Action junkies, rejoice. “Bhola”, in which Ajay Devgn does double duty as the eponymous lead actor and director, is the kind of all-out, no-holds-barred, high-octane actioner we haven’t seen in Bollywood in a long time.
Here’s what we get in the film, which runs through a night. A massive drug bust. A vicious mobster (Deepak Dobriyal) leading an army of goons laden with impressive firepower. A police station under attack, with only an elderly custodian (Sanjay Mishra) in charge. A bunch of cops hanging on to their lives by a thread. An ex-convict (Ajay Devgan) heading out to meet his ten-year-old daughter whom he has never seen. And an injured cop (Tabu) corralling the convict into a rescue mission with a hapless fellow (Amir Khan) riding along, strictly to provide the laughs
The biggest problem Bollywood has faced with this genre has been the inability to keep everything else in the film subservient to the action: bunging in song and dance and other irrelevant details, causes things to come to a standstill. Here Devgn, who now seems to have settled into his dual role, having had considerable practice (his last was ‘Runway 34’), makes sure, for the most part, that the set-pieces keep coming. And he keeps slaying, single-handedly keeping the monsters at bay.
