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‘Sikandar’ Movie Review: Salman Khan Stars in A Bloated, Old-Fashioned Misfire
The film itself plays a supporting role in A.R. Murugadoss’ hollow monument to Salman Khan .
Director: A.R. Murugadoss
Writers: A.R. Murugadoss, Rajat Arora, Hussain Dalal, Abbas Dalal
Cast: Salman Khan, Rashmika Mandanna, Sathyaraj, Prateik Babbar, Kajal Aggarwal, Sharman Joshi, Kishore, Jatin Sarna
Language: Hindi
Given Hindi cinema’s twin obsession with nepotism and nationalism, it’s hard not to be nostalgic about a dopey Salman Khan movie. The badness of a family entertainer like Sikandar is harmless, vintage, candid, pure almost. It has no ulterior motive, no genre, no affiliations; it’s a festival release, but the festival may as well be a Salman Khan release. It’s just there: a 150-minute montage of intro shots and ad slogans parading as punchlines. In other words, Sikandar is a dying breed of Bollywood vice. I’ve kind of missed it. The brain melts, but at least the spirit stays intact. It’s so critic-proof that I’m heaving a sigh of relief as I write this — there’s no prospect of offending anyone because nobody cares. Happy days.
Both its villains are bald, so hair propaganda is the closest it comes to taking a stand. The closest it comes to being political is Khan playing a Rajkot resident who (occasionally) speaks Gujarati, a language that gives him a direct line to New Delhi. The closest it comes to meta referencing is when this godly hero delivers its actor’s thoughts while punishing an errant minister: “I don’t know about PM or CM, I can easily be an MLA or MP, but I’m not interested. Don’t force me to be interested”. It’s so strong on fan service that when Khan breaks the fourth wall during an action sequence, he doesn’t look at the camera; the camera looks at him. It even reverses the anxiety around modern technology: the acting all around is so robotic that AI would in fact humanise it.
The problems are the good old problems. The film does not discriminate with the staging of its alpha-male-saviour complex. Everyone needs rescuing: women, children, mothers, orphans, villagers, teens, lovers, old men, cats, crocodiles. (Two of these are untrue, but you probably can’t guess which ones). The superstar vanity vehicle opens in an airplane where a Mumbai politico’s son (a hamming Prateik Babbar) randomly blackmails a female co-passenger by threatening to expose her pornstar past to her kid. Just as this cackling monster starts to touch her, that famous bracelet — with a famous fist attached to it — appears. Sikandar appears. The monster groans. The air-hostess makes an announcement: “Ladies and gentleman, we are experiencing heavy turbulence soon”. The rest of the film is different iterations of this same scene. Sikandar keeps appearing; physics and baddies keep disappearing.
We soon learn that Sikandar’s other name is Sanjay Rajkot, the revered and wealthy king of Rajkot. Which means he’s the king of good deeds. (We also learn he’s named after Alexander the Great and Sanjay Dutt). His ‘subjects’ worship him because he’s given them land, housing, food, everything short of magical powers and first-world passports. He’s married to Saisri Rajkot (Rashmika Mandanna), a woman less than half his age who yearns for his undivided attention. Saisri explicitly states that, age difference and neglect be damned, she is the one who feels lucky to be chosen by such a noble and busy man. There’s an essay waiting to be written about Mandanna catering to the middle-class Indian patriarch’s biggest fantasy; this is the fourth consecutive film (Animal, Pushpa 2, Chhaava) in which she plays a subservient wife whose only purpose is to cook the carcass of female agency and decorate her husband’s masculinity. Never mind that Saisri reacts more like a disappointed daughter — not a sulky partner — when her king has no time to check out her latest painting. This is not an innuendo.
Sikandar is actually a terrible husband, but because it’s Khan, even his flaws are celebrated. He still manages to slip in a few romantic songs, a tacky drone show at night, a date, a “baby” here and there. When a tragedy does befall them (if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll know that Saisri acts like an affectionate ghost — a la Megha in Mohabbatein), even his grief has swag. He’s so sad that he speaks to someone on a cell-phone precariously balanced on his bulky shoulder. When he drinks, it’s only the anti-alcohol disclaimer on screen that implies he’s drinking. He isn’t living so much teaching; when he cries a lot, he makes sure to mention that “I’m man enough to accept I’m wrong”. When he imagines Saisri, she’s still trying to please and humour him. It doesn’t help that, at some point, he swears on her life to make things right. Who’s going to tell him?
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It’s not unusual for superstars to treat their movies as vessels of autofiction. But Khan’s version of reality is too detached from storytelling to affect the viewers. He spends the second half in Mumbai — heartbroken, strong, philanthropic, rich and single in no particular order. He’s a billionaire humble enough to take the train and hire a taxi; the city’s iconic kaali-peeli fiat miraculously comes back to life for him. Sikandar’s generosity aligns with Khan’s: capable performers like Jatin Sarna, Sanjay Kapoor, Vishal Vashishtha, Sharman Joshi, Kajal Aggarwal and Anjini Dhawan are reduced to the sort of passing characters who’re just happy to be in a mass movie. I kept expecting Joshi to be revealed as a traitor in Sikandar’s team, but the twist in such movies is that it cannot afford any twists. There’s some merit in a grieving Sikandar’s journey being driven by love and not revenge; the merit, however, doesn’t last long.
Forget the dead wife, even the story stays servile to the man. For instance, Sikandar arrives in the city to befriend the three patients saved by his wife’s organs (she signed up to be an organ donor so that God protects her husband in her afterlife). Which means he sets about trying to fix three different lives and cultures. Meanwhile, the evil political leader (Sathyaraj) and his police stooge (Kishore) keep vanishing from the narrative while he’s organ-loving. At one point, Sikandar is framed as a terrorist and becomes India’s most wanted man, but no biggie; the film lets him finish his light-hearted portions before it remembers the consequences. Their scheming is so neglected by the film that they must empathise with the late Saisri; there’s no other conflict — no competition — and they’re still relegated to second best. One can almost envision these baddies twiddling their thumbs at the nearest vada pav stall, impatiently waiting for him to finish playing the messiah; a Holi song only extends their wait. The sheer boredom of loitering around in the blind spots of the script makes them easier to defeat.
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There are times when Sikandar’s reaction shots look like they’re filmed in a different timezone. In terms of set pieces, there’s half a creative moment in a Dharavi brawl where he holds an uprooted door in a garage dump, opens it and growls “welcome to hell” in a strange accent. There’s another one where Sikandar slides his hand out of one shirt sleeve and punches a guy through the other. That’s as close as the movie comes to realising the pulpy excesses that its South Indian counterparts thrive on. The lack of rhythm and ingenuity are not new to a mainstream Hindi production, but the lack of intent is. Perhaps the most implausible element in a film that counts on Khan simply showing up is the fact that his taxi encounters no dug-up roads in Mumbai. Not a single pothole. Some traffic, at best. As I said, it’s hard not to reminisce about the good old days. Maybe we’ve reached a stage where nostalgia is nothing but unresolved trauma.