An Action Hero: "Action that thrills & humour that will have us in splits!!!"

It's been a year where Bollywood had to play second fiddle to movies from the South as the latter had the box office singing to its tune. Well the Hindi film industry only have themselves to blame for the mess they find themselves in rather than blame it on the audience or the ascendancy of the OTT platform. There is no doubt that the taste of the audience has undergone a huge change primarily because of ease of access to content from other industries & it would have naturally dawned on them that the Hindi movies were in a state of stagnancy. But it would be unfair on my part to generalise all of it, since there were indeed quite a few that were interesting. One such movie was Anirudh Iyer's "An Action Hero" which certainly had me entertained, though it unfortunately failed to ring the money registers. 

This is the directorial debut of Anirudh who decided to embark on his maiden venture with the script that he had penned. Giving him credible support was Neeraj Yadav who took on the responsibility of the screenplay and the dialogues which was undoubtedly the USP of the movie. The duo has done a fantastic job as it is essentially a dark comedy or rather a satire on Bollywood, media houses and the underworld, all of which are essentially dissimilar on the outside but feed off each other for their survival. Maanav (Ayushmann Khurrana) was the Bollywood action king & heart throb of the masses who had the bonafide air of arrogance about him. The shoot of his latest flick took him to Haryana where he rubs off Vicky, the brother of a prominent politician. The two gets into a scuffle & it leads to a scenario where Maanav decides to flee to London until everything had settled. However, it was just the start of his troubles!!!

The arrogance, tantrums & aloofness of the stars are captured well with the icing on the cake being the way that Anirudh had roasted the media which includes an undeniable reference to Arnab Goswami. The action sequences were choreographed well & the liberal sprinkling of hilarious one liners keeps us entertained. Kudos to Parag Chhabra for the BGM and the music which gelled well and provided the desired impact. Kunal Shah had also done a fine job with the visuals.

Ayushmann has been in the industry for only a decade & within that time itself he has carved a niche for himself with his choice of movies. He was impressive as Maanav be it in the way he carried himself as the star & also for his classy stunts. Another person who deserves the same amount of praise was Jaideep Ahlawat who was both menacing yet hilarious at the same time. The rest of the cast didn't get much of screen space but still had us in splits such as Hiten Patel (as Kaadir) & Jitender Hooda (as Inspector Daroga) while Neeraj Madhav was wasted in an inconsequential role. 

Verdict: I'm pretty sure that quite a few eyebrows will be raised by what I am going to say next especially since the movie had tanked. However, according to me this is one of the best Hindi movies to have released this year. In short, do check it out!!!

Rating: 3.25/5

Regards...Ben