It could have been honed even further, were it not for director Dhawan’s determination to speed through every aspect of the film, from his rolodex of Bollywood personalities making rapid, unmemorable cameos to the succession of stereotypical Middle Eastern backdrops for Kabir and Junaid’s increasingly implausible capers. The partnership has a rocky start, but before long, they’re stripping down to matching neon orange briefs that reveal mirror-image sets of abs, addressing each other as K and J (the “Men in Black” reference will go unnoticed by few), and the buddy cop formula is complete.
He is joined by Junaid (Varun Dhawan), a somewhat bumbling rookie who is as bubbly as Kabir is brooding, but leaves much to be desired in terms of his investigative expertise. Brought in to spearhead the search, the no-nonsense Indian Special Task officer Kabir (John Abraham, expressionless as usual) has supposedly incomparable skills, including sniffing out his girlfriend’s secret lover, pointing a gun at anyone who doesn’t meet his every demand, and smoking in inappropriate places.
On the eve of a major cricket match with Pakistan in the UAE, India’s star batsman Viraj Sharma (Saqib Saleem) is kidnapped. The premise is slightly improbable, but not without a fair share of intrigue. But the use of this word to encapsulate the film is a questionable decision - sure, blows are delivered, cars get chased by helicopters, and boats explode, but “Dishoom” sputters soon after it starts by way of a promising plot that veers maddeningly off-course. The only thing that makes much sense about Rohit Dhawan’s “Dishoom” is its title: the classic Bollywood onomatopoeia employed as the sound effect when an actor throws a punch, or a term used colloquially (“dishoom-dishoom”) to describe an action movie.
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