That specific shade of neon blue on Jacqueline Fernandez’s top during the first dance sequence in Kick looks less like a costume choice and more like a warning flare fired directly into the auditorium. It is a loud movie, sure, but loud is the baseline for mainstream Hindi movies now, so calling it noisy feels redundant. I sat through it with a mild jaw ache from clenching my teeth at the sheer persistence of the background score, which follows Salman Khan around like an overly enthusiastic golden retriever that refuses to learn boundaries. If I'm honest, the first half hour moves with the grace of a shopping cart with two square wheels, bouncing erratically between a London train station and a meet-cute that plays out at roughly the speed of drying paint.

Sajid Nadiadwala stepping into the director's chair for the first time results in a visual style that can only be described as expensive confusion. The camera never stays still for more than three seconds, whipping around actors' heads during casual conversations as if a sniper might appear from behind a potted plant at any moment. That manic energy works fine in the action beats, where gravity is treated as a loose suggestion rather than a law, but it ruins the dialogue scenes. Characters will try to land a heavy emotional beat, and the editor will suddenly cut to a low-angle shot of a car tire spinning in a puddle. It is a small thing, but it bugged me every single time it happened, draining the air out of moments that were supposed to matter.

Salman Khan plays Devi Lal Singh, a man who cannot hold a job because he constantly needs a kick, which is screenwriter Chetan Bhagat's idea of a profound psychological diagnosis. Khan gives us the standard-issue Bhai performance, complete with the lazy slouch, the knowing smirk, and the shirtless interval fight that makes very little narrative sense. He is not really acting here; he is occupying space with the terrifying casualness of a landlord who knows you cannot afford to move out. When he tries to look vulnerable, his face does that thing where it goes entirely blank, like an ATM screen flashing out of order. Jacqueline Fernandez has the thankless job of standing next to him and reacting to his charm with wide-eyed disbelief, a dynamic she also perfected in Housefull 2 without breaking a sweat.

Then Randeep Hooda shows up as a grim cop with a perpetual five-o'clock shadow and a voice that sounds like he gargles with gravel every morning. He spends most of the runtime chasing Khan through the streets of Warsaw, though you could have dropped them into any generic European city with a cobblestone square and nobody would have noticed the difference. Ayananka Bose’s cinematography leans heavily on the blue-and-orange color grade that every action director uses when they want to make things look expensive. The soundtrack, composed by Himesh Reshammiya and Meet Bros Anjjan, hits you over the head with percussion tracks that sound like someone falling down a metal staircase. It's not great, not bad, just there, vibrating in your chest cavity until the credits finally roll.

The film wants us to believe that vigilantism is totally fine as long as you're stealing from corrupt politicians to fund sick children's treatments, a moral framework that belongs on a t-shirt sold outside a college campus. Nawazuddin Siddiqui enters late in the game as the primary villain, and he plays him with a giggling, high-pitched menace that temporarily wakes the movie from its stupor. Siddiqui doesn't fit the established aesthetic of typical Bollywood movies, where the bad guy usually wears a sharp suit and strokes a Persian cat; he looks like a guy who would sell you a cracked phone in a parking lot. His scenes with Khan provide the only genuine electricity in a two-and-a-half-hour runtime that otherwise limps from one set piece to the next.

By the time the climax arrives on a rooftop with more helicopters than a Michael Bay convention, the fatigue has set in so deeply that the explosions register as white noise. This is entertainment engineered for a specific kind of Friday night exhaustion, asking for nothing and giving back just enough to keep you from walking out. Kick is entirely forgettable, slipping out of your head the second you step past the popcorn boxes in the lobby.