Bhaiyya Ji Review: Over-the-Top Drama Falls Flat

Director: Apoorv Singh Karki
Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Suvinder Vicky, Jatin Goswami, Zoya Hussain, Vipin Sharma
Run-time: 135 minutes
Storyline: Ram Charan, who goes by Bhaiyya Ji, a retired goon, seeks violent revenge for the murder of his stepbrother

‘Bhaiyya Ji’ a cross between Bhojpuri and South Indian masala movies was recently released on Zee5.

The film is a new type of beast altogether, with explosive action, dramatic dialogs, cacophony and unnecessary rhetoric.

Two wonderful actors Manoj Bajpayee and Suvinder Vicky, who usually like to underplay their characters, mouth stagey dialogs giving the impression that they have mistakenly crash-landed on a Salman Khan Set.

But all of that later, let’s begin with the plot and storyline.

The film opens at Ram Charan Tripathi aka Bhaiyyaji’s (Manoj Bajpayee) ancestral home, decked up for his marriage to his long time sweetheart Mithali, (Zoya Hussain). He is keenly awaiting the arrival of his younger step brother, Vedant (Akash Makhija) who is soon to board a train back home with a couple of friends.

The brother never arrives, owing to a scuffle that leads to his death, at the railway station with an influential Gujjar, Chandrabhan Singh’s (Suvinder Vicky) son Abhimanyu Singh (Jatin Goswami).
This forces, Ram Charan Tripathi, a retired and feared criminal, to come out of self-imposed retirement to avenge his brother’s death and fulfil the promise made to his step mother.
The narrative is predictable, the dialogs and direction laughable. An archetypal mother seeking an eye for an eye, a would-be wife (Zoya Hussain) who can pull the trigger, a slimy police officer (Vipin Sharma) who shifts sides, and so on.

Long dialogs and dramatic rendition tries hard to build the character of Bhaiyaji, who funnily after super long dialogs, histrionics, super slow-mo visuals, in an anticlimax, gets injured in the first face-to-face itself.

This leads to his resurrection and then more drama and then some more physical injury to Bhaiyyaji, that leads to even more drama.
This continues till finally he rescues his step mother and slays the killers of his brother.
The film is unwatchable from the word go. There is no sense of time and space. The characters travel between Noida, Delhi and Bihar in a matter of seconds.
There is a sequence, where Chandrabhan Singh’s cronies are loading black money in boxes in the train. There is atleast a truck load of boxes full of money, and interestingly, the boxes are all see-through and the notes are arranged in such a fashion that they are facing the transparent walls from all sides. It’s hysterical.
In an idea straight out of the 70’s, in the climax, the villains capture Bhaiyyaji’s mother to leverage their position against the mighty Bhaiyyaji. To add more fuel to the fire, she is hung on top of a firepit to roast; but low and behold, Bhaiyyaji saves the day and her and while at it, kills the antagonists too.
All in all poor storytelling, bad acting, illogical script, laughable direction. Don’t watch it, even if you have nothing better to do!!