In Agneepath director Karan Malhotra's desi adaptation of the Hollywood hit Warrior, it's not Akshay Kumar or Sidharth Malhotra who overpower each other in the battlefield - it is tragic melodrama frighteningly reminiscent of bad 90s films that suffocates the ring and eventually seeps out to drive you nuts.
David (Akshay) and Monty (Sidharth) play, like you know, brothers who are disgruntled and grow up to passionately hate each other. If you intricately evaluate the relationship, there isn't much reason for them to despise each other but they still do. Their father, Gary (Jackie Shorff), is an erstwhile fighter who's returned from jail looking more like an out-of-job actor than someone who's seen prison time for murder. There's also Shefali Shah who gets domestically abused all over again, but this time she's sailing in Worli naka instead of Warsaw or wherever in Europe Dil Dhadakne Do traversed.
How the institutionalisation of Mixed Martial Arts in the country takes the blood from the streets to a swanky ring with insufferable commentators is what Brothers is essentially about. Partially. It is also about Sid and Akki battling it out in the grand finale, a combat every breathing creature could foresee other than the characters in the film who are shocked beyond expressions on hearing this. (David-Monty 'Bai' hai, the foreign-accent speaking commentator declares)
So towards the end, you aren't rooting for any of them. You are rooting for them to run out of steam after their tediously choreographed fights so you can slyly escape the slaughterhouse to do more productive things in life (no, not like working on your physique or anything).
To be fair, Akshay Kumar is the only consistent actor in the film where everyone looks like they were paid extra to overact, especially Jackie Shroff and Ashutosh Rana. Jackie Dada goes dangerously overboard and freakishly-crazy as the boodha-bewdaa-berozgaar-baap. He even gets brutally kicked by one of the firang fighters in the film for overzealously cheering for his son. The kick that knocks him out of the stadium seems fitting and not for a minute do you feel bad.
That is perhaps Brothers biggest drawback. The director takes so long to establish the film's basic premise - which should have required not more than 15 minutes - that you really don't care much for anyone in the film.
To say that Jacqueline Fernandez is one of the nicer things in the film doesn't say much about the film itself. Looking pretty and convincingly Parsee-turned-Christian, she isn't allowed much to do and what she's expected to, like play games with her daughter and stay away from TV when Akki is fighting, she does fairly well.
Siddharth Malhotra is shockingly bad. Still stuck in the Ek Villain-mode, his face is expressionless other than the few times he pounces on his opponent. This was probably achieved by mildly electrocuting him. As the second half gets into combat mode, it practically renders the first half useless. We didn't need it. At all.
However, what's interesting is the way the film is shot (Hemant Chaturvedi) and edited (Akiv Ali). Although lengthy in its run-time, the film has some beautiful transitions. Like the scene where Akki-Jacky's lovemaking scenes seamlessly cuts into a newborn baby or the scene where Shefali Shah's character dies - the shot transitions from her laying dead in her room to the coffin in one shot.
An exceptional scene also is when the Mary song plays with Kareena oozing breathless sexual energy that is contrasted with the masculine vigour of Akshay training for his first MMA (they call the event it R2F, no it doesn't mean Run too Fast from the film, it means Right to Fight. Yes.)
Even the dialogues sound dated and Sidharth makes it worse.. The funniest sequence is when the duo is found sorting childhood issues in a brutal climactic fight that inspires chuckles instead of sympathy. There was also the track of Akshay's dialysis-ridden baby who's soon forgotten. Seriously, as wifey Jacky comes to watch the matches, I was worrying where the little one might be. Sadly, nobody else cared.
You could watch Brothers if you have been too lazy to hit the gym and are convinced will never go again. But watch only if you're going through a lean phase.