It’s 2004, Mumbai. A seven-year-old Ruslaan sees his family getting killed and gets tagged as a terrorist’s son. He is adopted by the police officer in charge of this mission. In 2024, we meet a grown-up Ruslaan in Istanbul, where he messes up an important undercover mission. After that, we see Ruslaan going on various missions like these and messing it up every time. I wonder why his superiors continue trusting him despite such unfavourable results from him. I wasn’t very convinced that he does so discreetly because his non-biological father is against him joining the forces. Later in the film, his father and he face off to save the country from getting destroyed by a Chinese. I hope none of it made sense to you till now or you found the premise extremely dull because figuring out what out of the two was Ruslaan’s story is the question I kept finding answers to throughout.
At one point, I became lenient with Ruslaan because of the approach it takes towards Muslims in India. It felt like the need of the hour in the country’s current political climate. There are moments and dialogues that attempt to reduce the country’s mammoth bigotry quotient. I was impressed with this element in the film, and this continues for quite some time. I don’t know what happened at the end. The film takes a three-sixty-degree turn and decides to comfort the bigots. I think the confusion was the secret sauce while Ruslaan was being made. It is in such a huge quantity that the interval moment and the big reveal at the end generate nothing, making it inexplicably and unforgivably ineffective. Predictable was the next main ingredient. With a dated plot like this, it’s hard for even a good film to snub predictability. If you are attentive (which is honestly hard) while watching the movie, you will feel your patience is being tested. If you are not attentive (like I was) while watching the movie, you may feel that some effort is being put in by the makers to make the film engaging to the best of their ability.
There is a lot of action in Ruslaan. Sadly, it is poorly designed. I was willing to take that effort to notice what makes these action sequences different in some capacity. Every time an action sequence started, I hoped it would impress me. I was left colossally disappointed. The background score is blaring to an unacceptable extent. While it doesn’t feel like it is covering up for everything sad, the film had to offer every possible moment, but it doesn’t save them either. I would like to give a minus Z to the editing because Ruslaan largely feels like an exercise in boredom. The only saving grace of the film (for me) was the various international locations. I got a momentary relief noticing the landscapes of it, the architecture of the mansions, etc. One of the strongest elements of movies ruined that as well for me.
The protagonist’s performance is poor to a whole new level. Aayush Sharma gets a lavish, massive entry scene with action and a loud background score. It doesn’t take much time to realise the frivolousness of this scene, setting the bar for silliness for the rest of the film. I felt like Aayush Sharma had hidden his expressive side for unknown reasons, or he just doesn’t know how to emote. Most of the focus was on physique, which is still fine because, by now, the Hindi cinema audience is used to this, but that shine to it was distracting to a whole new level. I have nothing much to say about the newcomer Sushrii Mishraa as this wasn’t an appropriate film to analyse her acting talent. She wasn’t bad or pretentious, but thankfully, she didn’t look unnatural in any way. I didn’t understand for what joy the experienced talents like Jagapathi Babu and Vidya Malvade were neither earnest nor loud. They were certainly striking a balance between the both for reasons probably beyond our understanding.
Ruslaan is that rare film that makes you question its purpose in the first place. It’s not that one hasn’t seen something like this before, and there isn’t any harm in making the same thing over and over again. All such a film requires is honesty, which is massively missing in Ruslaan. How casually people inform each other about a character dying nicely shows the lack of dedication in making this movie. Even the all style no substance approach would have worked for Ruslaan had there been requisite attention in certain departments like action, aesthetics, sound, etc. Watching some impressively designed action in those locations would have been so much fun. Nonetheless, as I exited after watching Ruslaan, I quipped, is it too late to expect something or anything decent from the typical commercial Hindi entertainer? Decades ago, they defined Hindi cinema. Sigh.
meri maaa, CINEMAAA 