Baadshaho teaser: Ajay Devgn leads this desert treasure hunt set during the Emergency

The Emergency of 1975 has mostly been used as a backdrop for tense, political dramas — notably high on the ‘gritty’, ‘realistic’ quotient. The latest film to have gone that route is Madhur Bhandarkar’s Indu Sarkar.

But Milan Luthria’s Baadshaho, while set in the same milieu, goes down a different path.

This is an out-and-out action thriller/entertainer, which eschews ‘gritty realism’ for quintessential Bollywood masala.

The official teaser has been released by T-Series on its YouTube channel, and we start off with the Emergency being announced, with the country going into lockdown mode. Amid this, a bunch of six “badasses” (men and women) have decided to pull off a heist that could bring them untold wealth.

We’re introduced to the principal characters — Ajay Devgn, Emraan Hashmi, Ileana D’Cruz, Esha Gupta, Sanjay Mishra, Vidyut Jamwal — and vignettes of Rajasthan’s desert and glorious havelis, some high-octane stunts and dialoguebaazi that don’t really establish the plot of Baadshaho as such.

It is believed that the film is based on Indira Gandhi’s orders to take over Jaigarh Fort (which was believed to be the hiding place for Raja Mansingh of Jaipur’s treasure — spoils of war from his campaign in Afghanistan during Emperor Akbar’s time) at the time of the Emergency.

Milan Luthria teams up with Ajay Devgn and Emraan Hashmi yet again after Once Upon A Time In Mumbai. Baadshaho releases on 1 September 2017. As for its official teaser, here it is: