7 Dogs movie review: A global cartel called 7 Dogs. A super-strong drug called Pink Lady. Good guys. Bad guys. And a billion-dollar budget. Make that billions. And there’s your Big Arabic Blockbuster, studded with international stars and locations, its India release buoyed by the presence of Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt.

I must confess that I went into the movie mostly to see what the two Bollywood superstars would do in a film like this one, whose plot-line resembles countless films they’ve been part of. Clearly, the Belgian-Moroccan director duo of two of the ‘Bad Boys’ capers– as well as a couple of episodes in the enjoyable series ‘Ms Marvel’– are capable of mounting films on scale, creating kinetic set-pieces with a high degree of entertainment.

But with this one, top-lined by Saudi stars Karim Abdel Aziz and Ahmed Ezz, accompanied by the dapper Giancarlo Esposito, and the very international Monica Bellucci, the fun factor dips in a thin screenplay saddled with predictable patches.

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Khalid (Karim Abdel Aziz) is an intrepid Interpol agent, about to hang up his boots for a sedate desk job and holy matrimony, not necessarily in that order. But he’s pulled off his pile of files, leaving his anxious to-be bride and know-it-all mother fighting over the wedding plans, for a new assignment: to stop the 7 Dogs in its tracks, for which he is teamed up with the dubious Ghali (Ahmed Ezz), the latter being the only one who can help infiltrate the gang.

The trouble with shooting everything on a set, however gigantic it may be– is that everything looks like a set, and computer graphics look like computer graphics. When the action spills over into the desert, the vistas are breath-taking; the rest, whether it’s Shanghai or Mumbai, is as generic as it can be.

What is it with international productions thinking that narrow, over-crowded gallis represent Mumbai? In a shack nestles Salman Khan as a small-time informer called Johar; in a bigger shack, Sanjay Dutt holds court as flamboyant goon Ranjit. They’re both big draws in the Middle-East, Salman being the bigger one, but their parts are nothing but glorified cameos.

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The second half lumbers about, with Khalid and Aziz team-tagging through a series of seen-before sequences, involving vault-breaks, poker games, and desert shoot-outs. And the promise of a follow-up.

7 Dogs movie cast: Karim Abdel Aziz, Ahmed Ezz, Monica Bellucci, Giancarlo Esposito, Salman Khan, Sanjay Dutt


7 Dogs movie directors: Adil El Arbi, Billal Fallah


7 Dogs movie cast: One and a half stars