Prabhu Dheva's style of filmmaking is fast falling into the latter category. After a slew of action-packed movies, Action Jackson coolly follows suit with very little excitement to offer. However, true to its title, there is no lack of punch in the high-octane scenes. In fact, there are all kinds of punch in this loud fare. But they would have made more sense if there was a proper meal of a story to hold them together. A reason why this Ajay Devgn-starrer is a happy addition to the run-of-the-mill script with the invisible please-leave-your-brain-at-home statutory label.

Action Jackson in tailor-made for Ajay Devgn and just for actor's die hard fans. The movie could have worked more had it been more qualitative in terms of action which sometimes just couldn't impress us. It more or less relies upon Ajay Devgn's strong aura and screen presence which however leaves its impact on us but it's not the one which we would count in his favorites.

The film begins with a terrible opening scene where a few men in orange (the goon army of a don) are smashing someone's head through a windshield, while putting a bullet in another person's head (shown to us in detail, in slow-mo). In another corner of the world, we see Ajay Devgn playing the 'Good Guy'. So in a montage spanning a few minutes, we see him meditate, lend his umbrella to school-going kids, rescue a snake, help a pregnant lady, and so on. Point taken.

Watching Action Jackson can be a challenging proposition. This film changes personality like a person suffering from dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder). The first half plays out like an unscripted comedy while the second half sees a sudden transformation into stylized action territory. It's as if director Prabhudheva wanted to make two distinct movies with the same cast. When he couldn't make up which genre to go with he put the two together to make an ambiguous mix-genre movie that's too inconsistent to garner any appreciation.

And we are back to the '80s! Remember the spate of sloppy Bollywood potboilers - revenge sagas with incongruous narratives, vicious villains, vile vamps and cringe-worthy situations? Prabhu Dheva's 'Action Jackson' has all of that. Prabhu Dheva is a pro at belting out action films with Southern-style flavouring - his signature dance moves, slo-mo action sequences and add to it a quintessential Bollywood hero like Salman Khan or Akshay Kumar and we have the perfect formula for box office success.

Sonakshi Sinha plays Khushi, who is a clumsy girl characterised by always running late, falling on the road and spoiling her clothes due to which her boss doesn't want her in office. When she is running late to work, she picks up a box of oats from the table, eats some straight from the box, sips some milk and then eats a spoon full of sugar and shakes herself to mix the ingredients inside her body.

"AJ," the girl gasps into her cellphone, breathlessly and furtively while gangsters surround her, "Some people are after me." Efficient to the last word, her man wastes no time in getting to the point: "What are they wearing?" This is but a taste of the relentless absurdity served up by Action Jackson, the peculiar new film from Prabhudheva.

When a reviewer is confronted with a Bollywood star vehicle as spectacularly vacuous as Action Jackson, the usual tendency is to go a touch easy with the potshots. In other words, one dismisses it as a film meant only for diehard fans of the lead actor and leaves it at that. But in the case of Prabhu Dheva's latest all-out mockery of moviemaking, one would be inclined to think twice before making any such unilateral claim. Would any actor's fans, at least those that are in their right minds, be so undemanding as to lap up something as excruciatingly trashy as Action Jackson?

The last Prabhu Dheva outing, R Rajkumar, was so unbearable that I thought I would be scarred for life. Action Jackson is almost as vile: the only reason I stuck around was to see if Ajay Devgn would start making like Prabhu Dheva by the end. No, he doesn't. That's not the deal-breaker, though, because Ajay Devgn's never been much of a one to shake a leg. And that's perfectly okay because not all men have to be able to dance to prove their macho-ness.

The film is about Vishi (Ajay Devgn) who is a small goon in his area but is good at heart (just like all of our heroes are). He loves beating up people to the tunes of music beats and mixes dancing with action sequences. Not weird enough? Add to that a girl Khushi (Sonakshi Sinha) who bumps into him in the changing room of a mall to see him naked. And this girl starts stalking him simply so she can see him naked again. Does that disgust you?

Vishi is a local goon who basically likes beating up people to get his work done but is nonetheless a kind-hearted person. On the other hand Khushi is an extremely clumsy girl who keeps losing her chances with destiny and gets suddenly lucky after she accidentally meets Vishi. Amidst the building chemistry between Khushi and Vishi, local cops and an international don named Xavier are on the look-out for AJ aka Jai who is a look alike of Vishi and is in the same city. The story takes a major turn of events when both AJ and Vishi come face to face.