In his latest conversation with his own screen image, Salman Khan plays a Man With No Name who is known as bhaijaan, or dear brother, to one and all. The 144-minute Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan is about the joys and benefits of brotherhood.
Bhaijaan has pledged never to marry to ensure that he always stays close to his three brothers Love (Siddharth Nigam), Ishq (Raghav Juyal) and Moh (Jassie Gill). The young men, while devoted to Bhaijaan, are eager to wed their girlfriends. So they set up a match between Bhaijaan and Bhagya (Pooja Hegde).
She’s a “conservationist of antiques”. Surely that isn’t why she falls for a relic? Anyway, Bhagya has a brother of her own, Balakrishna (Venkatesh), who worships non-violence. That’s a problem because Bhaijaan is a god of violence. When he finds a wrongly parked car, he moves it around with his bare hands.
An old adversary, Mahavir (Vijender Singh), and a new one, Nageshwar (Jagapathi Babu), pop up to ruin Bhaijaan’s union with Bhagya. Once they are crushed, everybody shoves off to shimmy to Let’s Dance Chotu Motu (whose lyrics include nursery rhymes).
Farhad Samji’s remake of the Ajith-led Tamil film Veeram (2014) has the feel of an unruly picnic where everyone is invited. The spread includes all the elements typical of a Salman Khan movie, but in more judicious quantities than in his previous few outings.
This helps, since there are almost no new discoveries. Except, maybe, that Pooja Hegde holds her own against her hard-bodied leading man, the Delhi Metro can keep on running despite broken windows and mangled equipment (courtesy Bhaijaan’s fists of fury) and denim hotpants go well with rolled-up lungis.