Firstly, it’s worth stating that Nawazuddin Siddiqui is the real hero of Raees, who successfully fulfilled the outline of his character and shined throughout the movie. Obtaining an overall rating of 2.5/5 Shah Rukh Khan as Raees successfully attracted a large audience but disappointed with a hollow plot with an ‘already seen everything’ kind of storyline and screenplay.
Raees, is the story of a mobster with a good heart, who grows up on the wrong side of the law but follows good causes. His dubious ‘goodness’ is a legacy from his mother, to honor which he must indulge in dangerous businesses. Based in the dry state of Gujarat, Raees becomes a liquor baron and is challenged a confident and honest IAS officer. Cue, the eye rolls..Raw action, modern-folkish music, love and tragedy, fail to give any edge to this movie.
The plot starts falling apart when the director portrays an intelligent officer as a person who would miss out on checking the waterways (as if he wouldn’t have thought about it). From injecting hooch into tomatoes to selling 21st century alcohol which probably wasn’t available at the time the movie is set in, various mishaps affected the quality of the story. Action scenes turned out average, and seriously “super jump” is for arcade games not humans.
Siddiqui chimed in and uplifted the movie with the zing that Shah Rukh sahab seemed to lack in his role. Mahira Khan couldn’t help with her fresh charm and the audience quickly forgot her role as Sunny set the screen afire with the item song “Laila mai Laila.”
Intense, bearded expressions, Gandhi Ji’s spectacle backstory, Nawaz’s spurts of comedy, great intentions but wrong direction, and the cost that is paid by a boy grown up around the “dhanda” is all we got from the movie. By ‘The End’ we still couldn’t figure out what these pieces of puzzle tried to say to the audience.
