race3 — Hive

Race 3 begins with a build-up to Salman's character, Sikander. And needless to say, his entry shot in the film comes with blown up cars, run down motorcycles and drone shots of the skyline.

Anil Kapoor (Shamsher Singh) is Saqib Saleem and Daisy Shah's (siblings Suraj and Sanjana) father, and someone is trying to kill him. Enter Sikander — the family's saviour and bodyguard (and also Suraj and Sanjana's cousin). However, Sikander is nowhere to be found in the face of this danger

Salman's entry shot is exactly the same as the one we see in the trailer — i.e. standing atop a building, wearing a black cape. Superhero Sikander to the rescue. While he jumps off the building to reach his family, Suraj and Sanjana fight off a group of miscreants who want to kill their father.

Everyone's waiting for Sikander. And there he comes, dapper in a grey suit with two guns in tow. Needless to say, the level of action escalates with every passing minute. These characters haven't said more than a word or two. Clearly, the tone of Race 3 is being set right from the beginning. It's going to be a loop of bhai-action-bhai-action

Bobby Deol (who plays Yash — another cousin of the Singhs, like Sikander) gets a spectacular entry of his own, thrusting into the frame mid-air on a bike. He has the required swag to pull off this mysterious persona. Together, Bobby, Salman, Daisy and Saqib save Anil from being killed. And so, the Race begins.

Needless to say, we're rooting for Bobby.

After this high-speed opening, we are given the backstory of the Singh family. Shamsher (Anil) and his older brother (whose son Sikander is) used to supply weapons to the army in the 1970s. Shamsher and the brother have a falling-out leading to the latter's death. As a result, Shamsher is ousted from the village. Shamsher tries to convince his children to be nice to Sikander, because of the bonds of blood, but Suraj and Sanjana (who only address each other as "bro" to show their millennial cred) aren't buying this family drama. The lines are drawn within the family.

With so many characters to give screen time to, Race 3 spends a large part of its first 30 minutes establishing these individuals. After showing us the Singh family dynamics, we are then shown how Sikander and Jessica (Jacqueline Fernandez) meet. The eventful day takes place a couple of years ago (yay, another flashback) in Beijing. Salman magically has a so-fake-it's-funny French beard now, to denote that we've gone back in time. Jessica and Sikander's love story unfolds over a heavily produced song.

Just so that we don't get confused, the song is called 'I Found Love' and has Salman dancing in the snow in a ganji and his turquoise bracelet. Jacqueline uses the opportunity to rock a plain red sari. This is Race 3's version of 'Pehli Nazar Mein'. So far, so predictably good.

However, poor Sikander and his unfulfilled romance. Tch tch. Jessica goes missing and Sikander forgets about love, making his way back to the Singh family.

Meanwhile, in the present, Shamsher meets an old friend from India (and this is revealed to the audience with the use of a random Bhojpuri accent) who informs him that he's looking for a special hard disk — one which contains information that could help bring several corrupt politicians to book (and absolve Shamsher of the old allegations against him). This disk can be found in Cambodia. The Singh family's task is set, with the "mission" being led, rather obviously, by Sikander.

The film is heavily infused with the stock Race series tropes: action, cringeworthy dialogues, clothes that look like they belong in a very expensive mall, and wide landscape shots. What's missing, however, is the songs that would have served as a distraction amid the too-fast-to-miss pace. But instead of a pace, Race 3 has a train of things they want to show off — Salman and Bobby's swag, Jacqueline's dancing skills, high-octane action sequences among other things. As a result they end up losing the plot quite literally, and we are left with a medley of poorly written filler scenes, a story we're still trying to figure out, and twists that pale in comparison to the earlier two films.

The only saving grace so far is Bobby Deol as Yash, who brings the earnestness required to this film, reminding us of why we loved watching him on screen in the so-bad-they're-good thrillers of the '90s.

Where's the campiness of the Abbas-Mustan thrillers? Where's the tackiness of their family politics? (Remember Deepika Padukone and John Abraham's one-upmanship in Race 2? Or Akshaye Khanna and Saif Ali Khan's verbal punches in the original Race?)

What we get instead, is a full-blown battle between Sikander and Yash over Jessica. They're both in love with her, but neither trusts her. She had once fled the scene with a bag of cash. There's too much drama to catch up with. Give us a shirtless fight between Bobby and Salman instead!

So let's backtrack a bit. Here's an unconventional family where no one trusts the other. Shamsher, the patriarch. His offspring Sanjana and Suraj, who don't like Sikander, his nephew. MeanWhile Sikander and Yash, believe Suraj and Sanjana are out to get them, and even though they have their own issues, they team up to bring down the brother-sister duo. All this happens against the backdrop of the larger mission, of finding the hard disk in Cambodia that will help the patriarch Shamsher get back his reputation by ousting politicians in India who framed him eons ago. Phew.

By the middle point of Race 3, the battle lines are drawn. Will the family be successful in retrieving the hard disk without killing each other?