‘Dunki’ movie review: Shah Rukh Khan and Rajkumar Hirani deliver a drama that delights and drags in equal measure

In ‘Dunki’, Rajkumar Hirani’s first and long-awaited collaboration with Shah Rukh Khan, the purpose and social concern is laudable but the storytelling feels facile and laboured after a point

Early in Dunki, a simplistic but heartwarming take on the poor illegal immigrants from Punjab who make dangerous journeys in a desperate search for greener pastures, a set of hopefuls find a way to crack the English test. They memorise a paragraph by rote and decide to parrot it to the examiners by just changing the name of the topic.

Inadvertently, the long scene with diminishing returns becomes a metaphor for the sameness that surrounds Rajkumar Hirani’s storytelling. Over the years, he has engaged the audience with almost the same story structure but always managed to imbue it with a beating heart and a smiling face.

In Dunki, Hirani’s first and long-awaited collaboration with Shah Rukh Khan, the purpose and social concern is again laudable but the storytelling feels facile and laboured after a point, largely because Hirani doesn’t want to test newer ways to put his point across. The spontaneity that we associate with his work is sadly missing.

Set in a small town in Punjab, Dunki goes into flashback to tell the tale of four characters with modest means who want to immigrate to London to get over their difficulties in life. When they are about to give up, Hardy (Shah Rukh), an ex-armyman, comes into their lives to make their dream a reality by taking a circuitous, illegal route. Along the way, he develops a soft corner for Manu (Taapsee Pannu) only to realise that her wish to cross over to a foreign land is stronger than her love for the man who gave her the belief.

The theme of illegal immigration may be relatively new for the Hindi film industry but it has been tackled in Punjabi films and the news pages are full of first-hand accounts of the perilous journeys that the so-called ‘donkeys’ make. So when the film presents the challenges as a novelty, it doesn’t come as a surprise. They feel tepid in picturisation and we keep looking for a little more nuance and a little more poignancy. The feeling becomes stronger when the end credits show some facts and figures superimposed on some heart-rending images of illegal immigrants.

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Hirani always puts emotional logic ahead of conventional logic and uses situational humour to great effect. Here he does it again but the results are not as consistently riveting and charismatic as they have been in the past. The emotional swell does overwhelm you two or three times but the seamless unpredictability of the narrative that has been the hallmark of Hirani and Abhijat Joshi’s writing is missing here. More importantly, in the light-hearted first half, the jokes around English and Englishmen start feeling repetitive. And some like one around the national anthem don’t land properly. Perhaps, Hirani has chosen England over the the US and Canada because he could use the colonial connection but in the present scenario the illegal immigration to the US and Canada is more newsworthy and relatable.