If you ask my about anything related to finance, you’ll mostly see me make a poker face. And that’s because I am not well versed with the world, nor have I been extremely interested in the field. This could be because of my not so friendly relationship with Mathematics.
When Scam 1992 was released last year, I heard a lot of people talk about it. There were rave reviews from several people. However, the length of the series wasn’t something I was up for. 10 hours of a stock market-related scam was not something I was up to. (Let’s not judge me here, there are many of you who haven’t seen Harry Potter yet, and I can judge you for the same). However, I also wanted to have a graphical knowledge of this Harshad Mehta scheme.
So, when The Big Bull released on Hotstar, I was all for it. 2 hours and 31 minutes is something I was definitely ready to give for a movie. Another reason was the presence of Abhishek Bachchan, I’ve always liked his movies and it’s a pleasure to watch him on screen.
To give you a little information about the movie, The Big Bull released on Disney+ Hotstar on April 8, 2021. The film stars Abhishek Bachchan, Ileana D’Cruz, Nikita Dutta, Sohum Shah, Supriya Pathak, Saurabh Shukla, Ram Kapoor, Shishir Sharma, Sumit Vats and many others. You also have Mahesh Manjarekar in a cameo appearance.
The star cast is something that is capable of producing a decent movie. And while the movie isn’t as catchy as Scam 1992 in the critics’ eyes, we need to understand that there are a lot of things that have to be taken into account.
For someone who has no prior knowledge of this, I personally found this to be a good one time watch. Will I watch it again? No, I won’t, and that’s because this subject is not my cup of tea.
Has Abhishek Bachchan done a good job? Of course, he has. I think Abhishek Bachchan is one of the most underrated actors in Bollywood. He has given some stellar performances in the past, and that’s something no one can take away from him.
As far as The Big Bull is concerned, I was completely convinced by Junior Bachchan’s acting skills and he does deserve an applaud for doing a great job here. His body language, his expressions, his dialogue delivery, and his conversations with the eyes, all of them were stupendously done. No complaints here. In fact, there were so many times when I got the Guru vibe from him while watching this movie. For those who have been trolling him need to take a chill pill because where the credit is due, a person should get it.
Ram Kapoor, Samir Soni, Saurabh Shukla, Sanjay Manjarekar and Shishir Sharma have had smaller roles, but I don’t think there’s much to complain here.
Ileana D’Cruz wasn’t splendid but there’s nothing groundbreakingly bad here as well. She was average in the movie. I wish there was more of a Sucheta Dalal vibe here, but it could be because of the fictionalized version of the event here.
Sohum Shah who played Abhishek Bachchan’s brother could have done better. At times, there was a little too much overacting going on.
My problem was with the entire romantic aspect of Harshad Mehta’s life. I wish the makers wouldn’t have added so much masala to make it a little too Bollywoodish to my taste at least. Another problem was the demonic laughter of Abhishek Bachchan in between. I mean, why did we have to add a Ravan sort of a sound to it, the movie would have been better without it.
I think what went wrong for The Big Bull is the release of Scam 1992 before it. Because all that happened was comparisons between the two. What needs to be understood is that you only can add so much into a movie as compared to a series.
Also, this was a fictionalized version of it, and since Sucheta Dalal was behind the making of the series, the makers had the liberty to add more facts as compared to The Big Bull.
All in all, I found this movie to be a good weekend watch. I would cut a few points because of the reasons already mentioned above. However, I still believe that the movie is a decent make and at least Abhishek Bachchan is one person who doesn’t need to be bashed. He did a good job and was the one that held the movie through the 2.5 hours.
Talking about rating it, I’d give it 3 stars at least. If you’d keep the comparisons aside, this movie does deserve a chance.
Review: 3/5
Start Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Nikita Dutta, Ileana D’Cruz, Sohum Shah, Ram Kapoor and Saurabh Shukla
