Dhoom

When a band of fast and furious (or at least disgruntled) bikers get tired of their day jobs waiting tables at a pizza place, they go on a robbing spree that has the entire Mumbai police force up in arms. Only supercop ACP Jai Dixit (Abhishek Bachchan) and his shades can stop them before they rob again, and again. And again, because it takes him a quite a while to stop them.

Hollywood doesn't have a monopoly on vacuous action thrillers, and now and then other countries like to step up to the plate and show that they have what it takes to make a slick, empty piece of entertainment. Dhoom is one of Bollywood's efforts. Is it empty? Yes. Is it slick? Not really. Is entertaining? More than I expected.

Dhoom desperately wants to be slick and that's probably the most annoying thing about it. The screen doesn't need to be sliced into three separate shots that all show the same view, or other stupid camera/editing tricks that add nothing to the experience. I'm all for style over substance once in a while, but you actually need to have style for it to work.

The plot is borrowed piecemeal from numerous other action/thrillers and if you spend any time thinking about it you're liable to get a headache. How exactly are pizza waiters coming up with these robbery plans? Especially their final scheme, in which the movie switches from ripping off The Fast and The Furious or Point Break to Ocean's Eleven. These are some impressive pizza guys.

If you go into the movie expecting it to make no sense—or hoping for it to make no sense—Dhoom manages to be fitfully entertaining. It's got a few fun song and dance numbers that were better than I expected; crummy Bollywood action movies are often lacking in this area. There's a dance sequence involving fixing a car that made me chuckle.

Dhoom really delivers in the bad movie department in the final action scenes. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a boat/semi-truck chase scene before, and this chase goes on and off the water and the road. It’s ridiculous and will probably have you laughing in spots that the director intended to be dramatic. The hand-to-hand combat during these scenes seemed to be filmed using a fish-eye lens that had been handed to a drunken passer-by, which definitely adds to the experience.

Dhoom isn’t a good movie but it mainly achieves what it sets out to do; be entertaining. It’s filled with good-looking people, it’s got some pretty good dance numbers, and it’s stupid as hell. There are tons of pointless western films in this vein already, but if you’re looking for a stupid film where a boat chases a truck down the road and there are some song and dance numbers, this may be your best bet.