Bade Miyan Chote Miyan Review – Outstandingly Boring
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Director: Ali Abbas Zafar
Writers: Aditya Basu, Vashu Bhagnani, Suraj Gianani
It’s great to be ambitious, but if you’re going to make a movie with a larger-than-life villain who threatens to wipe out an entire nation, then show the heroes dancing to a mediocre song at the beach, you risk erasing any sense of tension, thrill, and suspense. The viewer is going lose attention.
Only the first few minutes of the 2024 Bollywood action movie “Bade Miyan Chote Miyan” (now on Netflix) are gripping. It begins with a well-shot scene of a terrorist attack on Indian forces transporting a top-secret package. The battle is well choreographed, featuring heavy armor, guns, tanks, rocket launchers—the whole shebang. The primary antagonist, a masked megalomaniac, swoops in on a chopper, goes on a murderous rampage, and steals the package. The Indian army enlists two elite court-martialed soldiers—Freddy (Akshay Kumar) and Rocky (Tiger Shroff)—to retrieve their goods. Will they save the country? That’s the premise. (Of course they will).
With an almost three-hour runtime (it’s 2 hours and 43 minutes but feels like forever), “Bade Miyan Chote Miyan” is packed to the brim with combat sequences, explosions, blood, sweat, and deaths, but it’s all strung together in the most inane manner. And the jokes—don’t get me started on the jokes—are so bad that the writers even acknowledge it by having other characters repeatedly say Rocky’s sense of humor “sucks.” When Rocky is shown a video of the terrorist attack, with the bodies of martyred soldiers, his first response is, “This psycho is definitely a virgin.” Not funny at all, Rocky. Not funny at all.
Both Akshay Kumar’s Freddy and Tiger Shroff’s Rocky are insufferably self-important, so much so that you’d think they are superheroes. Well, that’s definitely how they are portrayed, and not even in a fun manner. Prithviraj Sukumaran plays the primary villain, whose look and voice feel slightly inspired by Bane from the Batman universe. Sonakshi Sinha is wasted in her small part as Captain Priya Dixit, while Manushi Chhillar does her best to take on the bad guys as Officer Misha but isn’t badass enough. They should’ve given Manushi’s part to Sonakshi instead. But I don’t know if it would’ve made much of a difference in making “Bade Miyan Chote Miyan” slightly more watchable. With ill-timed forgettable songs, familiar action sequences, and a cliched climax, this film colossally struggles to be gritty.
Even Jennifer Lopez’s bizarre over-the-top sci-fi action flick “Atlas” wasn’t as bland as “Bade Miyan Chote Miya”. But if you really want to watch a fun action movie from 2024, there’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”, Fahadh Faasil’s Avesham and a bunch of other titles to choose from.
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