I have been anxious about myself recently. I do not react to bad movies as before. It is mostly a kind of weak mix of submission and sarcasm. A few sighs here, some puns there and I’m through. But watching Apoorv Singh Karki’s Bhaiyya Ji made me feel young again. All those passionate feelings came pouring back out. Rage. Sadness. Repulsion. Hate. Hopelessness. There were times when all my willpower had to be summoned not to leave the screening room then the film was shown. For this reunion with my former self, I am grateful to Bhaiyya Ji.
I knew it would happen just as soon as the villain was introduced as a wicked rich kid who liked running over dogs. Or the moment his powerful father appears in a scene where he slaughters a stubborn girl who claimed that his son had committed sexual harrassment (“Why are you crying if he didn’t rape you?”).Or the moment father and son laugh after realizing that a body they pushed into an incinerator chamber wasn’t dead yet. Or the moment when an enormous fire looks like it could be caused by wayward crayons or if a crow rendered with CGI seems more like good-looking bats.
The idea is simple: think of Bhojpuri John Wick but replace the dog by sibling. A boy called Vedant gets killed outside Delhi railway station while fighting gun toting bullies for parathas. The killing itself done by Mad Rajya Party leader’s crazy son Abhimanyu (played by Jatin Goswami for crying out loud) is covered up. Vedant’s elder brother, Ram Charan (Manoj Bajpayee), is having wedding preparations at Bihar when he learns about this misfortune. By now, Ram Charan is doing his best to appear like an ordinary middle class man trying hard not to show us his grief. But after the last rituals, the beast comes out of retirement.
Ram’s own voice-over (while he’s posing with a shovel) helpfully tells us that he was once a fabled Robin Hood who had sworn off violence. But now hunger for revenge has brought him back and his gangster nickname ‘Bhaiyya Ji’ makes everyone tremble in fear even those who are not close to him. This beedi-smoking and meek-to-macho Bhaiyya Ji gives a warning to the villainous father (Suvinder Vicky) that nothing will stop him until he is through with his offspring.And not even the fact that the film in which all this happens is terrible.
You can see what Bhaiyya Ji is going for. All those euphemistic terms for empty craft: Masala-mass storytelling, South template, ‘80s’ Bollywood tribute, Rohit Shetty campiness. The result is a movie that doesn’t have the self-aware swag or technical skill to hide behind tradition. Every scene is milked dry and then some. Minutes into the story, I started to dread the next over-the-top breakdown moment. Ram Charan hears about an “accident” and starts mumbling like some one possessed for what seemed like an hour. He sees ashes and goes into shock for two hours. He mother sees ashes back home in Bihar and she falls apart for three hours approximately
Neither Goal-Oriented nor “Screen-Worthy”
Anticipating the melodrama makes it worse because there is no escaping it. I resorted to counting sheep in my head, but even these cute animals suddenly started to mourn their old grandparents in slow motion. A background score by Sandeep Chowta could have been used for a horror movie made by Ram Gopal Varma around mid-2000s. If you take away the slow-mo, then this 135-minute hamfest constitutes roughly 21 minutes of weakly digestible matter. One moment, however, the film has sudden realization that other than Ram Charan’s retro quest there was a real world happening outside such as when a scene randomly comes up with the chief minister talking to his advisors about “mafia” issues. Their decision, Let them fight.That’s what the film means when it says: Nah, too much work.
The most jarring aspect is the film-making itself. A scene in the morgue is composed of shots that keep breaking the axis for no good reason. A shot of Ram Charan falling into a river looks so fake that I looked away with second-hand embarrassment. An action sequence on a bridge on Mahashivratri looks like a rough dress rehearsal for the real action sequence. The screenplay writer believes that Bihar and Delhi are not far apart and proves it through various jokes he/she employs throughout. Chandrasekhar Bajpayee celebrating his century (this is his 100th film) almost moves us to tears; he is playing an actor who would be suitable for single-screen audiences only. On the other hand, it’s depressing to conclude that neither single-mindedness nor screen-worthiness define this film.
His previous collaboration with director was popular Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai, which was equally cheesy melodrama overshadowed by an outstanding performance from Bajpayee. But Bhaiyya Ji defeats him by taking itself so seriously. A bit more of Ram Charan getting exasperated and breaking character to tease the old men in his village (you wear two diapers and you want to join me?), a breeze through a filmy pandit’s face as he hears the voice of his mythical hero, or a cowardly cop (Vipin Sharma) proudly calling himself cowardly would have made Bhaiyya Ji more like that spoof. But no it’s Marjaavaan (2019), Bhoomi (2018) rather than An Action Hero (2022). Now, what do you think about this? At least I’m capable of emoting again. I had forgotten what it felt like to lose my appetite. Who knew a paratha could do that?
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