Review: Bharat

*Painfully Mediocre*

Bharat is a Salman Khan film which is written and directed by Ali Abbas Zaffar. This pairing has earlier made films like Sultan and Tiger Zinda Hai which earned a great deal of money in the Box-Office and had received decent reviews. I liked these films and was intrigued by what Bharat would have to offer.

Ali Abbas Zaffar disappoints.

The film deals with Bharat (Salman Khan) who encounters various situations in life and emerges victorious in all the difficult moments which he goes through. The problem is, that the film opens with Bharat alongside his best friend, Vilayti Khan in a store, content with their life. After that, when the titular character narrates his life to his grandchildren as well as the audience, the tension and the feeling of uncertainty decreases drastically when a life-threatening situation takes place during the narration as we, the audience are shown at the starting that Bharat and his best friend are living side-by-side each other, gratified.

The cause for the decreased *tension* all lies in the Screenplay written by the Director and Varun Sharma.

Secondly, the pacing was very uneven. The first half was relatively decent but it all came apart in the next half. I felt that the movie was dragging and the addition of 3-4 songs with dance sequences didn’t help at all. The second half had a lot of forced comedy which made me forget how to laugh.

It was not a 155 minute film by all means and could have been much better if it would have been trimmed more to a 130 minute mark.

The only thing that kept me going was the performances of the cast. Salman Khan nailed his role. Katrina Kaif (Kumud Raina) proved to her critics that she does have acting chops and her on-screen chemistry with Salman Khan was decent. Disha Patani and Tabu did their best with the minor roles which they were given but Sunil Grover as Vilayti Khan takes the cake as the best *actor* here. He hit the right spot when it was comedy and when it was drama.

The performances of the cast saved the film. All in all, Bharat is not a Kalank (pun intended) or a Race 3, but it isn’t a Sultan either.

—————–RATING———————–

1) Performance: Excellent

2) Treatment: Bad

3) Story: Mediocre

4) Recommendation: If you think Katrina Kaif doesn’t know acting, watch Bharat if you want to be proven wrong.