NEW STARDOM HAS BEEN A LONG TIME COMING

IT is Akshaye Khanna's year, and we are just bidding adieu to it.

- KARTIK BHARDWAJ

Scroll through social media, and every second reel is of the actor, lording over the frame, grooving to the catchy beats of FA9LA, the song by Bahrain-based rapper Flipperachi, used in the blockbuster Dhurandhar. Akshaye plays Pakistani gangster Rehman Dakait, and with his intense stare and a Marlon Brando-coded dialogue delivery, shines the brightest in a multi-starrer.

Rewind to the beginning of the year, and you have him playing a kohl-eyed Aurangzeb in Chaava. It's a tricky one. Mughal emperors in the current cinema are being reduced to temple-demolishing, chicken-leg-tearing beasts. Akshaye, however, holds his own. His Aurangzeb is less plain vile and more calculative, and he plays him with a silent depth, portraying the highly debated-on emperor with a necessary roundedness.