Since I enjoyed two Emraan Hashmi films from last year so much, Shanghai and Jannat 2, I figured I wouldn't mind seeing a third one as well. Rush is a debut direction from Shamin Desai, who passed away before the film could be completed, leading to several delays. Finally the film was finished by his wife.
Rush takes place in the world of 24-hour news channels, where Samar (Emraan Hashmi) gets fired because he interviews a hitman, who boasts about killing the influential friend of the news channel's owner. Soon Lisa Kapoor (Neha Dhupia) contacts him with a luxurious job offer to become the chief editor of Crime 24, a crime-reporting network, where he gets full editorial freedom, company car, apartment and other significant perks. As you can imagine, it's a bit too good to be true..
Knowing the production history, the film in all its poor quality begins to make more sense. The promos give promise of a pretty slick film, but what is actually revealed inside is a muddled fever dream of somebody who's stayed up too late, watching trashy 24-hour news networks. Rush attempts to portray the honest journalists, slaving away to uncover the corrupt civil society for what it is, but whatever interesting ideas it contains (and the minor 'twist' is predictable from the get-go), those get lost inside all the bad acting, bad dialogue and badly integrated song sequences. Probably the best thing about the film is the fact you get a glimpse of Sagarika Ghatge (better known as Preeti from Chak De India) as Emraan's girlfriend, and even she's not great in this.
As far as Emraan goes, because the film began shooting in 2010, you can see this is probably still the stone-faced Emraan of old. While he's had fans throughout his career, I think there's a very good reason why he only gained serious mainstream success starting with The Dirty Picture - the man just wasn't a very good actor before. He had the delivery of lines, but none of the emoting capabilities we've seen him with as of late - it's almost as if he's sleep-walking through these older films of his. If I was ever planning on checking out more of his filmography, this film convinced me not to. The films don't interest me on their own, and it seems even his acting is unlikely to impress me, so I'm better served by just following his future ventures.
In summary, Rush ..just don't.