Imagine Game of Thrones crossed with Gladiator and you’ll have something like this entertainingly old fashioned action movie with epic levels of throat slashing, spectacular scenery and a fair bit of camp. Rumoured to be Pakistan’s highest-budget film, this remake of a cult classic from 1979 is the story of a young noble boy, Maula Jatt, who is spirited away to a poor village when a rival clan slaughters his parents.
After a flashback to that massacre we meet Maula (Fawad Khan) as a young man. The size of a well-fed bear, he earns a living fighting in gladiatorial games, pummelling poor souls from neighbouring villages. But the discovery of his past sets him off on a path of revenge against the Natt family responsible for killing his parents.
That journey is predictable enough but made juicily watchable by a trio of scenery-chewing villains from the Natt clan. Meanest of them is eldest son Noori (Hamza Ali Abbasi), an untameable mountain of a man who speaks in a menacingly gentle purr. Noori has chosen to live in prison, having heard it’s where the fiercest men in the country are kept. There’s a wonderful weariness in his disappointment at the poor quality of opponents. “Oh God, I ask you for lions and you send me sheep.”
Noori’s little brother and rival is petulant pretty-boy Maakha (Gohar Rasheed). There are shades of Nero in his psychotic smirk, his pouncing on a young woman for sexual thrills and killing her suitor. Last of the murderous siblings is sister Daaro (Humaima Malick). The movie ends, unsurprisingly, with a big fight between Maula and Noori – a fight in which Maula pauses to twiddle his fine moustache. Like I said, old school; still, I enjoyed every minute.
• The Legend of Maula Jatt is released on 13 October in cinemas.
