sinha as Dr. Priya Dixit, Ronit Bose Roy as Colonel Adil Shekhar Azad, Manish Chaudhari as Karan Shergill.
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Director: Ali Abbas Zafar
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Release Date: April 11, 2024
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Available On: Theatrical Release (likely to be released on Netflix OTT Platform)
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Released/ Available In Languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam & Kannada
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Runtime: 164 Minutes
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Critic Review:
Director Ali Abbas Zafar who writes the screenplay (along with Aditya Basu), strangely takes credit for “Characters created by Ali Abbas Zafar”. Are characters not a part of story and screenplay writing?
Since he takes full credit for it, here are Ali’s characters. In the diversity-conscious world of Hindi cinema, if there is a Captain Rakesh (Tiger Shroff), his teammate must be Captain Firoz (Akshay Shroff), nicknamed Rocky and Freddie. Fearless officers who defy orders, whose “ego is bigger than our talent”, have been court martialled and thrown out of the army. Oh, wow, what characterisation. We’ve never seen such heroes before.
Rocky and Freddie report to a senior called Adil Shekhar Azad (Ronit Roy) and the evil force out to destroy Bharat is Kabir (Prithviraj Sukumaran), a name commonly chosen to avoid identification of any particular community.
Three women have names like Dr Priya Dixit (Sonakshi Sinha), Captain Misha (Manushi Chillar), both from the Indian armed forces and clumsy IT genius Dr Bawa (Alaya F). But there’s zero romance and glamour.
If only Ali Abbas Zafar (no, his name is not Amar Akbar Anthony) had lavished the same attention on balance in the content, the fun Amitabh Bachchan-Govinda starrer of 1998 would’ve got an entertaining sequel in 2024. However, apart from blowing up the producer’s money on intermittently blowing up a variety of vehicles and places (Afghanistan, London included), the story doesn’t move beyond two Indian army officers out to get an enemy who wants to destroy Hindustan.
All the fun gags seen in the promo reels are nowhere in the film with a distinct absence of chemistry between Akshay and Tiger.
The three main “turning points” are like firecrackers dipped in cold water.
One, half the film lingers on the identity of the masked enemy. However, a flashback to what transpired between Kabir and the Indian army makes the enemy as obvious as shops on Oxford Street. Given their history, where was the mystery in identifying him?
Two, why Rocky and Freddie were court martialled is in a flashback where what they did was hardly worthy of such censure. It was far less serious than an earlier rescue act in Afghanistan where the twosome with the swagger had defied orders and put a family of hostages at risk by leisurely going in to throw “herogiri” dialogues before and after assassinating a wanted terrorist. Azad Sir had lauded them for that act of “bravery”.
Three, Dr Priya or Sonakshi’s character, her role in the AI angle, is as incomprehensible as the elaborate AI itself or Alaya’s occasional bouts of genius-gibberish. Sprinkled all over is a “Karan Kavach” for Hindustan (like Israel’s protective Dome) and lines like, “To counter brainwashed terrorists, we will have brain-controlled soldiers”, “Revenge is the purest form of justice”, “Neeyat is better than kabiliyat” (which is forgotten when Freddie-Rocky are court martialled), and “There’s a thin line between genius and psychopath”.
Left half-baked are equations. What happened to Freddie and Priya? Why did she enter reminding him that she was now married? A somewhat well-tuned ‘Mast Malang’ is wasted in not creating any spark between Akshay and Sonakshi. In fact, two songs in the end credits have more romance than the actual film.
By the end of watching exotic locations getting lost in a messy screenplay, you only want to ask, “Why, Ali, why?”
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan – Watch Or Not?: It’s better to concentrate on sheer korma and biryani this Eid.
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Review Score Rating: 2 out of 5 (i.e. 2/5)
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Official Trailer:
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Official Trailer (Credits Pooja Entertainment)
Also Read: Maidaan Review: A MATCH WINNER