Harshad Mehta, the infamous stock broker who outsmarted the Indian banking system in the early 1990s is an individual that has fascinated film makers and authors. The boom of the OTT platform in the lockdown period saw the release of Hansal Mehta's critically acclaimed web series "Scam 1992". This naturally meant that it was always going to be an uphill task for Kookie Gulati's "The Big Bull" which was based on the same story albeit with cinematic liberties. In essence it felt like a ODI up against Test & the question was which one managed to satiate the audience.
Hemant Shah (Abhishek Bachchan) decided to make a plunge into the stock market when he learned that it could be the staircase to quick wealth if one played his cards smartly. Along with his brother, Viren (Sohum Shah) who was already a small dealer in the stock exchange; he rapidly became a name that was spoken in the corridors of power. Hemant knew the frailty in the banking sector that he used to his advantage & as one would expect, many others also benefitted from his unscrupulous dealings. But it was a matter of time, before law took its course.
Apart from donning the directorial cape, Kookie had also penned the script along with Arjun Dhawan and that is exactly the weakest aspect of this movie. The characterization of the protagonist was poorly etched & none of the events that unfolded on screen barely gave us a credible essence of how this scam panned out or if the political system was involved. Everything whizzes by in quick time as if they were more keen to show a glimpse of everything rather than focus on the specifics which would have added so much value to this production from Ajay Devgn. Dharmendra Sharma's editing was mediocre, Vishnu Rao's visuals was average while I did enjoy Cari Minati's rendition of the title track.
There isn't much that the artists could do when the script itself is pretty average & though Jr AB received quite a bit of flak for his performance, I felt he did a reasonable job with what he was given. However, it did have streaks of "Guru" & leaned towards a filmy villain rather than a calculative smart individual. As for the rest of the cast, Ileana D'Cruz, Sohum Shah & Nikita Dutta were ok while artists like Supriya Pathak & Saurabh Shukla were wasted.
Verdict: Without a shadow of doubt, Hansal Mehta's web series choke slams "The Big Bull". The so called biopic turned out to be an ordinary flick of a guy who flew so high (I dont know how many times they used that analogy in this movie) & eventually fell flat as he had no parachute. This is more or less the fate of the movie except that it barely took off. In short, don't bother!!!
Rating: 1.75/5
Regards...Ben
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