Release date 17th june
Director Nargish Kukunoor
Music Director Tapas Relia
It’s like a dazzling flash in the sky that lights up everything around it and soaks you instantly in its warmth.
This sparkling little gem deftly darts back and forth between disarming simplicity and hearty cheerfulness to deliver a feel-good road trip fable.
The spell it casts is so durable that it clings to you for hours after you’ve left the auditorium. So, why not some irrepressible, childlike hope in the face of grave adversity? Dhanak weaves an easy-flowing yarn around that compelling thought and comes up absolute trumps.
Shah Rukh Khan looms large over Dhanak without showing up in person even once. Salman Khan, too, registers his notional presence in the story.
One Khan fires the imagination of 10-year-old Pari (Hetal Gada); the other sways the heart of her younger brother Chotu (Krrish Chhabria), a spirited visually impaired eight-year-old who cannot get Salman ‘Dabangg’ Khan out of his mind.
A few days shy of Chotu’s ninth birthday, the siblings flee their unhappy home in quest of SRK, who they learn is shooting a movie in Jaisalmer and can help restore the boy’s vision.
Pari has vowed, in all innocence and faith, to show her sightless brother a dhanak (rainbow) on a dark night and her belief in SRK’s power to make her dream come true is unshakeable.
Pari and Chotu revive a dehydrated white rapper on a ‘world peace’ tour. Back on his fet, the guitar-strumming man sings about giving love a chance.
As a brief jamming session ensues, Chotu adds his enthusiastic voice to the music with a rendering of the folksy Damadam mast kalandar.
A spunky nomadic woman (Flora Saini) commits highway robberies without batting an eyelid and becomes a handy ally of the two runaways.
An ageing soothsayer (Bharti Achrekar) who, with the help of her “whispering stones”, shows the duo the path forward. On the way, Pari and Chotu also come across “a squat and strange man” (Suresh Menon)