After being leaked late last week and then unceremoniously yanked from all blogs by producers UTV films for an official Monday release, the Rowdy Rathore trailer is finally available to view online!
Continuing the trend of Southification started a couple of years ago by Prabhu Deva’s very own Wanted. Rowdy Rathore is once again a remake of a South Indian movie (Vikramarkudu by SS Rajamouli), translated, adapted and sprinkled with magical Bollywood pixie dust but what has made Rowdy Rathore one of the most awaited movies of 2012 is that leading man Akshay Kumar is kicking ass again after ages! (and boy is he making up for lost time in this trailer)
Let’s start off with the things I love about this trailer:
Akshay Kumar is back the way we like seeing him ie hitting people with bricks, sledgehammers and then drop kicking them in the groin, which is infinitely cool! His comedy act was getting stale anyway and he hasn’t had a major clean hit in a while which won’t affect his star status too much but even he would admit that his last few movies have left his old school fans disappointed.
After the massive success of Dabanng and going on a signing spree with every acclaimed production house, we finally see another glimpse of Sonakshi Sinha in a proper movie role.
There’s something about Sonakshi which makes her adorable, maybe it’s her facial features or the types of roles she chooses that reminds me of old time Bollywood heroine’s and something that has gotten lost since the days of Madhuri Dixit. In hindsight, her role in Dabanng wasn’t greatly developed and she didn’t have that much screen time but she manages to do what she does in the trailer, stop time and make us want to watch her again and again and then run after her in a unbelievable dorky manner.
What I’m not too sure are about are the hit and miss one liners sprinkled throughout the promo. South Indian movies are well known for their crowd pleasing one liners but what they are trying to do with Rowdy Rathore just seems like they are throwing everything and the kitchen sink at us and hope some of it will stick. I do love the “440 volt ka jathka” and “Don’t Angry me”- dialogues but wonder how many times we will have to hear them repeated over and over again before the movie actually releasesin June. I am also not a huge fan of the cheapo back drop when the dialogues are spouted facing the camera.
The desperation of wanting to make sure the dialogue catches also reminds me of the name that is attached and producing Rowdy Rathore, Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
Although a very talented filmmaker, he almost reminds me of M.Night Shyamalan, both visually amazing storytellers that got consumed by the massive success of their first few features. The combination of SLB and Akshay Kumar still seems odd to me, but if they can manage to combine their strengths and not their weaknesses, it could still give us an enjoyable time at theaters.
In general I do wonder how long the Southification trend will go on for as Wanted was released close to 3 years ago now. We’ve had Singham, Force and if we are to believe rumors, every male actor is going through a stack of South Indian DVD”s to adapt from Shahid Kapoor to Ranveer Singh. Some of the action shots, wire fu and slo mo which are a staple of massy South Indian movies is already loosing it’s sheen in the Rowdy Rathore trailer. But those issues will be for movies coming out after Rowdy until then we are psyched!
Rowdy Rathore releases in June.
