It has almost been a decade since ‘Dabangg’ (2010) released. That was the post-Ghajini/post-Wanted phase when masala films were made by the dozen every year and most of them managed to strike the bull’s eye. In the recent past, such films are being made less frequently as the masala cinema wave has been taken over by the high-concept cinema wave. Most filmmakers in the Hindi film industry are looking for out-of-the-box concepts and aiming to tell stories that have never been told before. Contrary to what some of them would like to believe, the masala film genre is still alive as seen by the success of films being made in South India or the ones that are being remade in Bollywood, there is still a huge market for them.
What separated ‘Dabangg’ from the other films made in that genre in that time was that director Abhinav Kashyap made sure that the milieu, lingo etc. of the film seemed authentic. This factor helped the film stand out despite a fairly generic plot and it turned out to be the highest grossing Hindi film of that year. ‘Dabangg 2’, the second film in the franchise, was directed by Arbaaz Khan and now Prabhudeva has been given the realms of directing ‘Dabangg 3’.
‘Dabangg 3’, as evident from the trailer, is both a sequel and a prequel to the first two films. While it traces the journey of Chulbul Pandey (Salman Khan) after the events that unfolded in the second film, it also gives one a good glimpse into the life of the younger Chulbul, much before he became a cop. The romantic angle between Salman and Saiee Manjrekar looks interesting and seem to add a tinge of freshness to the narrative. In the trailer, we get to see the events of the past and the present in a balanced manner and one assumes the link between the two is what the film is trying to connect here.
Salman Khan looks as dashing as Chulbul as he looked in the first two films. Looking at how young and fit he looks, it makes it difficult for one to believe that he is all of 53 years old! The trailer packs in enough masala for the viewers and fans of the franchise and promises to be bigger and better than the first two films in the series.