‘Bullett Raja’ Falls Wide Of The Mark; Faces Tough Time Ahead

Another Bollywood flick with big names has gone awry. This time, it is Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Bullett Raja, starring Saif Ali Khan and Sonakshi Sinha. In spite of all the promo and hoopla, the gangster-thriller couldn’t rock the box office and only grossed Rs 25 crore at the end of the 4th day, according to industry estimates. That’s a paltry sum, going by movies like Krrish 3 (Rs 24.5 crore on the opening day alone and a total of Rs 267.9 crore till December 2) or even the trouble-torn Ram-Leela. The latter’s BO collection was a little less than Rs 60 crore after Day IV, but this flick from Sanjay Leela Bhansali has finally entered the Rs 100 crore club and grossed around Rs 110 crore till date.

But let’s come back to the Saif-Sonakshi starrer and try to decode why the stickiness is missing. Based in a small town in Uttar Pradesh, the movie is mostly about gangsters and gun fest while Sonakshi plays Saif’s love interest. The theme may not sound too original, but it hasn’t drawn too much flak either. In fact, film critic and analyst Taran Adarsh tweeted about it quite enthusiastically: #BullettRaja movie review: Enjoyable, engaging and extremely distinctive. Not to be missed! But that was on November 27 and only a couple of days later, the reality hit hard. According to his column, this ‘Bullett’ has missed the mark! The movie got mixed reaction from other critics and that seems to be reflecting in the box office.

If Saif fans are hoping for a turnaround (à la Ram-Leela) in the coming weeks, they could be mightily disappointed. After all, Shahid Kapoor-starrer R... Raajkumar is coming up this Friday (December 6) and it has a similar theme – that of a small-time goon, caught up in a criminal life. Interestingly, Sonakshi is also the lead lady there and considering the fact that it is directed by Prabhu Deva, Saif’s flick could be in for some tough competition.

Finally, we can’t help asking the inevitable – is Saif losing his touch? Although Cocktail ($920 million) and Race-2 ($16 million) saw good response at the box office, other movies including Aarakshan (domestic net $6.5 million), Agent Vinod ($8.4 million against an estimated budget of $9.2 million) and Go Goa Gone ($3.8 million) failed to take off.

End note: Sunny Deol’s rustic action flick Singh Saab the Great has grossed Rs 42.1 crore till December 2 while Imran-Kareena’s rom-com Gori Tere Pyaar Mein has collected only Rs 30.20 crore. It seems both Saif and Bebo need some good luck and solid crowd support to sail through the coming weeks.

Image: Mazematlo.com