How to win friends and punch people.

Dishoom (2016) is not a movie with pretensions.  It knows exactly what it wants to be: a bombastic summer action flick with maverick cops, sports, jokes, a pretty girl, and no deeper emotional complexity than the enduring and eternal bond between buddies.  Spoiler: that's exactly what Dishoom is.

During a cricket tournament in Abu Dabi, Indian cricket superstar Viraj Sharma (Saqib Saleem) has gone missing.  Soon after a hostage video surfaces, apparently from a deranged, self proclaimed Pakistan fan (Faisal Rashid) who demands that the tournament be played without Viraj.  The local police keep Viraj's disappearance quiet, and the Indian government insists on sending one of their best, Kabir Shergill (John Abraham), to help with the case.

Kabir is a maverick cop who plays by his own rules, by which I mean that he's an arrogant jerk who is introduced beating up the guy who asked him not to smoke in the elevator.  Almost immediately after landing in Abu Dabi, he pulls a gun on a police officer and demands to be taken to the Indian team's hotel rather than the police station.

Miraculously, Kabir is not thrown in jail, or even taken off the case.  Instead, he is partnered with rookie cop Junaid Ansari (Varun Dhawan).  Junaid's main qualification is that he knows every street in the city, thanks to a year spent fruitlessly searching for a  missing dog.  (The dog turns out to be very important later.)  With the help of sexy pickpocket Ishika (Jacqueline Fernandez) they track down the psychotic superfan only to discover that he's a struggling actor who thought he was auditioning for a role.

Cut to the real villain, sports bookie Wagah (Akshaye Khana), who is tired of Viraj's miraculous last minute cricket wins.  Wagah also would like to make a great deal of money.  He tries bribing Viraj, but the cricket star is a patriot, and he will not betray his country, either for money or to save his own life.  Wagah orders his henchman Altaf (Rahul Dev) to store Viraj in nearby Abbudin.

Meanwhile, Kabir has finally been thrown off the case; he's a loose cannon who plays by his own rules, but so far he has not been getting results.  Junaid hands in his badge, and the pair break Ishika out of jail to help them get into Abbudin, where they an underground arm-wrestling ring which uses captive women as currency.  This leads to a big musical number.

Dishoom is probably most successful when it's a bromantic comedy.  Abraham and Dhawan have an easy chemistry, and the two characters do seem to bring out the best in each other, relatively speaking; Junaid softens some of Kabir's rough edges, while Kabir gives Junaid the respect that he needs.  I don't particularly like either character, but I believe that they like one another.

The romantic tracks are less successful.  Ishika clearly likes Kabir, but the characters barely interact at all, while Junaid keeps receiving unsolicited calls from Qureshi (Satish Kaushik) to tell him that the entire family saw Junaid's matrimonial ad and they didn't like the looks of him.  I will never say no to a Parineeti Chopra cameo, but it takes  along and not very funny brick joke to get her there.

The movie's real hero is Viraj, who suffers his captivity with dignity, holds firm to his ideals, and never points a gun at anyone over a trivial dispute. Unfortunately, he doesn't get a lot of screentime, but most of his screentime is shared with Akshaye Khanna, the cast's real standout.  I still think of Khanna as the gentle Sid from Dil Chahta Hai, but he's clearly having a wonderful time chewing the scenery and carrying out an evil scheme which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  

While Dishoom is mostly successful as a dumb action movie (it's dumb, and there is action) the movie keeps threatening to deal with serious issues, and then not following through.  The arm wrestling sequence and accompanying musical number are probably the worst example.  There's a harrowing moment when Kabir and Junaid catch sight of the captive women who are explicitly being offered as prizes, with one of the women silently begging for help.  They can't help yet (because secret mission) and it's Ishika doing the dancing for reasons that are never explained, and after the dance number and ensuing motorcycle chase the women are never mentioned again; instead we get a long sequence of Junaid repeatedly being hit in the crotch by flags.  It's a sour note in an otherwise silly movie.