Hero Is A Colossal Disaster
Inexperienced and visibly unprepared, Sooraj and Athiya don't reveal the spunk we saw in Varun, Alia or Sidharth
So, director Nikhil Advani, who last gave us the impressive D-Day, takes charge, but this time he has the huge responsibility of ably introducing Suniel Shetty's daughter Athiya and Aditya Pancholi's son Sooraj as bonafide actors - which none of the two are at this point. Each scene in Hero is a scene that looks like Nikhil was briefed to "launch them." After a point, my guess is that Nikhil must be feeling like he's working for NASA with the amount of "launching" he had to do.
Among Hero's many failings is its inability to stay consistent. There is zero continuity and even Anees Bazmee shows some traces of logic, but the lapses here are so glaring that they don't escape your attention. When Sooraj kidnaps Athiya, he takes her into a safe-house which she cribs about (she is being told he's security provided by her father). He says he's got her fruits to eat. In two seconds, fruits magically turn into pav-bhaji! When they escape after an ambush, Athiya can clearly see that there are cops and men from the Army chasing them - yet she doesn't find anything amiss in cops chasing cops!
After some "Do you love me or NOT?" scenes, Sooraj decides to give up a life of crime for Athiya. How does he do that? In straight 5-minutes, he takes over an abandoned mill and transforms it into a swanky gym, all with firang clients and super cool graffiti. From a hitman, now he's a gym instructor. Now, if the guy doesn't work hard on his body language and expressions that may probably be the job he'd have to take in real life. Point being: Take acting classes, not kickboxing.
Athiya is relatively more comfortable in her skin as the rich, bratty kid of an Inspector General (a convincing Tigmanshu Dhulia), but she screeches way too much and bears a striking resemblance to Sonam Kapoor (as if she wasn't one too many already?). But with the right choice of films and proper grooming, the girl has the potential to go a long way purely due to her confident screen-presence and expressive face - something that is missing in Sooraj.
Meanwhile in the film, songs interject, the duo keeps running, bullets are sprayed, knives are drawn, blood is spilled like kerosene....but nobody dies. Ever. If Salman directed this film, it'd have been called Being (Super) Human. Hell, the title track, which was the most bearable thing about the film, isn't even a part of the narrative.
And the love story? Well, Sooraj-Athiya have some sort of chemistry but their love never feels real, there is no source to why they've suddenly gone nuts about each other - unless you count a scene in a disco where Sooraj defends Athiya's 'honour.'
Nikhil, as a filmmaker, is capable of so much more. His deft direction shows up in some scenes, like the one in a theatre where the film's story is summed up as a musical, but he's eventually bogged down by mediocre writing.
Hopefully, his next week's release Katti Batti, won't be a study in: how to abide by nepotistic principles in Bollywood and we'll have some real talent to see (it still has Imran Khan though.)
