Lord Clive (Lloyd Owen) is ruling with an iron hand. He kills little Zafira's father (Ronit Roy) who is the king of Ranakpur, mother and elder brother, leaving her under the care of her dad's trusted lieutenant, Khudabaksh (Amitabh Bachchan). Years pass by. Zafira (Fatima Sana Sheikh) is now a beautiful young lady, well-versed in sword-fighting and other forms of warfare. She has been trained excellently by Khudabaksh.

Writer director Vijay Krishna Acharya (DHOOM 3, TASHAN previous) tells a period based saga, it's circa 1795, British company's officer Clive (Lloyd Owen) by a wicked plan takes over the kingdom of Mirza (Ronit Roy), Mirza and his people are patriotic and desire freedom against the British Raj. The cruel and wicked Clive takes Mirza's kingdom and kills Mirza, Mirza's daughter princess Zafira (Fatima Sana Shaikh) gets rescued by Khudabaksh urf Azaad (Amitabh Bachchan) a leader of rebel pirates who steal British ships and dream to win freedom back. Clive hires a wily thug Firangi (Aamir Khan) to nab Azaad and his gang and what happens next is everybody's guess.

Set in 1795, Thugs Of Hindostan is the story revolving around a revenge of a daughter for British had killed her father. Zafira (Fatima Sana Shaikh) - the daughter is a master-archer trained under Khudabaksh aka Azad (Amitabh Bachchan) and 11 years later, somehow they intersect their path with Firangi Mallah (Aamir Khan). As Aamir himself said recently, Firangi is someone you adore but can't be friends with him.

There is an obligatory prerequisite for all commercial films, especially the big-budget, star-spangled ones: Thou shall not bore. And yet, the opposite happens often enough. When the biggies of Bollywood decide and then set out to conquer the box-office as an end in itself, they first take leave of their senses. Then, after sending the pesky writers on long leave, they proceed to throw cash at the the art director, the CGI team, the costume wallas, the extras, the star's hair stylist, colourist, the carpenters... anything and everything except the story, the dialogue, the writing.

Circa 1795. Khudabaksh aka Azaad (Amitabh) leads a band of thugs who aspire to free Hindostan (Indian subcontinent) from Britain's East India Company; which came to trade but started to rule. Alarmed by this threat, British commander John Clive (Lloyd Owen) gets Firangi Mallah (Aamir), an unscrupulous thug from Awadh, to infiltrate Azaad's gang and help the goras neutralise the revolutionaries.

May be Aamir Khan's Firangi Malla is, after all, modelled on Jack Sparrow. But the film is far from being inspired by The Pirates of Carribean. Though, after sitting through 2 hours and 45 minutes of Thugs of Hindostan, I wish it were. The swashbuckler Diwali venture is nothing short of colossal heartbreak for cinephiles.

Trust the makers of Dhoom 3 to make a 300-crore movie look spectacularly unambitious. Thugs of Hindostan is the Bollywood manifestation of Halloween - an amusing, self-gratifying but altogether pointless fancy-dress ball designed to trick audiences under the guise of treating them. The result is a tiresome action adventure with tiresome superstars who are too tired to act adventurous. The film is based in 1795 so that they have the excuse to at least look adventurous - ships, swords, cannons, horses, hats and grand forts fill in for actors, screenwriters, musicians and sound designers.

Somewhere mid-way into Thugs of Hindostan (TOH), two friends, Firangi Mallah (Aamir Khan) and Sanichar (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) are shown guzzling a bottle of Ye Olde Pirate whiskey. Nice nod to Pirates of the Caribbean (rumored to have been the film's divine guiding force) I thought, till a 1800 date showed up on the label. Now isn't TOH... set in 1795? How come this jump ahead to the future then?

Clive (Lloyd Owen), an officer belonging to the East India Company, does the dastardly act of taking over Mirza's (Ronit Roy) kingdom, killing him, his wife and son in the process. The only one left alive is the little princess Zafira, who is saved in the nick of time by the royal guardian Khudabaksh (Amitabh Bachchan). Zafira (Fatima Sana Shaikh), grows up to be a fierce warrior herself and her only aim is to win back her kingdom and make the British quit India.

It is not every day that you get to see an Aamir Khan film in the theatres. He appears on screen once in two years; once in a year if his fans are lucky, and is known to have the audience dance to his tune. But the Pied Piper of Bollywood stumbles and falls flat in Thugs of Hindostan. The film struggles to stay afloat with all the paraphernalia dragging it down. The heaviness of every scene and the heavy-handedness with which the film is taken forward weigh it down. But more on that later.

It takes a lot to make pirates boring. Without a doubt, Thugs Of Hindostan is a whole lot of movie - the biggest budget Yash Raj production of all time, the first film to star both Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan - and yet this giant period epic turns out to be feeble, formulaic and entirely forgettable. Directed by Dhoom 3's Vijay Krishna Acharya, here is a film so dull and unoriginal that it can only inspire the shrugs of Hindustan.

As you slide into Thugs of Hindostan, you expect a rousing tale of thuggery and patriotism, because that's what the name suggests. You also expect a modicum of quality filmmaking because you can't get more A-list than Yash Raj Films, Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan. What you get instead is nothing but a massive cherry-picking enterprise from big entertainers of the past, many of them YRF's own.

Let's come to the point right away. Does THUGS OF HINDOSTAN manage to live up to the monumental expectations? Or does it turn out to be a shocking disappointment? Unfortunately, the film is a king-sized disappointment. THUGS OF HINDOSTAN is the story of a group of rebels fighting the British. The year is 1795. The kingdom is ruled by a benevolent king [Ronit Roy]. The evil Clive [Lloyd Owen] annexes the kingdom by treacherous means and kills the king and queen. The king's guardian, Khudabaksh [Amitabh Bachchan], escapes with the king's daughter Zafira [Fatima Sana Shaikh]. 11 years later, Khudabakash, Zafira and their gang are now considered thugs. They have wrecked havoc in the lives of the Britishers.

Billed as the year's biggest blockbuster, Thugs of Hindostan proves to be about as reliable as its most memorable character. Aamir Khan's Firangi Mallah, the only good thing about Vijay Krishna Acharya's pre-Independence drama, is a confidence trickster who double-deals his way through life with roguish charm and sweet talk.

In one of the scenes meant to bring intensity to Thugs Of Hindostan, Amitabh Bachchan tells Aamir Khan, "Baat suna ke hi maaroge ya koi hathiyar bhi laaye ho (Have you brought weapons too or you're planning to kill me by words?)" To this, Aamir simply smiles. Well, this is what happens in most of the film. The actors are so obsessed with their characters that they forget the audience is waiting for engaging content, a spectacle they haven't ever seen before. However, all they get are characters with a penchant for smiling.

Big, bloated, bombastic, Thugs Of Hindostan is a period saga that banks solely upon action and spectacle for impact. The characters that populate it are, like the thousand ships that the film launches in the service of a bitter early 19th century battle between the fast-expanding British East India Company and a band of intrepid rebels who refuse to be enslaved by a foreign power, are as flimsy as cardboard. Thugs Of Hindostan barely ever hits terra firma.

After the British company's officer Clive (Lloyd Owen) takes over the kingdom of Mirza (Ronit Roy), princess Zafira (Fatima Sana Shaikh) and Khudabaksh aka Azaad (Amitabh Bachchan) form a band of rebel pirates who swear to defeat the English officer and win their freedom back. The British Company in return, hire the wily thug Firangi (Aamir Khan) to track Azaad's gang and thwart his plans.