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EDITOR'S PICK
'Baaghi 2' is all about Tiger nothing else (Review By Subhash K Jha ;
* 1/2 )
All this while we rued what Jacqueline Fernandez was seen doing to the iconic Ek
do teen song and dance number. Turns out, this travesty was the least of the
problems in Baaghi 2, an overblown, padded-up and puffed-out adaptation of last
year's engrossing Telugu hit 'Kshanam' about an NRI who is summoned back to
India by his former girlfriend to find her kidnapped daughter.
Finding the missing girl is not all that concerns the Hindi remake's hero, now
re-christened Ranveer Pratap Singh, an army man who gets a chance to use his
battle tactics to a wage a kinetic war on drug dealers in an elaborately staged
Rambo-like climax that finds Tiger Shroff flying high literally.
He somersaults over flying choppers, flips over conifers, flies across cars and
vanquishes adversaries with the quick-thinking machismo of a sumo wrestler
thrown into a ring with a cunning and dangerous canine.
A Tiger's Ranveer stops at nothing. The trouble is, the film doesn't know where
to stop either. The original plot had some interesting twists and turns in the
kidnapping drama.
In the remake the drama of a distressed mother (Disha Patani, so one-note and so
pale and pretty your heart reaches out to her for all the wrong reasons) and her
saviour is converted into a loud scream-fest where everyone has a 'bawl'.
There is so much sound and fury in the storytelling that I was convinced it
signified something . Alas, all I came away with was a convoluted attempt to
regurgitate a solid thriller by injecting large doses of bombast and melodrama
into the original.
Nothing in Baaghi 2 is done gently. Certainly not the editing which bulldozes
through the event-packed narrative caring little for niceties like pace and
momentum. Every move is a a slog, every slap is a sledgehammer.
Julius Packiam's background music which tries to keep up with Tiger's rush of
bravado, could wake up a pack of comatose wolves, although it could do nothing
to keep me from falling into a dreadful numbness of the spirit, the kind one
feels when a bunch of over-enthusiastic kindergarten boys try to do a stage
version of an Amitabh Bachchan actioner from the 1980s.
Throughout there is a feeling of outdated bravado, an expired bluster which no
amount of stunt-baazi can camouflage. Tiger Shroff's action scenes are a saving
grace, though most of the stunts are staged with chairs tables and glass doors
breaking with pre-orchestrated regularity.
The surprises in the original film are here rendered utterly ineffectual as the
narrative pounds and pulverizes the plot with puerility.
Everyone hams. Pratiek Babbar and, surprisingly Manoj Bajpai ham so much it is
an embarrassment to watch them whenever they are on screen. With Babbar that's
not a major problem as the script has little time for him. The only one who gets
away with the hamming is Randeep Hooda. His long-haired hippy-esque cop-act is
put forward with a certain degree of intelligence, otherwise found to be lacking
in almost every sequence.
At one point in the preposterous plot, a cop is seen propositioning a distressed
mother nudging her legs with his legs to suggest what they can do when those
legs are not walking.
And all the while Tiger Shroff seethes in anger. No wonder he erupts with the
vehemence of a battle-bound gun blazing at enemies across the border. His Rambo
act in the third act of this horribly-botched remake saves the day but fails to
rescue the film from its numbing nemesis.
Does Tiger find the kidnap victim? Does anyone really care what happens to the
missing child when we have more urgent concerns, like trying to hold on to our
senses while characters talk nonsense like "Muslims are not only known for
biryani but also for qurbani."
This, coming from an actor as able Deepak Dobriyal is a shame. But then, what is
not?
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A battle-hardened army officer goes in search of his ex-lover’s child who is mysteriously kidnapped. Neha reaches out to the only person who can help her with her plight, Ronnie. He goes deep into the underbelly of Goa, facing off against drug lords, menacing Russian henchmen, and blood thirsty animals. Daring stunts, chase sequences, air strikes, bomb blasts and other large-scale action sequences will be done with a bona-fide, larger than life approach, truly making it a spectacle.
Baaghi 2 is an action film produced by Sajid Nadiadwala and directed by Ahmed Khan. A Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment production, presented by Fox Star Studios, the movie stars Tiger Shroff & Disha Patani in lead role. The movie is set to release on 30th March 2018.