Rachana Dubey (BOMBAY TIMES; June 26, 2020)

Watching two actors trade punches on-screen always proves to be one of the main selling points of a film featuring two popular heroes. In Sanjay Gupta’s film, Mumbai Saga, the audience will get to see Emraan Hashmi and John Abraham lock horns. While major portions of the film were shot before the Coronavirus lockdown, the makers are now gearing up to resume the shoot in Hyderabad.

Emraan plays a police officer in the project, which has John as a gangster. So, did it ever bother the former that he would have to match the Parmanu: The Story Of Pokhran actor, who even at his leanest, weighs around 90 kilos and stands tall at about six feet, in action sequences? Emraan replies, “You bet it did! The first question I asked Sanjay Gupta after the narration was, ‘Do you think this will look believable?’ The fact is that everyone knows how well-built John is. My physique is different from his. When Mumbai Saga was offered to me, I was working on Chehre, and I was probably at my leanest. I was naturally worried whether our action scenes would look believable.”

The actor adds, “The only solution Sanjay offered me was that I put on enough weight, so that, the sequences would look believable. I’ve done this in the past, too, when I have gained and lost weight for different films. So, it’s not new to me. This time around, I dedicated five months to it, during which I also monitored my food intake. Eventually, I managed to put on the requisite weight so that the action scenes would look convincing. In fact, the way Sanjay has shot it, it looks very believable.”

Sanjay Gupta, who has directed the film, shares, “In an action film, it’s not just the physical appearance that decides who has an upper hand. Yes, John is way above average in his physical appearance, and Emraan did put on muscle and some weight. He worked meticulously on his physique. On screen, John appears like a brute force, while Emraan comes across as the guy with skills.”