'Brothers': Action Packed Family Saga

Film: "Brothers"; Cast: Akshay Kumar, Sidharth Malhotra, Jackie Shroff, Jacqueline Fernandez, Shefali Shah, Kiran Kumar, Ashutosh Rana, Raj Zutshi, Kavi Shastri; Director: Karan Malhotra; Rating: ***

Touted as the "Maha-Mahabharat" of modern times, "Brothers" is a high octane melodramatic action film from the stable of Dharma Productions which uses the fighting ring as the Kurukshetra.

It is a tale of two brothers, David (Akshay) and Monty (Sidharth) from a dysfunctional Christian family whose patriarch is the alcoholic street fighter Gerson Fernandes (Jackie Shroff) aka Garry.

Crafted in the three act drama format, the film begins on a tediously slow note but gathers momentum by the second act and gradually grips your attention in the last act.

At the very onset we are informed that street fighting though an illegal sport, flourishes in India. In an endeavour to legalize this sport, Peter Braganza (Kiran Kumar) an opportunist, announces that he is looking for fighters of substance so that he may bring the franchise of the Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Championship- Right2Fight to India.

Narrated in a non-linear manner, the narration begins with Gerson being released from a long term imprisonment only to find that his sons are now estranged and indulge in street-fighting occasionally. While he lives with Monty, he seeks forgiveness from his older son, David, but there is nothing he can do to unite his family.

It so happens that the two brothers; one aggressive and the other a strategist, one motivated with personal issues and the other motivated by angst, are selected for the Right2fight Competition. They are as predictably as ever, pitted against each other in the finale. It is a battle of prestige, desire and emotions.

Designed as a traditional fighting film, where the fighters are the usual self-destructive characters, here the fighting, also acts as a setting, more than a world, where the fragility of the relationship builds the tension of the saga.

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