You can add Gurkha (2019) to the long list of movies where I have seen the Indian remake but not seen the American original, so I cannot tell you how well this Tamil action comedy captures the subtle nuances of Paul Blart: Mall Cop. I can only look at the movie in front of me.
The titular Gurkha is Bahadur Babu (Yogi Babu), though the opening sequence quickly establishes that he is the son of a Gurkha father and a South Indian mother, because Yogi Babu does not look at all like a member of the Gurkha community. Bahadur and his fellow Gurkhas provide security for their neighborhood in Tamil Nadu, but they are not respected, so Bahadur decides that he will become a police officer, and specifically a police officer like Singham.
Bahadur does not become a police officer. He doesn't make it through the first night of training before ACP Harris Jayaraj (Ravi Mariya) throws him out, along with the equally hopeless aspiring police dog Undertaker. Bahadur then gets a job with Shaktimaan Security, a small private security company owned by Kavariman (Manobala). (And the terrible commercials for the security company just reminded me of how much I miss Shaktimaan.) Initially he's assigned to provide security for a house, and he wanders next door and meets instantly falls in love with Margaret (Elyssa Erhardt), who happens to be the American Ambassador to India.
Bahadur never gets a chance to confess his love or even really get to know Margaret before he's reassigned to work at a large shopping mall; he nearly quits before he learns that Margaret visits the mall regularly for her yoga class. He's assigned to work with an older security guard named Usain Bolt (Charle), who shows him the secret room which the security cameras don't record where they can hang out all day, a secret room which I am sure will not be important in any way later. When Margaret's bag is stolen, Bahadur and Undertaker (mostly Undertaker) manage to recover it, and he manages to befriend Margaret, though she does warn him that as a career diplomat she could never marry an Indian citizen because it would require her to give up her job.
And then the terrorists show up. In theory they are a band of disgruntled former soldiers, though leader Thyagu (Raj Bharath) has his own agenda. They launch a fairly sophisticated scheme to lure a large crowd of civilians into the mall's movie theater with free tickets to Bahubali 3 and a large gift certificate, and then they strike! Margaret is the real target, but after killing a couple of hostages for emphasis they demand a small ransom from the government within an hour. When the government can't get its act together in time, the terrorists turn to crowdfunding, demanding a much larger ransom form the people of Tamil Nadu with a four hour deadline, which is probably the most genuinely interesting thing in the entire movie.
The police won't go in, because some of the hostages lured in by the promise of Bahubali are the wives of high ranking police officials, including the wife of ACP Jayaraj. Most of the security guards are forced out early in the siege, and the halls of the mall are being patrolled by flying camera drones. Only Bahadur, Usain, and Undertaker are left to save the hostages - it's basically Die Hard with slapstick, and whether you like the movie or not is going to depend on your tolerance for broad South Indian comedy.
That said, tone is an issue. Bahadur is a big goofball with a funny dog, but while he's mucking about people are dying. Even the hostages alternate between stark terror and comedy bits, though Thyagu and his men are at least consistently serious. Bahadur's level of competence also varies wildly, swinging from action hero to buffoon as the script requires, and sometimes literally swinging from a firehouse dangling from the roof.
On the plus side, the movie never suggests that Margaret (the ambassador) and Bahadur (the mall cop) end up together; my suspension of disbelief can only stretch so far.
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