A Gentleman review: A VERY old wine in a new bottle.

Movie: A Gentleman

Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Jacqueline Fernandez, Suniel Shetty

Directors: Raj and DK

Producers: Fox Star Studios

Rating: 2.5/5 Stars

A Gentleman opens up with introducing us to Sidharth Malhotra, who is posing as a super-agent/master assassin Rishi who is getting tired of all the innocent lives that have been lost while carrying his duties handed over to him by a man who calls himself Colonel (Suniel Shetty). He reaches a point where he thinks he has had enough of the menace and takes away the identity of a Miami-based employee, Gaurav Kapoor and begins to set up the kind of life he has always dreamt of: A cushy job, a nice house in one of the best localities of a city, a car which can easily accommodate a family of five (though he doesn’t have one yet) and a small circle of nice and innocent friends. The plot of the film was quite similar to a school time short story (except the short story was WAY more interesting).

Coming back to the story, Sidharth’s Gaurav has found a potential partner in Jacqueline Fernandez’s Kavya, a colleague to Sid’s Rishi(who is now posing as Gaurav) who is a thrill seeking, bad boy loving (and a grossly underwritten) woman who only adds as much to the story as Katrina Kaif did in the Hrithik Roshan starrer Bang Bang.

A valued artefact with a bunch of secrets ingrained in them, a political connection, a secret service looking who wants the artefact to land in safe hands, blast from the past, cat-and-mouse chases, the peppering of quirky (but frankly, senseless) humour and everything leading to a mundane end, it’s all there! But, it’s all too predictable and yawn worthy. You could take a nice 10-minute walk around the popcorn area and come back without missing out on anything exciting.

Sidharth, who had stunned us all with his performance in Ek Villan, does not carry forward the quirky antics of an assassin in this dumbed down (and forcefully humorous) version of that very film. We wished that he would be a little bit like Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde. What also didn’t make sense is that how did Jacqueline’s Kavya, who was petrified beyond words after learning about Sidharth’s past, could so easily handle two guns and bombard baddies without a SINGLE bit of hesitation? What was that all about?

Another (senseless) point in the film was that a Miami-based corporate employee manages to call the Indian Defence minister. That makes me wonder: Is obtaining sensitive contact details of a high government officials ACTUALLY that easy?

The setting of the film in Miami actually makes way for some GREAT actions sequences, but it’s high time the directors understand that the dressing of a film will not help in taking the eyes off the boring writing.

One might be able to sit through this movie if he/she is a die-hard Sidharth Malhotra fan. Don’t keep high hopes from the film in terms of anything else.