Are you a Salman Khan fan? Do you care if there is a story or some semblance of logic as long as Salman is punching people, doing ridiculous dance moves and taking off his shirt? Do you rate a movie by the actor’s acting chops? If the answer to the first question is yes, and the next two are no, then what are you doing reading this review? You should be in the theatres watching Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan right now, hooting and hollering.
Salman Khan’s 2023 Eid special movie is high on the Salman quotient, as is expected, and most of it lands right. As was confirmed by the piercing whistles in the hall that matched those on screen when Bhaijaan is beckoned, once when he makes his first entry — the whistles get louder when Bhai appears in full flowing, horribly ugly hair glory, donning his jacket while he jumps off a roof — and again when he needs to be brought back from an almost dead state — to promptly take off his shirt and show off his abs, pecs and lats.
There were cheers when his “OCD” made him correct a wrongly parked car by simply lifting it up by the fender and righting it. There were cheers every time he punched a man. And there were cheers every time he said “bring it on” (the only other person who got equal cheers was Ram Charan when he showed up in a song sequence for a brief cameo). But unlike most Salman Khan films, the hall was relatively silent for the rest of the film, which speaks volumes about Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan if you take Salman out of the equation.
The story, whatever little there is of it, is this — Salman “no-name” Khan is known only as Bhaijaan in a “basti” in Delhi of which he is saviour and protector. An orphan, who rescued three other orphans — Love (Siddharth Nigam), Ishq (Raghav Juyal) and Moh (Jassie Gill) — and brought them up as his brothers, Bhaijaan is a man with the force of a dynamite in his fist and a heart of gold. He remained a bachelor, losing his girlfriend — a cute throwback to Maine Pyar Kiya with a cameo by Bhagyasree — to make sure nothing comes between him and his brothers.
Then the ungrateful (I’m joking, everyone is forever grateful for Bhaijaan) brothers fall in love with Chahat (Vinali Bhatnagar), Muskaan (Palak Tiwari) and Sukoon (Shehnaaz Gill) — what’s with the names! — and start looking for a suitable candidate for their brother to fall in love with. Enter Bhagyalaxmi Gundamaneni (Pooja Hegde) from Hyderabad, who saves statues of Jesus from the rain (!), talks nineteen to the dozen, speaks in yo-bro code and despises violence of any form. Of course the brothers decided this is the Bhabhi they have been waiting for. And for someone who had taken a vow of bachelorhood, Bhaijaan gets ready to marry Bhagya at very short notice.
Salman Khan has a meta scene in which he tries to show off his range of emotions… only there isn’t one. Ah well, what we have always watched a Salman Khan film for are the dialogues (not his acting), and no, there aren’t many quotable ones and only some are remotely funny. Worse are the wannabe funny dialogues by the supporting characters (of which there are many and none memorable enough to mention), which end up being cringey.
Pooja Hegde carries herself well and is charming when she is not being over the top, which unfortunately is more often than not. The villains, of which there are two — Mahavir (boxer Vijender Singh), a property tycoon, and Nageshwar (Jagapathi Babu), who hates the Gundamaneni family — are cardboard cutouts of bad guys, adding no thrill or threat to the slo-mo fight sequences and are eventually of no consequence. And if Salman’s stiff dance movements — and they are getting stiffer with every movie — are anything to go by, we get why most of the fights happen in slo-mo.
The last nail in the coffin of this movie is the soundtrack. One forgettable and often regrettable song after another ends up extending the runtime of a dragged-out movie. No one in the hall sang along or got up and danced, and that is a rare occurrence for a Bhai movie. Rarely can one use the word boring for a Salman Khan movie, but apart from some of the very Sallu bhai moments, that is exactly what Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan is… boring.
