Radhe: Salman Khan's yet another cringeworthy watch

It takes some doing to make a film, that leaves one wondering, if it would really have been that bad if the pandemic took you out last week. With Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai, Salman Khan brings yet another deadly wave of cringeworthy one-liners, cheap CGI action, and a senseless story that are a torture to sit through.

Watch the trailer of Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai here 

Radhe, out on Zee5--a favourite among pandemic releases--is supposed to be a remake of Korean film The Outlaws, but one quick Wikipedia search later, I can't see how. Directed by Salman's go-to director for bad action films, Prabhudeva, the film comes across as another sizzle reel for Salman and his bulging biceps, joining the ranks of Kick, Wanted, Race 3, the Dabangg series and more. This time, Salman, still pretending to be 30, cute and athletic, plays an affable encounter specialist who is called to Mumbai to rid the city of a drug problem.

Radhe bores holes in rapists in the morning, stares at Disha Patani's legs in the afternoon, and hugs kids at a rehab facility in the evening. It is not known when he practises running at super speed like the Bhai Cinematic Universe's very own Flash. Perhaps after dinner. But that time might be reserved for dancing with Jacqueline Fernandez at bars.

Pitted against him is Randeep Hooda's menacing drug lord. The actor couldn't even be bothered to change his hairstyle from the film Extraction or open his mouth at more than 40% capacity. As far as B-grade Bollywood villains go, he's as slimy as they come. He slits throats at whim, rapes and murders without reason. It was perhaps the only option available to make him appear more sinister amid an absence of halfway decent character writing.

These two are supplemented by Disha, who plays a sexy person of the female kind, and Jackie Shroff, who appears as a sleazy police commissioner of the comical kind. Not a single person appears to belong to the same planet as us. They are all idiotic beyond belief. The low-stakes plot, which involves Disha's character getting kidnapped by potential rapists and Jackie's character having an 'emotional' change of heart, induced a gag reflex in me.

Radhe is a collection of action sequences piled upon each other while Disha's tight dresses, some dance numbers, and goons saying 'apun' a lot, act as fillers. The action scenes are average right until the climax, which is when things get much worse. CGI helicopters are set on CGI fire and sent spiralling down the CGI sky as our hero and villain throw punches. It's the cheapest, ugliest piece of work you'd have seen in a long time. Give me Salman clanking like metal when he's hit with rods any day instead.

Salman and Prabhudeva are like the two kids in a classroom who are always up to no good -- creating trouble, setting the staff room on fire, or plotting to harass girls. Someone needed to assign them different seats two movies ago. They could start now.