Dabangg

Cast: Salman Khan, Sonakshi Sinha, Arbaaz Khan, Sonu Sood, Vinod Khanna, Dimple Kapadia Director: Abhinav Kashyap Rating:** ½

Da-bang. D-Bang. More Bang For Your Buck. The relentlessly publicised Dabangg comes with the kind of near-forgotten buzz that used to get generated back in those days when there were only single screens, and opening Fridays would see box office windows smashed by surging crowds.

There’s the inimitable Salman spread across every inch of the stretch. There’s new girl Sonakshi who has the smoulder-and-sweetness that’s gone missing from Bolly-hopers these days. And there is the unparalleled Munni doing the badnaam thing in an item number which rocks the rafters.

With all the ingredients of a masala entertainer lined up, what could possibly go wrong with Dabangg? It mainlines Inspector Chulbul Pandey (Khan) who makes up for his sissy monicker by prefacing it with Robin Hood. As in Hamaara naam hai Robin Hood Pandey, pyar se log humein Chulbul kahte hain : he doesn’t actually say it, but you hear the echoes of that classic line when Chulbul Bhaiyya opens his mouth. That’s what Abhinav Kashyap’s directorial debut is-- an unabashed tribute to the 70s films set in small town India, where the hero was allowed a little naughtiness as long as he was the saviour of the poor, and a saint when it came to the women in his life, namely his mother and his legally wedded wife. The villain was given some wiggle room, but always had to lose in the climax, even if he was better built than the hero.