Brothers is loud, over the top and an exhausting watch, says Raja Sen.
If the number of crucifixes in a film signify how pious it is, Brothers must have been shot in the Vatican.
The characters — a Fernandes family from Mumbai — are Catholics, it is established early on, but director Karan Malhotra keeps labouring the point home — all the characters wear crucifixes around their necks, walk out of churches in slow-motion, have Jesus tattooed on their biceps, do a Hail Mary before getting their fingers bloody, and so forth. One man is even named Cross. Talk about using the lord’s logo in vain, the entire film sees more dangling-cross action than George Michael’s earlobe from back in the day.
As we know from tic-tac-toe, where there are crosses there must be zeroes. True to symmetry, Malhotra gives us many a moment of absolute worthlessness. The entire first half, in fact, is unwatchable. Right upto the point of intermission, relentless melodrama is thrust our way with operatic zeal, complete with an excruciating, crescendo-driven background score and characters trying to out-wail it. It’s all tears and flashbacks and, funnily enough, it’s entirely unnecessary. The quickest fix for this truly bad film? Watch only the second half.
Actually, I must here apologise. I may here have implied that the post-intermission portion is any good. It isn’t, though the good news is that after such a horrendous first-half, it does at least feature some spiffy camerawork and well-choreographed action sequences. The bad news is that this is all the second half has, as we go through MMA fight scene after MMA fight scene till we get to the MMA fight scene we knew was coming all along: one where two brothers glare and fight and cry ad nauseam.
 This is an official remake of Warrior, a Hollywood drama from 2011 featuring a bunch of great actors jumping on the Mixed Martial Arts bandwagon and ending up with a film that is, I'm told, both a solid action drama.
Malhotra, a young man who made the too-loud new Agneepath, is a perplexingly old-school director who seems committed to making movies that look like they were assembled from Prakash Mehra outtakes and plot-points too silly for Mukul Anand to use. Warrior may have been melodramatic to begin with, but Malhotra amps up each possible moment, laying it on impossibly thick and spelling every little gesture out for the audience. So a flashback of the mother reading is not just simple and sunny, but features a wannabe-Morricone background score while she reads
books on true love by Brian Weiss. And that’s the subtle bit, for this is a movie when characters see large cuts on other character’s cheeks and say things like "ooh, itna bada cut?"Jackie Shroff, grey and grizzled and looking like an underfed and grumpy Santa Claus, plays a father who used to be a street fighter. His sons — Akshay Kumar, a physics teacher, and Siddharth Malhotra, a surly guy who shakes his leg a lot — hate each other and aren't particularly nice to him. Still, the old fool keeps wishing they'll all make up. It’s all rather like Rakhee in Karan Arjun going on about her sons prodigally returning. Except Shroff frequently hallucinates about coffins. (With giant crosses on them, of course.)
There is much randomness. Jacqueline Fernandes plays Kumar's long-sobbing wife who gets so deliriously happy on seeing a text message that it may well have contained news about a Kick sequel. Kiran Kumar plays an evil MMA promoter who smokes so many cheroots his name could have been Disclaimer Braganza — obviously he’s Catholic too. (Also, he builds up hype for months and months only to end up with a two-night tournament. Tsk. Whatever would N Srinivasan say?) Ashutosh Rana, who doesn't seem to have aged at all in the last two decades, plays a sometimes slimy, sometimes loyal manager. Shefali Shah shows up and makes sure her nostrils flare up more than Kumar’s thigh muscles. And, in a vulgar and ill-choreographed song sequence, an A-lister shakes her caboose so desperately it feels like she wants to be renamed Kareena Kapoor Kardashian Khan.
Akshay Kumar looks believably fit, both during his training montage and his fights — the first of which he wins with a brutal finisher that led my friend to exclaim that Kumar "broke his arm with his balls," which is symbolism at its most testicular. Bravo.
But that’s all this film has, a ball-busting Kumar and one particular fight that ends with delightful abruptness. Everything else is exhausting.
Most of us in India first heard of MMA in the 90s when Monica from Friends was dating a billionaire who wanted to be a UFC champion. Now, all I've seen of the octagonal fighting championships is the superheroic Ronda Rousey, an undefeated megastar who finishes off opponents in something like 16 seconds. Weighing 158 unbearable minutes, Brothers is nearly 600-times as long as the Rousey win — and not one-millionth as thrilling.
Rediff Rating:Â 