A trivia question for the ages: what film has Monica Bellucci, Giancarlo Esposito, Martin Lawrence, Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt in its cast? The answer is 7 Dogs, a Saudi Arabian action thriller by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, the directing duo behind the last two Bad Boys movies. The internationalism is more or less the point. Admittedly, there's always a cheap thrill in watching your favourite faces in a snazzy global production, complete with explosions and gunfights. It's an old tradition across media. Think of it as the cinematic equivalent of an all-stars charity match — sans the charity.
7 Dogs is airborne from the first frame. Gravity, in such movies, is both enemy and muse. Hotshot Interpol agent Khalid (Ahmed Ezz) captures Ghali Abu Dawood (Karim Abdel Aziz), a prized kingpin with ties to '7 Dogs', a transnational crime syndicate. The crisis at hand is the planet-wide dispersal of a dangerous superdrug called Pink Lady. Ezz and Aziz are both Egyptian stars, and they are swiftly joined by Saudi Arabia's Nasser Al Qasabi, who plays Khalid's boss, imaginatively named General Nasser. This man cuts his latest captive a deal: he will commute Ghali's jail term if the seasoned criminal teams up with Khalid and helps infiltrate 7 Dogs. The syndicate, we are told, has no leaders and settles its affairs by vote, a fairly democratic setup for a cabal of mysterious canines.
You know how these things go. Mounted on a reported budget of $40 million, and seizing on every opportunity to show it off, 7 Dogs was filmed at the expansive Al-Hisn Big Time Studios in Riyadh. The story writer, Turki Al-Sheikh, is a Saudi government official and chairman of the General Entertainment Authority. The whole enterprise is an unmasked showcase for the state-of-the-art facilities at Al-Hisn. I can only guess at the paychecks some of the stars pocketed; Bellucci, ever graceful, said in a statement: "The organisation was amazing, and this was my first time there in Saudi Arabia. The studio was huge. I felt being in a big movie with great possibilities."
Implicit in that quote is a mystery: can you shoot a globe-trotting action film in the 21st century at a single studio, no matter how vast and accommodating? Surely all the world’s not a sound-stage? Film critics in the east tend to grumble at Hollywood facsimiles of major international cities. Here, for a change, they can grumble at an Arab production for committing the exact same crime. Shanghai is no more than a rainy night market and a blinking high-rise; Mumbai, meanwhile, is like a bad, bad book cover for Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
For Indian audiences, the Mumbai pit-stop is the obvious and most exciting draw. The unlikely tag-team of Khalid and Ghali turn up in the city. Their goal is to accost Ranjit (Sanjay Dutt), a flashy gastronome and one of the seven 'dogs' on their list. To get to him, they call on Jauhar (Salman Khan), a local fixer and informant. Khan appears to enjoy himself roasting kebabs in a pinstripe suit (somehow, he looks more relaxed than in his last solo outing, Sikandar). Dutt plays some sort of a parody of an influencer-gangster. It's 15 minutes of noisy, overblown horseplay, culminating in a bizarrely hectic chase and a dangling plotline.
Directors Adil & Bilall got their break in Hollywood shooting frenetic action. Their camerawork refuses to relax: it glides, spins, pirouettes, and does a dozen jumping jacks around the actors. The opening battle in Shanghai is filmed, for concerns of pure flash, from under a glass floor. Likewise, the autorickshaw chase in Mumbai shifts to found footage, in a dizzying imitation of GoPro. The editing pattern is equally chaotic and cocksure: split screens, spinning transitions, trippy animated interludes. This approach in 7 Dogs struck me not as a signature style but a lazy default; it betrays a lack of faith in the plot, or in the pulse and inventiveness of the action choreography. The final third of the film, darting from Vegas to Riyadh, is an unqualified slog. You can practically rewatch the climax of Race 3 and be none the poorer for it.
The actors do their bit to infuse some life and charm. Ezz, in neat suits and shades, has a likeable Tony Stark insolence. Qasabi, as the upbeat General Naseer, brings bags of screen presence (if this were a Bollywood production, the role would go to Adil Hussain). Giancarlo Esposito seems in a rush to discharge his limited duties and head out for the sunset. 7 Dogs is playing in India in English and Hindi; I happened to catch the Hindi version, which occasioned its own head trip. A favourite was Monica Bellucci saying, in the middle of a high-stakes poker game, "Mujhe lagta hai tum bluff kar rahe ho (I think you're bluffing)". She's not wrong. The whole film is.