0 Stars (out of 4)
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Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but Kick asks its audience to forget everything they know about quality filmmaking for 146 minutes. Kick is boring, annoying, and offensively stupid.
Though no one associated with this turd comes off well, Kick is primarily a failure of storytelling. The moronic plot lacks any sense of organization. Explanations come out of left field. The characters — in particular Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s villainous rich guy, Faroz — operate without clear motivation. There’s nothing in this that makes a lick of sense.
Though Kick is a Salman Khan vehicle, the movie opens with Shaina (Jacqueline Fernandez) moping about in Warsaw, Poland. She shares a train ride with Himanshu (Randeep Hooda), a top cop visiting from India. Their families want the two of them to marry, but Shaina explains that she’s still mourning the end of her previous relationship.
The movie should’ve stopped at that point. When Randeep Hooda starts talking marriage — especially while looking cute in a sweater vest — the only answer is, “Yes.” Roll credits. Instead, we get forty-five minutes of flashbacks to Shaina’s romance with annoying lout Devi Lal (Khan).
It’s hard to believe that a woman intelligent enough to become a licensed psychiatrist would fall for a schmuck as irritating as Devi Lal, but Shaina does nonetheless. He dumps her after she suggests that — since he finds steady employment and conventional romance a kind of “hell” that interferes with his adrenaline addiction — they live with her dad after marriage. Devi Lal declares that he won’t be a live-in son-in-law and stalks off.
It takes nearly two hours before alleged genius cop Himanshu realizes that the master thief “Devil” he’s tracked to Warsaw is Shaina’s ex, Devi Lal, who’s managed to worm his way into Shaina’s care with a purported case of amnesia.
Things get increasingly stupid as politically connected healthcare tycoon Feroz is revealed to be Devil’s next target. Siddiqui plays Feroz as a cackling supervillain, but he doesn’t have a sinister agenda or plan for world domination. He’s just a rich guy who’s kind of a dick.
(Speaking of genitalia, did no one on the crew notice that Randeep’s nuts were practically busting out of his pants during Himanshu’s balcony drinking scene with Devi Lal?)
The explanation for Devi Lal’s transition from unemployed schmo to master thief hinges on writer-director Sajid Nadiadwala’s exploitation of disabled children to provoke audience sympathy. It’s tacky.
It also doesn’t hold up to scrutiny from a story perspective. No matter what Devil’s Robin Hood-like motivations are, he kills several Polish police officers who try to stop his destructive chase through downtown Warsaw (which may have actually been London, since Devil drives a red double-decker bus headed for King’s Cross).
But, this being a Salman Khan film, morality always tilts in Khan’s favor. No matter how many lives Devi Lal/Devil takes, he’s always the hero because his intentions were good. Like every Khan character, Devi Lal’s only flaw is that he doesn’t have a girlfriend when the movie begins.
There’s nothing good about this movie. The performances are terrible. Even the choreography sucks because it has to accommodate Khan’s stiffness.
Enough. We’ve seen this all before. Kick just takes the typical Khan movie to jaw-dropping new lows.
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