Bajrangi Bhaijaan : "Movie Review"

Rating : Not Applicable 

Hindi (English subtitles available), 2015 

 

A Salman Khan movie which makes the public go misty-eyed is dangerous - dangerous not to the people but to bank vaults which will burst out with the cash generated. The revenue gap between India's Hindi and Telugu movies which is watched in theatres mostly by Indians, and Hollywood's English movies which the whole world watches , is still huge but is steadily getting narrower . Bajrangi Bhaijaan has positively exploded at the box office, generating Rs.500 crore (approx $100 million) in just two weeks. I was not keen on watching it, but when one of my acquaintances, while mentioning what he did over the weekend, reported that it made him teary-eyed, my enthusiasm was stoked. 

 
I was all set to watch and review the movie, but once the buzz settled a little, and my common sense returned , I remembered what had happened earlier this year. The court had acquitted Salman Khan in a case where he had done drunk-driving in 2002 - his car had careened over the pavement killing one man that night and injuring four others. Khan recruited India's costliest lawyer Harish Salve who charges up to Rs.30 lakh per day ($750,000 per day) and Salve, who himself deserves to be jailed life-long,  finagled the case, freeing Salman. I've watched Salman Khan ever since I was old enough to understand a movie - from his first big hit Maine Pyaar Kiya in 1989 to his moving performance in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam  - after which Khan changed over to making rabidly commercial films, with avid support from his moronic fans. I did watch his last film in 2012 by committing the mistake of forgetting what he has done but I will not repeat the same blunder now. Did our forefathers lose their lives and get their skulls cracked open for our independence so that their children of future generations could not only forgive a man for evading punishment for manslaughter, but also flock to theatres to make his film earn Rs.500 crore in two weeks? So I'll repeat that I initially wanted to watch and review this film but will never do so now. There are some rules and values in life, without which life has no meaning. 
 
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