Om Review - Aditya Roy Kapur & Sanjana Sanghi's Ancient Mass Film Will Make Your Eyes Bleed

Known for his romantic boy image, Aditya Roy Kapur has come across an out-and-out action drama with OM. Supporting him in this action-packed ride is Dil Bechara girl Sanjana Sanghi. Okay, so these are the only two good things about the film. Yes, everything else there is bad. I repeat, every single thing is BAD! It's as bad as renaming Om: The Battle Within to Rashtra Kavach Om. Bollywood makes around 200 films a year, and we hardly get 20–25 watchable films. So the point is that we make more bad films than good ones. Why? Because we make films like OM. Kapil Verma's mass action saga is decades late, hence unbearable.Om tells the story of Om aka Rishi (Aditya Roy Kapur), a RAW officer-cum-para commander, who is after a Kavach (a new technology that creates a laser shield) to prove that his father, Dev Rathod (Jackie Shroff), is not guilty. The flashback sequences reveal a few secrets that aren't true, or maybe they are. Well, that's what you have to find in the film. Raj Saluja and Niket Pandey's script takes you 5 decades back from today and bores you with 70s melodrama. There is not a single conflict that you haven't seen in those retro masala entertainers. The so-called Kavach is the only new thing, but even that's not original. Don't tell me you haven't seen Wakanda's story in Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War. So overall, you can assume that there is no story in Om and Lord Shiva will bless you by saying, Om Namah Shivay.Speaking of performances (if there are any), Aditya Roy Kapur shows his muscles well, not his acting talent. He is so loud sometimes that you feel like scheduling an appointment with the ear specialist. However, he is good at action scenes. And so is Sanjana Sanghi. She has a fantastic action sequence in the beginning, which raises the heat more than expected, only to leave you cold and dry later. Prakash Raj is hardly watchable and mostly unbeatable. Our Bindas Bhidu, aka Jackie Shroff, keeps his swag intact, whereas Ashutosh Rana and Prachee Shah pass it out with mediocre scenes.Om fails to win the battle against its terribly outdated writing. The screenplay does nothing else but make it worse. Even Manmohan Desai's films would have looked modern and advanced in front of this disastrous show. The climax reaches the new heights of illogicality. Niket Pandey's dialogue makes you even more uncomfortable. One of them goes like this: "Dhyaan se sunna, Kaan se nahi". Holy smoke! What was that? How can someone hear something without ears? I mean, who does that? And who was the editor to finalise such crappy scenes? Forget ears, even eyes can't handle the gruesomeness for a second. Then super sexy Elnaaz Norouzi appears in an item number, Kala Sha Kala, and you are hooked to the screen for 3 minutes while the rest of the songs give you time to have small naps.Ahmed Khan has given us back-to-back cinematic wonders, Baaghi 3 and Heropanti 2, and now he gives us Om. The only difference is that he is the producer here, not the director. Well, but then there is Kapil Verma. Om could have made a blockbuster masala entertainer with this script, but in 1972 – that's 50 years ago. Kapil Verma's direction is weak, but that's not the issue here. The biggest issue is that it's terribly outdated. Rashtra Kavach Om has three good action scenes, but that's cheaper than parking fees at the cinemas. For the rest, it has nothing, I mean nothing at all, not even a cent, to be worth your time. So better skip it. Jai Bhavani.