Sometime in the 21-month emergency enforced under Indira Gandhi’s rule in 1975, Gitanjali (Illeana D’Cruz), the headstrong princess of a royal family in Rajasthan, is imprisoned because she wouldn’t comply with a corrupt minister’s sexual advances. Fuming with revenge, the minister (Priyanshu Chatterjee) forces Gitanjali to hand over her family’s gold assets under government decree.

Confined to a temporary prison cell (though still with make-up allowances I gather), the beautiful princess summons her bodyguard-cum-lover (Ajay Devgan) to hijack a specially fortified truck that is transporting her gold to the government reserve.

Baadshaho sounds like a swashbuckling adventure of a man’s love, doesn’t it? Trust me on this: it is as far removed from credible fiction as it is from historical fact.

Although some on-screen text and archival footage says the story is set in the ’70s, most of the costume and set design flings that idea out of the window. Also flung out are the romance-factor and a grounded story.

Baadshaho is as far removed from credible fiction as it is from historical fact

Gitanjali is modeled after Indira Gandhi — a strong woman of influential lineage who wants things to bend to her will. The reference is uncanny right down to the former’s secret illicit affairs (Gandhi’s secret love life has recently been uncovered in a few books). One sole exception is that D’Cruz is far more ravishing.

Her bodyguard Bhavani Singh (Devgan) is simple enough to understand. He saunters straight into the film without any backstory to help Gitanjali because, like most hardcore men, he never breaks a promise.

Devgan’s compatriots include Emraan Hashmi (in tattoos, mascara and a radical-looking T-shirt), Eesha Gupta (plastic-looking, amateur) and Sanjay Mishra (as a drunkard, genius locksmith). On the villain’s side is rough-and-tough army man Seher Singh (Vidyut Jammwal) whose half-naked introductory scene doesn’t make sense in the context of this film.

Actually, not one character (with the slight exception of D’Cruz’s and Devgan’s) makes sense here.

Director Milan Luthria (Once Upon a Time in Mumbai and its sequel) flaunts a kinetic vibe to his storytelling this time round. He compensates the one-dimensional plot with flashy non-linear editing that jumps to-and-fro in time, filling in the audience on important bits about characters when necessary.

As the story progresses — darting from scene to scene as if its pants are on fire — one feels that Baadshaho could be set in any period, thereby rendering its historical Emergency setting irrelevant.

Published in Dawn, ICON, September 24th, 2017