Gabbar Is Back

A university lecturer teaches his students how the system works. The same man leads a network in another life: he abducts corrupt officials, tries them and punishes them. Nobody knows who he is; he calls himself Gabbar. The police come after him and one officer begins to work out his method. As the narrative proceeds, why he does it comes out. Radha Krishna Jagarlamudi directs. Akshay Kumar takes the lead; Shruti Haasan and Jaideep Ahlawat are in the cast. The film is a remake of a Tamil production built on the same idea. The matter it treats is corruption and what it means in daily life; the film works it directly and angrily. The solution it argues for is outside the law; the narrative does not debate that and puts its hero in the right. Akshay Kumar took one part after another in mainstream films on social subjects in this period and this belongs to that line. The crowd scenes and action sections are at the level the genre expects. Its limit is point of view; the narrative presents a complicated problem as something one man can solve. Who it is for: viewers who like mainstream Indian action and films on social subjects. Who it is not for: the narrative is sloganeering, the violence is justified, and the characters are one dimensional.