Sri Sathya Sai Arts’ Ruslaan (UA) is the story of a terrorist’s son who joins RAW.

Ruslaan (Aayush Sharma) loses his terrorist-father in his childhood when the latter is killed in a police encounter. A police inspector, “““Sameer Singh (Jagapathi Babu), and his wife, Manju (Jaswinder Gardner), adopt Ruslaan. Although Ruslaan has been fond of the guitar since childhood, he joins the RAW as he wants to serve the nation. Of course, the fact that he works for the RAW is unknown to his family. His father, police inspector Sameer Singh, keeps telling Ruslaam to pursue his interest in music, but his only connection with music is that he teaches music in a college the drama so unreal that the audience completely lose interest and have to literally force themselves to keep themselves engaged in the proceedings. The shocking revelation in the second half doesn’t have half the impact it should’ve had. Consequently, after a point of time, the viewers simply watch the drama unfold, knowing fully well that anything and everything would be possible for Ruslaan to reach his final goal of exposing the enemies of India. It wouldn’t be incorrect to say that there are almost no high points in the screenplay or even any surprises or nuances in the characterisations. Every character and every aspect of the drama is so unidimensional that it is a wonder how anyone could invest crores of rupees in the inane and clichéd script. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that no character is given anything of consequence to perform. Mohit Srivastava and Kavin Dave’s dialogues are dull, his moments as Ruslaan’s friend, Tabla. Shahriyar Abilov has screen presence as Elvin. Zaheer Iqbal is alright as Raheel. Sal Yusuf (as Ozan), Beena Banerjee (as CMO – Aabha), Runav Shah (as kid Ruslaan), Aparna Beniwal (as Saba), Deepak Kriplani (as Saba’s father),

Nagpal, Akshdeep Sengupta and Vishal Mishra) is quite melodious but none of the songs is a chartbuster. Lyrics (Rana Sotal, Bipin Das, Shabbir Ahmed and Mellow D) are ordinary. Song picturisations (by Rajitdev Easwardas) are commonplace. Ketan Sodha’s background music is so-so. G. Srinivas Reddy’s cinematography is quite nice. Action and stunt scenes (by Vikram Dahiya and Dinesh Subbarayan) afford thrill.

Production designing (by Parijat Poddar, Baji Ramdas Patil and Deep Bhimajiyani) and art direction (by Mukesh Chauhan) are fair. Mayuresh Sawant’s editing is reasonably sharp.

On the whole, Ruslaan is an insipid fare which will turn out to be a non-starter.

Released on 26-4-’24 at Inox (daily 3 shows) and other cinemas of Bombay thru NH Studioz. Publicity: so-so. Opening: poor. …….Also released all over. Opening was weak everywhere.