A Gentleman movie review: Sidharth Malhotra isn’t convincing in his ‘risky’ avatar

A Gentleman star cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Jacqueline Fernandez, Darshan Kumar, Hussain Dalal, Rajit Kapur, Supriya Pilgaonkar, Suniel Shetty
A Gentleman director: Krishna DK, Raj Nidimoru
A Gentleman rating: 2 stars

This latest outing by Raj and DK is a spy spoof cum thriller cum love story, and while the going is good, it’s not bad. But you have to wait the no-go bits out, and in the two hour and some run time, there are too many of those about.

Sidharth Malhotra who helms this enterprise plays a good guy who can also be bad. Now while the handsome Malhotra is perfectly pitched as the ‘sundar’ and ‘susheel’ fella of the title, he isn’t quite as convincing in his ‘risky’ avatar.

The action moves from splashy Miami to grungy Mumbai, and we see Malhotra swing from being a law-abiding home-owner who drives under the speed limit to a sharp-shooter who kills under orders.

Accompanying Malhotra is Fernandez playing a good-looking, good-natured ditz. There’s also a crooked defence minister, a bent spy-meister, a middle-aged couple looking for a suitable groom for their daughter, and a bunch of gun-toting fellows all after our hero.

Some of the proceedings, especially the light-hearted banter between Malhotra and his colleague, played by Dalal, are fun: that’s when you see the skills of the directors being utilized fully.

And while we are fully O-ding on the eye-candy on display (there’s ample evidence that Malhotra and Fernandez both possess washboard abs, and other whistle-worthy attributes), we also wish that there was some more comic-book energy in the plot, which keeps sliding and slowing.

That’s the only way spoofs can remain spiffy, and worthy of our complete attention.