<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2026/aug/Mayank-Shekhar-new_e.jpg" alt="Mayank Shekhar" width="150" height="76" /><a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/bollywood-news/article/7-dogs-sanjay-dutt-expands-global-footprint-with-salman-khan-starrer-action-thriller-23644878" rel="nofollow">Sanjay Dutt</a> plays a dog in the international film 7 Dogs, directed by Moroccan-Belgian duo, Adil-Bilall.&nbsp;
As in, Sanjay&rsquo;s one of the top dogs, operating an intercontinental drug-trade. He&rsquo;s based in India. The other six are similarly, secretly placed in other countries. None of whom have met.&nbsp;
Sanjay&rsquo;s character Ranjeet has every moment of his life filmed on a go-pro camera. Hence, this particular exchange between Ranjeet and a desi woman must&rsquo;ve been recorded too. Wherein, they go, &ldquo;You wanna party?&rdquo; &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; &ldquo;Mumbai!&rdquo; &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go; let&rsquo;s party!&rdquo;
Except, Ranjeet is already in <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/mumbai/mumbai-news/article/bmc-demolitions-in-mumbai-bmc-conducts-demolition-drive-in-rustomjee-crown-building-at-prabhadevi-removes-illegal-alterations-from-9-flats-23646635" rel="nofollow">Mumbai </a>&mdash; which, from every angle looks like it&rsquo;s been built from the light sands in swanky Saudi Arabia.&nbsp;
Only, a lotta muck has been thrown at make-believe streets to make it seem sufficiently Mumbai! If anything, Shanghai and Vegas, in the movie, look crappier.&nbsp;
The second time on, Sanjay perhaps chose not to revisit Riyadh sets for the said shoot. His portions appear to have been shot, over a Zoom call, on the terrace of Marine Drive&rsquo;s Hotel Marine Plaza, instead.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s the end of him in the pic. He lasts, probably, a minute, max.&nbsp;
One audience&rsquo;s cameo is another&rsquo;s junior artiste! And you thought Sanjay agreed to an extra&rsquo;s part?&nbsp;
Consider Salman Khan. Further, Salman plays Sanjay&rsquo;s personal lackey in the same movie &mdash; Ranjeet&rsquo;s &lsquo;Ramu Kaka&rsquo;, if you will. His memorable line being about what&rsquo;ll you eat, &ldquo;Jalebi, samosa, chai, perhaps?&rdquo;&nbsp;
Together, Sanjay-Salman (Sanju-Sallu), and others, get on an autorickshaw, torn from the top, for an action sequence, seemingly shot on a shaky cellphone, set to 0.5x, for the big screen, that the influenza could do a better job for Instagram.
Thus, goes the debut of two of Bollywood&rsquo;s top old-world, veteran superstars, on the supposedly global screen!&nbsp;
The desh-bhakt in me can&rsquo;t take this anymore. Seriously, imagine such Indian extras in a pic, made on Saudi money, with Monica Bellucci for the villain, Martin Lawrence in supporting cast, with two random, Egyptian-Arab actors, Ahmed Ezz and &nbsp;Karim Abdel, as heroes?&nbsp;
Well, I watched it in a theatre. So, you don&rsquo;t have to imagine it! What&rsquo;s the bone of contention in 7 Dogs? A designer drug called Pink Lady.&nbsp;
Which, as we are explained, leads to hallucinations that &ldquo;half its users can never get out of &mdash; until they die!&rdquo; Doesn&rsquo;t that kinda defeat the purpose of recreational drugs? If you stay in its suicidal sway, until you die &mdash; brother, why would you ever buy!&nbsp;
One of the movie&rsquo;s eponymous 7 Dogs (Karim), replaced since, and otherwise fine with global terrorism once, opts out of this Pink Lady business.&nbsp;
He&rsquo;s under arrest by Saudis, brought to his knees by an Interpol star-officer (Ahmed). This officer and former terrorist form a curious crime fighting team, thereafter &mdash; in search of the seven dogs still supplying Pink Lady.&nbsp;
The film&rsquo;s obviously a massively scaled, multinational spy-thriller of sorts. Which is also self-defeating for its purpose &mdash; given this altogether star-driven, Hollywood-derivate, genre flick, is centred on two unknown characters, let alone actors, unlikely to be as excitedly consumed anywhere outside Egypt.&nbsp;
Take, say, the leads out of a Jason Bourne, James Bond, Mission Impossible, Men in Black or Miami Vice type movie &mdash; what&rsquo;ll you be left with? 7 Dogs.
Who should know this better than the film&rsquo;s directors, Adil-Bilall, such fun boys, who revived Michael Bay&rsquo;s Bad Boys franchise, that I caught only much later &mdash; Bad Boys for Life (2020; Hindi dub on Jio-Hotstar), Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024; rentable on YouTube) &mdash; with Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, old men now, kicking serious ass in a high-energy actioner that&rsquo;s as brain-dead, but several times more entertaining: &ldquo;Bad boys, bad boys, watchugonna do, when they come for you&hellip;&rdquo;
The onscreen colours in 7 Dogs look saturated. Sets seem as fake as its characters. This could be an &rsquo;80s B-grader, if Steven Seagal emerged from the neon-lights in China! The movie is originally in Arabic.&nbsp;
A villain tells the heroes, &ldquo;I hate it when you guys don&rsquo;t speak in English!&rdquo; But they&rsquo;d just spoken in English, in the English dub I saw.&nbsp;
The film&rsquo;s got into Guinness, for blowing up record amounts of explosives for a scene. I remember that scene. What a pointlessly polluting waste. It felt like AI/CGI to me!
I wonder if the Saudis got had by a greedy bunch, looking at the moolah on offer. And then I see the story credited to a Saudi government official, heading the state agency, that paid for the movie! Maybe, the filmmakers didn&rsquo;t have a choice?
Light years later, I suspect, 7 Dogs will get discovered by connoisseurs of trashy movies for how it was so bad, that it was beyond good!&nbsp;
I&rsquo;d just wanna know what persuasion skills and petrodollars does it take to cast Sanju-Sallu as extras in a film!
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com The views expressed in this column are the individual&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;t represent those of the paper.

Imagine Salman Khan, Sanjay Dutt as extras in a pic with Monica Bellucci for villain, and two rando Arabs as heroes!

Seriously, who let the ‘7 Dogs’ out?

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Seriously, who let the ‘7 Dogs’ out?

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