Radhe Trailer Review: Disha Patani Is A Decorative Prop To Salman Khan's Hyper-Machismo

Radhe trailer review: The trailer for Radhe, released April 22, makes no bones about what the message focus of the film is - bhai is the best. Salman Khan makes a return to the big screen after staying away from it for a whole year; 2020's Eid went missed due to the pandemic. Khan is making up for it with two years' worth of machismo in Radhe. Needless to say, his loyal fan brigade is in a frenzy, so much so that they seem to be uncaring of the negligible presence of the female cast in the film.

Because when bhai is on screen, dare anyone else demand attention?

Three women of some prominence find space on the cast list: Disha Patani, Megha Akash and Jacqueline Fernandez. Patani is the female lead in Radhe, fulfilling the role more of a decorative prop than Radhe's love interest in the trailer. She appears for the duration of just two lines of dialogue from her and one bad joke from Radhe.

Akash is nowhere to be seen and Fernandez is seen for a split second in what looks like a quintessential Bollywood, to use a sanitised term, 'dance number.' Perhaps not appearing in the trailer at all is far better than tired objectification.

Women Missing From The Trailer Doesn't Come As A Surprise. That's A Concern: Radhe Trailer Review

What's both tragic and comic is that the absence of women from this Prabhudeva directorial didn't entirely come as a surprise, since films with Khan in their lead are known for an obsessive focus on him and him alone. Almost as if the hours-long feature was made only with the motive of inviting hero worship.

In each, glorification of his machismo is greater than in his last somehow, even though every consecutive Khan film seems like a rehash and redistribution of the same script over and over. Take the Dabangg franchise for example. Was Sonakshi Sinha ever an active element in moving the plot? Had she been given any more identity than a tool for Khan's Chulbul Pandey to enjoy the other rasas of life his gun can't fulfil? In Sultan, hailed as a fairly progressive film, who took centre stage after Anushka Sharma - also an A-lister like Khan - took a backseat after her character gets pregnant?

Are women finding screen space amid the testosterone-driven chest-thumping of male characters?

When any film, like Radhe or other similar Khan-worship instrument, chooses to push the male lead as the story, there's no offence there really. The issue is the gender parity in the same film, the use of women as props in films.

Taking lead from the Akash-Fernandez conundrum, rather than sparing them split-second ornamental roles, omitting female characters altogether if they don't add serious value to the story is the better choice.

Watch Radhe trailer ">here: