Wazir Hindi Movie

Wazir surprises us with a brilliant beginning and Amitabh Bachchan emoting with just his face and Farhan's seething passions are near short of a miracle, you think. And then with the second half of tiresome explanations and almost laughable action sequences, the film simply freefalls into tediousness. Jan 7, 2016 By Manisha Lakhe

When Amitabh Bachchan's face crumples into hurt and pain, you feel that pain, and when he cracks a joke and throws back his head to laugh, you smile at the screen. Bijoy Nambiar (who directed films like David and was a producer of Pizza) brings you Amitabh Bachchan in a role that tells us why he has die-hard fans.

You are Farhan Akhtar - an ATS officer who loses his young daughter in a gun battle with a terrorist and wants revenge - learning to share your pain, enjoying the easy friendship the two slip into.

The first half of the film has you watching with your jaw firmly in your hands. The montage of Farhan's life with the beautiful Aditi Rao Hydari and their estrangement with the daughter's death is beautifully captured first by their collective smiles and then Aditi's saucer eyes brimming with anger and tears. Panditji helps Farhan balance his anger and helps him go forward by telling him how he too has suffered a similar loss.

The ATS team and its covert operations are well-shot and you watch the proceedings hoping that the bad guy is killed. You understand why Farhan takes up the cause of avenging Panditji's daughter's murder...

That's when the melodrama creeps in and the second half of the film seems to fall off the cliff. The highs you experience in the beginning are lost in the explanation and more explanations of the chess metaphors that are used. 'Pyada, Oont, Haathi, Chaal, Haar, Jeet, Check, Check-mate, Black and White' are repeated over and over with Sufi lyrics ( with the ever handy words 'Maula, Rab, Ishq, Yaara') until you wish everything were over. You have watched enough films to have figured out who was playing whom...

Neil Nitin Mukesh and John Abraham have a scene each and you wonder why they are even in the film. Vidhu Vinod Chopra who is happy to take credit for the original story, should have been merciless when writing the script which goes on and on in the second half explaining itself. Sometimes it is smarter to let the audience use its brains.

Wazir surprises us with a brilliant beginning and Amitabh Bachchan emoting with just his face and Farhan's seething passions are near short of a miracle, you think. And then with the second half of tiresome explanations and almost laughable action sequences, the film simply freefalls into tediousness.