The Big Bull review: Watch it only if you are a Abhishek Bachchan fan

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‘The Big Bull’, starring Abhishek Bachchan in the lead role and directed by Kookie Gulati is a film that takes us through the journey of a middle-class man and his dream of becoming the first billionaire of the country. Produced by Ajay Devgn and Anand Pandit, the movie premiered exclusively April 8 on Disney+ Hotstar.

The movie is said to be inspired by true events and its plot is pretty similar to Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story.

‘The Big Bull’ revolves around the life of Hemant Shah (Bachchan), a low middle-class Gujarati living in a small chawl in Mumbai who becomes a small-time stockbroker and manipulates the loopholes in the country’s archaic banking system to earn massive profits. Using these tricks, he becomes the largest broker and gets the moniker ‘Big Bull’. Investigative Journalist Meera (Ileana D’cruz) finds his game of growing. And eventually, the holes in the banking system that Hemant used to fill his vault get caught and it is here that the story of his downfall begins, which ends in an anonymous death.

The script lacks the punch for a plot of this nature and it seems like major events of Mehta’s life have been picked up and placed. The movie has taken a narrative approach where the story of Shah is narrated by celebrated business journalist Meera Rao (Ileana D’cruz), who writes the biography ‘The Big Bull’ on Hemant’s advice and narrates management students at an event in 2020. Meera Rao is the journalist in the movie who exposed the scandal of Hemant Shah.

Bachchan tries to look the part and his eyes shine bright whenever he talks about money. Nikita Dutta plays his wife but the makers have missed ageing in her case and only Abhishek is shown growing old.

Soham Shah has done a good job in the role of Hemant’s younger brother Viren Shah. The scenes featuring Supriya Pathak in the character of Hemant and Viren’s mother could have been made a bit more intense.

Actors like Saurabh Shukla, Samir Soni, Mahesh Manjrekar and Ram Kapoor are part of the cast but fail to create a lasting impact. Yalgar, the song by Carryminati, goes well with the montage of Hemant turning into the big bull. But the romantic track in the film just adds to the list of unwanted things in the movie. There is one dialogue where Abhishek says,”kahaani kirdaar se nahin, haalat se paida hota hai’’ is a redeeming feature of the movie.

Overall, the twisted story can be a one-time watch.