According to acclaimed French director Jean-Luc Godard, all you need to make a movie is a gun and girl; Tarantino took him at his word and now Bollywood follows fashion with ‘Tashan’.

It starts promisingly: a red Mercedes plunges over a cliff and into a pond. Its male occupant Jimmy (Saif Ali Khan) talks directly to camera underwater: he informs us that his life was radically different six months ago. We are then subjected to the first of several lengthy flashbacks, set in inexplicable locations.

Jimmy, a Mumbai call centre worker, is recruited by Pooja (Kareena Kapoor) to teach English to Lakhan (Anil Kapoor), a gangster. Predictably, Jimmy and Pooja fall in love by singing a song in Greece! They decide to steal Lakhan’s loot and run away. Lakhan engages “recovery King” Bachchan (Akshay Kumar) to track them down.

First-time director Vijay Acharya has watched too many Tarantino-blaxploitation movies from his foreign DVD collection. However, he lacks the ability to understand the genre he is trying to emulate. Acharya attempts to recreate ‘Kill Bill’s’ clever mishmash narrative structure. He fails: incoherent set pieces, crude dialogue, crass sexist and homophobic humour, and an extended ‘Crouching Tiger’ style action climax comprise the result.

Since a script appears to be non-existent, the A-list actors have resorted to preparing for their roles by hitting the gym: they equate emoting with stripping. An anorexic looking Kareena Kapoor emerges from the sea in a bikini. The middle-aged heroes get their shirts off at random, and Anil Kapoor competes with Kareena Kapoor (no relation) to display cleavage.

“Now I am going to rape you!” Jimmy threatens Pooja; a voiceover giggles: “That’s the way you like it!” Bachchan refuses to be seduced by Pooja but denies he’s gay as he is not “the other type”. When Kumar’s crotch-scratching killer character declares that he is “no Shah Rukh Khan” and that he is “bit of a dick” you nod in agreement.

Worse of all is its ‘Indians must come together’ unity in diversity patriotic message at the end: Nehru would be outraged to see his post-Independence slogan used to justify these gym bunnies actions.

The pretentious opening credits prefix a ‘THE’ before each cast member’s name. As the title literally translates, this is bunkum-style over substance, and we the audience are THE ‘tashan’ victims.

Director: Vijay K Acharya, 153 mins, 15, Subtitles

Stars: Anil Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor.

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