Rowdy Rathore
- Director
- Prabhu Deva
- Studio
- UTV Motion PicturesBhansali Productions
- Release Date
- 1 November 2012
- Running Time
- 143 min
- Language
- Hindi
- Country
- India
- Budget
- ₹60.00 Cr
- Box Office
- ₹203.39 Cr
Review
Prabhu Deva's "Rowdy Rathore" is a schizophrenic mess that somehow stumbled into massive box office success, proving once again that commercial viability and artistic merit are entirely different beasts. The premise—a petty criminal mistaken for a dead cop's doppelgänger—has genuine potential, but the execution is a scattered, tonally confused disaster. Akshay Kumar sleepwalks through dual roles that demand more nuance than he's willing to offer; his Shiva is forgettable, and his Vikram Rathore is little more than a caricature of tough-guy posturing. The father-daughter relationship with Chinki, which should be the emotional spine of the film, feels grafted on and manipulative rather than earned. Deva's direction is all surface—loud songs, gratuitous action sequences, and crude comedy that mistakes vulgarity for humor.
What baffles me most is that the film occasionally hints at something halfway decent: there are moments where the confusion between Shiva and Vikram could have yielded real dramatic tension or at least genuine laughs, but the screenplay keeps abandoning these threads to make room for pointless dance numbers and tedious action set pieces. Sonakshi Sinha is wasted as Paro—a character so thinly written she might as well not exist. The film's cynicism is staggering; it's constructed entirely around spectacle and star power, with zero faith in story or character. That ₹203 crore box office haul tells you everything about Indian audiences' appetite for empty calorie
Storyline
So this guy Shiva is basically a petty crook hanging around Mumbai when he spots this gorgeous woman named Paro at a wedding and falls head over heels for her. She's from Patna, and when he tells her what he actually does for a living, he promises to turn his life around for her. But before he goes completely straight, he wants to pull off one last big heist with his buddy to get enough money to set them up nicely. Things go sideways when he steals what he thinks is a trunk full of cash from a railway station, only to discover there's actually a little girl named Chinki inside instead of any money.
Now Shiva's stuck with this kid who somehow believes he's her father, which he definitely isn't. He can't just dump her because a cop named Vishal keeps watching him closely, and on top of that, he's terrified that Paro will find out he's been hanging around with a child and think he's a deadbeat dad. When he finds a photo of Chinki and her actual father, Shiva realizes they could be twins—the resemblance is crazy uncanny, which explains why the girl is so convinced he's her parent.
It turns out Chinki's real dad is actually this super respected police officer named Vikram Rathore, a tough guy that criminals seriously fear. While Vikram is out looking for his missing daughter, he gets hit by an auto-rickshaw and suffers some serious brain damage that puts his life in real danger. Meanwhile, Shiva's relationship with Chinki slowly changes when he accidentally breaks her tape recorder that has recordings of her late mother's voice, and seeing how devastated she is actually makes him feel terrible about his cruelty.
