Zee Studios has debuted the first trailer for the upcoming Indian Hindi language film Raksha Bandhan, the new comedy-drama from director Aanand L. Rai and star Akshay Kumar. The film’s title is a reference to the Hindu festival of Raksha Bandhan, a celebration of the bond between brothers and sisters. On Raksha Bandhan, women tie holy threads on their brothers’ wrists; the men, in turn, promise to always protect them.
Kumar has, on occasion, attempted to tackle social issues in his recent films, and Raksha Bandhan appears to be in the same vein as films such as Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Pad Man, and the more recent Good Newwz. The actor, often listed as among the world’s highest-paid stars, is otherwise best known for his action movies. The big social evil that he’s addressing in Raksha Bandhan is dowry.
In India, especially in smaller cities, it is fairly common for women's families to present a monetary sum to the families of the men that they have been arranged to marry—a morally murky arrangement that is often abused. Because of this, there is a financial burden attached to having girls in the family, which is one of the several regressive reasons behind India’s skewed sex ratio, and more tragically, female infanticide and feticide.
Raksha Bandhan, however, is a comedy. The trailer introduces us to Kumar’s character, who has put off his own wedding in order to marry off his four sisters. He consults a matchmaker like Sima Taparia from Indian Matchmaking, but to no avail. And without the socially acceptable amount of money at his disposal for his sisters’ wedding, he appears to be constantly under pressure. The trailer does, however, sort of spoil that at least one of the women ends up getting hitched.
Kumar has often been criticized for playing characters with massive savior complexes in his films, and Raksha Bandhan, at least on the basis of this trailer, feels like more of the same. It also paints a rather romantic picture of very old-fashioned male stereotypes, not to mention the undue importance that it seems to give to the idea of marriage, which, problematically, is still considered in many Indian communities as the ultimate achievement in a woman’s life. “I’ve been waiting to marry you since we were kids,” says Bhumi Pednekar’s character to Kumar’s character in the film, highlighting the vast difference between the two actors. This is another frequent complaint directed at the star, who is often cast opposite actresses much younger than himself in films.
Once unbeatable at the box office, the very prolific Kumar is coming off two back-to-back flops this year—the gangster comedy Bachchhan Paandey and the historical epic Samrat Prithviraj. Rai’s last film was Atrangi Re, which featured Kumar in an extended cameo and debuted on the Disney+ Hotstar streaming service. Prior to that, he’d directed the big-budget romance Zero, which tanked so badly that it forced star Shah Rukh Khan into a four-year sabbatical.
Written by husband-wife pair Kanika Dhillon and Himanshu Sharma, Raksha Bandhan also features Sadia Khateeb, Sahejmeen Kaur, Deepika Khanna and Smrithi Srikanth as the sisters. The film is scheduled for a theatrical release on August 11. You can watch the trailer here: