CORRUPT . ION HURTS EVERYONE.

Mehta,Ashish Vashi, Neeraj Shukla) is at best derivative. We have seen the same story about the rise and fall of the 'Gangster With The Bloodied Gun' in scores of films by Ram GopalVarma and Anurag Kashyap.

There is nothing even remotely novel in the shootouts and the other shindigs (the latter includes a sudden sunny swing of Sunny Leone's 'Laila' kind into an item song). Even the tender relationship that Raees shares with his coy wife Asiya (Mahira Khan, assuming the Mere mehboob persona all pert, pouty and silky) has been done so much more effectively by ManojBajpayee and ShefaliShah in Ram Gopal Vanna s Satya.

Such considerations are perhaps unwarranted in Raees. Director Rahul Dholakia attempts to assemble an inherently messy saga of gangsterism set in the 1980s, told in the way films were narratedin that era. There is even an action sequence in a drive-in theatre where anAmitabh Bachchan film plays while Raees intimidates a builder.

Deliberately stagey and selfconsciously 'retro', Raees gathers its strength from the voluptuous resources of drama in the protagonist's life and the power of the narrative to make cliches come alive by their defiant reiteration. The director knows his material is weather-beaten and he doesn't pretend it is any other way. The shoot-outs filled with bombast and bravado, arefrom an era when such violence was consideredmacho.

At theend, when Raees's world falls apart with a close encounter of the 'thud' kind, there is no surprise left in the plot. It isn t only Raees who has nowhere to run to.

SubhashK.Jha