Pride and Punchability

 Khiladi 786 (2012) is the most recent installment in the long-running Khiladi series of films, but all the movies really have in common is Akshay Kumar in the lead role and "Khiladi" in the title, so there's no need to watch the other 785 first.  

Kumar plays Bahattar Singh, who is introduced as a heroic Punjabi police officer who intercepts goods being smuggled in food trucks, and is honest, incorruptible, fearless, and so good at fighting that the laws of physics are merely polite suggestions.  Except he's not really a police officer; Bahattar and his family are criminals who hijack the trucks, let the police arrest the smugglers, and then split the proceeds with their corrupt police pals.  Business is good, but the family's reputation is bad enough that no Indian family will let their daughter marry Bahattar.  His grandmother, mother and sister-in-law are African, Canadian, and Chinese, respectively, but he's hoping to find a traditional Indian bride.

Meanwhile, marriage broker Champaklal Desai (Manoj Joshi) and his son Mansukh (Himesh Reshammiya) are celebrating another successful match made.  The bride's father insisted on an arranged marriage rather than a love marriage for his daughter, but Champaklal actually arranged for the daughter to marry her long-time boyfriend, and they're only pretending not to know each other.  As Champaklal explains to his son, a little fibbing is okay if it leads to a marriage.  Mansukh repeats his father's words to a potential client, while standing next to a live microphone, at the actual wedding.  Suddenly the wedding is of and a furious Champaklal throws Mansukh out of the house for ruining yet another marriage.

Mansukh and his friend Jeevanlal (Sanjay Mishra) are drinking and lamenting this turn of events when Jeevanlal tosses a bottle away and it crashes through the windshield of Indu (Asin), who was driving through the street at breakneck speed in order to scare away a potential groom.  Indu is the sister of powerful gangster TTT (Mithun Chakraborty) so Mansukh and Jeevanlal are quickly surrounded by armed men, but when TTT finds out that Mansukh is a marriage broker, he's happy to forgive everything, as long as Mansukh can find Indu a groom from a  good family within ten days.

Fortunately, Mansukh met what he assumed was a heroic policeman while visiting Punjab for a wedding, and he knows that Bahattar is looking for a bride.  He heads to Punjab to arrange the match, and when asked tells Bahattar's family that Indu comes form a family of police officers.  Both families are criminals, but they both believe that the other family are police, and so wackiness ensues.

Indu, meanwhile, does not want to marry Bahattar because she already has a boyfriend, hapless Azad (Rahul Singh), who is in prison and constantly on the verge of being released before he screws it up again.  She uses all her tricks to frighten Bahattar away, but he's a card-carrying action hero, so he can take it.  He's also a decent and kind person and Azad is not, so she's a little conflicted, suddenly.

Khiladi 786 is the Khiladiest of all the Khiladi movies.  It's got an engaging farcical premise wrapped around the romantic storyline.  It's got Johny Lever. It has absolutely ridiculous action scenes; Bahattar is outright superhuman for no apparent reason, and other characters comment on it.  It has back up dancers in astonishingly skimpy outfits and an R. D. Burman themed nightclub.  And unfortunately it has Akshay Kumar wearing dark makeup to play his own long lost brother, which is really not cool.

And ultimately, it's nonsense piled on top of further nonsense.  Literally nobody wants to marry the handsome, rich action hero who only steals from criminals and has a notoriously good heart?  Can't TTT just hire a marriage broker rather than literally finding one on the street?  And why does Azad, who has been a low level criminal loser throughout the entire movie, suddenly have a small army of goons working for him just in time for the climax?  Doesn't matter.  Back to the farce and punching.