There’s so much to cheer for in Rahul Dholakia’s Raees. Just the casting is enough to convince most of us to see the film: the king of pulpy fluff, Shah Rukh Khan, in a face-off with Bollywood’s thinking actor, Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Khan is in his element as Raees, a hero with many shades of grey and showing just how kajal can smoulder if a man wears it right. Then there are scenes like the fight in a Mumbai meat market that shows you just how versatile a leg of mutton can be. Whether you’re looking to beat bad guys to pulp or cook a delectable raan, all you need is a goat’s hind leg. Finally, there’s a sprinkling of a few odes to ye olde Bollywood blockbusters like Kala Patthar and Qurbani.

With key ingredients like this, you’d be forgiven for thinking Raees is an out and out masala film. It isn’t. Raees dutifully has all the standard elements of a Bollywood film — romance, tears, an adorable sidekick, an angry (not-so) young man, cops-and-smugglers, an item number — but it also takes risks. Khan’s Raees is a 21st century update of the angry young man whom Amitabh Bachchan immortalised. He is a product of his circumstances, rather than a victim. Most impressively, Dholakia doesn’t shy away from looking at politics, religion and terrorism in the film. It’s still a simplistic view, but it’s more mature and less escapist than Bollywood’s traditional storytelling.

While Raees does take a few details from real-life gangster Abdul Latif’s life, the film’s plot is fictional. Like Latif, Raees also begins his criminal career as a bootlegger when he was just a boy. Latif went on to become an associate of Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested and was eventually shot while trying to escape.

Dholakia’s Raees isn’t quite as craven. His only interest is in making money. With his best fried Sadiq (Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub), Raees begins as a small-time bootlegger, who is able to best his competition because, as one of his competitors puts it, he’s got the brain of a baniya (the trader community) and the daring of a mian (a Muslim). Raees’s ambitions find an obstacle in the integrity of ACP Majmudar (Siddiqui), an upright officer in a corrupt police service. If the law says liquor is prohibited, it is Majmudar’s job to make sure there is no alcohol flowing. Majmudar doesn’t debate about right or wrong, morality or nuance. He just does his job honestly, and consequently gets transferred every few months.

Siddiqui is predictably fantastic as Majmudar and it’s a shame that Dholakia and his team of writers didn’t give him more screen time. Ayyub is another actor who has proven himself to be reliable and as Sadiq, he’s credible and unaffected. Perhaps the biggest disappointment in Raees is Mahira Khan as Aasiya, the film’s heroine. Aasiya could have had as much complexity as a Lady Macbeth, but Mahira Khan has only two expressions: a toothy grin and a furrowed brow to denote sadness.

Raees is one of Khan’s more accomplished performances. From the fact that Khan makes his introduction in the film via his bare, glistening torso — the camera doesn’t bother with his head and the screen is just filled with Khan photogenically twisting while performing mataam — one might think Dholakia didn’t have much confidence in Khan’s acting skills. It is true that Khan looks better — he’s held back on the glycerine and actually acted. Admittedly, he’s up against Siddiqui and he doesn’t really win that contest, but it’s good to see Khan emote without hysterics. There is, of course, an effort to whitewash Raees so that he isn’t just a greedy gangster and it follows a predictable set of tropes: a woman he loves and a neighbourhood that he vows to protect, particularly from selfish politicians. Still, there’s a certain subtlety to the way the cliches are used in the writing of Raees.

There are some wonderful moments in the film, like when as little boys, Raees and Sadiq steal the spectacles off a Gandhi statue; or the scene in which Raees beats up a mill owner who isn’t paying his workers while Yash Chopra’s Kala Patthar plays in the background. The fight in the butchers’ market and the moment in which Raees realises he is actually responsible for a bomb blast are also memorable. “I was so intent upon saving my neighbourhood, I didn’t realise I was setting the city on fire,” he whispers at one point. It’s just one of the many dialogues that are likely to linger with the audience long after they’ve left the theatre.

Yet at 143 minutes — many of which are unevenly-paced — Raees relies too heavily upon Khan’s on-screen charisma. It needed more stringent editing to bring out the strengths in both storytelling and performance. Because it mostly ambles through the plot, the final confrontation between Majmudar and Raees takes too long to come about. Consequently, you may actually find yourself wishing the two of them just get on with it so that the film ends.

Fortunately, for those 143 minutes, you have Siddiqui’s sharp acting skills and Khan’s smouldering good looks to keep you company.