I am a Salman Khan fan myself, and I have been biased towards him on previous occasions but by now even I have got tired of the kind of movies that he continues to dish out in the name of masala entertainers. All of his movies have now started to look the same and though they are still faring very well at the box office, in fact some of them even are going onto become blockbusters (I don't know how), but most of his fans have now got tired of watching the same "all-style-no-plot" stuff again and again. Before watching this Hindi remake, I decided to watch the original Telugu version first, that had Ravi Teja and Ileana D'Cruz and though it wasn't that appealing a movie but still there were moments when I found it somewhat entertaining. But this Hindi version of Kick with the larger-than-life avatar of Salman in it just couldn't entertain me at all. I found it really bland and cold. Some people might laugh at me saying that it's nothing new and may even question me, that hasn't Salman, even with a weak script, so often managed to set the screen ablaze with his charm and magnetism? I agree but how long can he manage to do that. After all he is not getting any younger!
These days, it's foolish to expect a plot in Salman Khan's movie. Salman Khan plays the quirkier character of Devi Lal Singh, an adrenalin seeking junkie who keeps on changing jobs in search of a kick. Funnily enough he is egged on by his father (played by Mithun Chakravorty) to go in his pursuit of 'kick'. Meanwhile Devi runs into Shaina, a psychiatrist (played by Jacqueline Fernandez) and falls in love with her. He fondly calls her Dr Psycho. She too loves him a lot but when she finds out that Devi had been lying to her all the while and that he had yet again left his job because he couldn't find it exciting enough, because he couldn't find a kick in it, she feels she can't put up with him. And so they break up. That's when Devi vanishes away from her life like forever. During this time, he had now evolved into Devil, a Robin Hood-type masked robber who steals from the rich to give to the poor. How many times have we seen Salman playing a charming, playful, slightly crooked superman with a heart of gold character? Anyway, his robberies catch the eye of the policemen and so enters into the story, the super cop Himanshu Tyagi, played by Randeep Hooda, who also happens to be Shaina’s fiancee. Following Devi, Himanshu lands up in Poland where he meets Shaina and they are about to be engaged when Devi re-enters their lives.
Salman Khan with his charisma, carries the film on his broad shoulders. Jacqueline once again puts up a wooden act with her expressionless face in almost every scene. Randeep Hooda does good in whatever scenes he got but he needed a better script to act in. Apart from some funny Salman moments, what stood out in ‘Kick’ was Nawazuddin Siddiqui as the wicked Shiv Gajra, with a trademark evil laugh of his own, something that we see with the villains in Bollywood movies. In fact in certain scenes, he almost stole the thunder from Salman Khan. The rest of the cast just does its job.
But overall, it is an outrageously silly film, there is neither any coherence nor any consistency and it drags on at times pulling the famous emotional manipulation-card. One finds so many gaping holes in the story and at times it gets unbearable. I would have given it a miss if I had known beforehand that I was going to waste two and half hours.
