Kick (2014) is a fairly direct remake of an earlier Telugu film, and as far as I know the filmmakers didn't draw any inspiration at all from the Fumetti neri subgenre of Italian crime comics. This story of a thrillseeking, apparently amoral super thief who is on an outrageous international crime spree and pursued by a humorless, relentless, and ultimately ineffectual police officer has no relation at all to 1968's Danger: Diabolik. Rather than the usual Bollywood plagiarism, this is an accidental remake.
Beautiful but gloomy psychiatrist Shaina Mehra (Jacqueline Fernandez) has a successful practice in Poland, and she doesn't want to get married, but her father convinces her to meet Himanshu (Randeep Hooda), a potential groom and son of a family friend. Himanshu is a police officer, and quickly realizes that Shaina is nursing a broken heart. He asks her about the mystery man, and that means it's time for a flashback.
Flashback to Delhi: Shaina meets Devi Lal Singh (Salman Khan) while helping her friend elope. Devi is the driver, but he's also secretly communicating with the bride's mother the entire time. After the ceremony, Shaina asks him what the actual hell, and Devi explains that there's more of a "kick" that way, and the bride and groom will have a better story. The groom is used to Devi's shenanigans, while the bride is actually thrilled that she was able to marry the man she loves with her mother present. Shaina is not impressed.
She warms up to him after seeing a viral video of him beating up the goons who were harassing a woman in a restaurant, and even more so after meeting his parents (Mithun Chakraborty and Archana Puran Singh) and learning about his many advanced degrees and wide variety of skills. They begin to date seriously, and she gets him a job working at a chemical plant, but he soon quits, because the job doesn't give him enough kick. Devi and Shaina fight, and he leaves after vowing that earning money will be his new kick.
In the present, in Poland, Himanshu explains that he is also dealing with the one that got away, though in his case it's a bit more literal. The only criminal he's failed to catch is a mysterious and daring thief known only as Devil. (Could Devil actually be Devi Lal Singh? Well, obviously.) In their last encounter, Devil gave him a clue which, in a feat of logical contortion worthy of Burt Ward's Robin, Himanshu interpreted as the number of a flight to Poland. So here he is!
And just as the flashbacks are wrapping up, Devi appears to ask for directions, and doesn't seem to recognize Shaina at all. She investigates and learns that Devi has amnesia after suffering a fall, and she insists on taking over his treatment and bringing him to her family home to recover. Devi does not, in fact, have amnesia; it's all a cunning scheme to get close to Himanshu and win back his girl in the process.
Meanwhile Himanshu has made an actual deduction that makes sense; all of the rich men that Devil has targeted have been connected to businessman and philanthropist Shiv Gajra (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), who happens to be in Warsaw to accept an award. He knows who Devil's next target will be, so it's time to set the trap.
Like Danger: Diabolik, this is a game of Cops and Robbers in which we are supposed to root for the robbers. It's all gloriously improbable, with ridiculous scheme followed by absurd action sequence followed by ridiculous scheme, all culminating in an explosive bus chase through the streets of Glasgow-pretending-to-be-Warsaw. It's all style over substance, but it's a lot of style.
It's different style, though; rather than slick sixties Eurohedonism, Kick runs on goofy Bollywood earnestness. While Diabolik steals because he is horny for crime, Devil steals because he's helping terminally ill children. (That's a spoiler, but if you've ever seen a Salman Khan movie, it's not much of a spoiler.) And Gajra, Devil's chief target, is blatantly, transparently, cartoonishly evil, so there's no question of who we're supposed to be rooting for. If Kick were an actual remake of Diabolik, that's exactly the sort of change you'd expect.
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