Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan seems to have grown restless in 2016. He's already released two films this year; the meta action thriller Fan, in which he plays a ficitonalized version of himself being stalked by a crazed fan who is also played by him, and Dear Zindagi, in which he plays a therapist to the twenty-something ennui Alia Bhatt. He's showing no signs of slowing with his next feature, Raees, already one of my most anticipated films of 2017.
While Fan was a bit of a serious turn for SRK in terms of his attempt to differntiate the two characters in a realistic way (he nearly succeeded), in Raees he looks to be going full Bollywood. This trailer shows Khan as Raees Alam, an '80s bootlegger in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Just when it looks like he has business all sewn up, we are introduced his nemesis, the formidable Nawazuddin Siddiqui as the only cop with the guts to take him on.
While I am a bit of an SRK fanboy, I can't tell you how excited I am to see my favorite working actor, and possibly the greatest in the world today, Nawazuddin Siddiqui squaring off with Khan. Siddiqui is the rare breed of actor who can work just as easily in this kind of big masala film as he can in the low key independent films where he first made his mark. This marks his first collaboration with SRK after a number of co-starring roles in films with the other two Khans of Bollywood, Salman and Aamir. If nothing else, Siddiqui's presence guarantees at least a modicum of grace and dignity among the din.
The look of the film, directed by Rahul Dholakia, is decidedly dingy, likely in homage to the great "angry young man" films (think Zanjeer, Sholay, Deewar) of the legendary Amitabh Bachchan. However, the trailer gives hints of a number of lively musical and romantic moments in which Raees's gruff exterior fades as his paramour, played by Mahira Khan, closes in on him.
The whole vibe given off by the trailer screams "throwback", in everything from the color, to the clothes, to the attitude, and I'm okay with that. This won't be the first time Shah Rukh Khan has attempted to capture the energy of Bollywood past. In his huge hit Om Shanti Om, he and director Farah Khan channeled '70s Bollywood, and more recently in 2013's Chennai Express where he pulled his own early '90s persona out of the mothballs for a crazy action adventure. In Raees, everything from the setting, to the color palette, all the way down to the title treatment on the poster screams early '80s Bollywood action, and that idea makes me giddy.
Raees hits cinema screens worldwide on January 25, 2017.