A Gentleman is another recent mainstream Bollywood movie I enjoyed a great deal. When I booked the ticket all I had in mind was "Hey, it's made by the same guys that made 99 and Shor in the City". After I booked I remembered, "Hey, didn't they also make Go Goa Gone and Happy Ending? Crap!" On the face of it, there was nothing else remotely promising. And the first 20 odd min had me regretting my decision with its wobbly pacing and stale humor. But then the movie started coming together, running multiple plot strands that (without spoilers) converged with a skillful timeline swerve that will either have you pleased or scratching your head going "समझ में नहीं आया". After that the movie is a tight and racy action comedy that stays within formula but milks it well. And Siddharth Malhotra is genuinely good in his part, exuding both toughness and self-deprecating humor. I've never seen any previous film of his but he generally seems to be cast as a depressed romantic fool a lot of the time. But here he conveys the ass-kicking buffed up hunk without it ever dipping into smug douchebag territory. The action sequences are immensely well done (including a nice riff on a Mission Impossible style heist, that includes rappelling down a glass-fronted tower building) and brutal hand to hand combat never gets old. Also the humor offers a continuous counterpoint to the violence (Amit Mistry seems to be continuing his role of Kuber from 99).
Sadly, like Jagga Jasoos, this is another cool movie that seems to be starved of an audience and likely to fizzle out pronto. Cinema on a weekend night was about a quarter full.
