Khiladi 786

About the film

Khiladi 786 is a 2012 Indian Hindi-language action comedy film directed by Ashish R Mohan. The film stars Mithun Chakraborty, Akshay Kumar, Raj Babbar, Asin (in her penultimate Hindi film appearance), Himesh Reshammiya, and Mukesh Rishi. It is the eighth installment in the Khiladi film series.

Plot

Champaklal Desai is a successful matchmaker and wedding organizer in Mumbai whose business starts going downhill when his son Mansukh joins him. After destroying many weddings unintentionally, Mansukh is thrown out of the house by Champak. A depressed Mansukh pays a visit to his friend Jeevanlal Praanlal D'Costa, who advises him to stop drinking, but Mansukh doesn't listen. Jeevanlal snatches the bottle, but in the process, the bottle crashes into the windshield of a car, due to which the car crashes into a tree and stops.

The car was being driven by Indu, who intentionally scares her grooms away by taking them for a dangerous long drive—the same trick she was using when her car crashed into the tree. Indu turns out to be the sister of an underworld don TTT, i.e., Tatya Tukaram Tendulkar, who wants to get her married to a decent family. TT's goons abduct Mansukh and Jeevanlal due to the incident. On learning that Mansukh is a matchmaker, TT assigns him the task of finding a good groom for Indu in return for letting Mansukh live. Jeevanlal is sure that they're going to die, but Mansukh claims that he knows a perfect groom for her.

This groom is none other than Bahattar Singh (Akshay Kumar), a police officer from a small village in Punjab who never lets goons get away. His family consists of his father Sattar Singh and Ikhattar Singh and their wives [Sattar, Ikhattar, Bhattar, and Chauhattar mean 70, 71, 72, and 74]. It is mentioned that Bahattar's brother Tehattar (73) was lost as a child. Even Bahattar has had tough luck finding a bride. But there's one thing Mansukh doesn't know: Bahattar and his family just pretend to be cops and wear fake uniforms. When Mansukh comes to their doorstep with an alliance for Bahattar, he lies to them by saying that TT is the assistant commissioner of police, due to which Bahattar and his family are forced to carry on their police act.

Production

In March 2012, it was announced that Ashish R Mohan and Himesh Reshammiya would be creating an action-comedy film starring Akshay Kumar with the title Punjab Rajnikanth. In April the title was changed as Khiladi 786, the return to the Khiladi series after 12 years.

Reshammiya reported casting issues therefore the film was delayed. In April 2012 Amitabh Bachchan and Salman Khan was signed to play a main role. He soon dropped out and was replaced by Mithun Chakraborty. Claudia Ciesla was roped into a special appearance to do an item number.

Many rumours went out about the female leads. The choices included Ileana D'Cruz, Nargis Fakhri and Diana Penty. However, in June 2012, Asin was signed.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was composed by Himesh Reshammiya and the music was sold to T-Series. Lyrics were penned by Sameer, R Mehndi, Shabbir Ahmed and Reshammiya. Punjabi rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh recorded the song "Lonely" for the film. The song "Hookah Bar" interpolates "Turn Up the Music" by Chris Brown while "Balma"'s intro adapts LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It".

Reception

Taran Adarsh on Bollywood Hungama gave the movie 3.5/5 stars and said that it was "for lovers of hardcore masala films completely." Madhureeta Mukherjee from Times of India stated, "For those looking for some logic-less laugh time, groovy tunes topped with some todh-podh – this one could bring some action to your weekend."

It was renamed as Khiladi, 786 being a holy number in Islam, for release but promos and ads of the film were banned in Pakistan.

Khiladi 786 opened to strong response at single screens but weak at multiplexes. It had good opening with a collection of around ₹87.5 million (US$920,000) on its first day. It netted ₹92.5 million (US$970,000) on its second day of release. Khiladi 786 had further growth of around 20% on Sunday, netting ₹115 million (US$1.2 million) bringing the total nett collections to around ₹293 million (US$3.1 million) at the end of its first weekend. The film had good collection of ₹450 million (US$4.7 million) in its first week.

Key details