Singham Returns: Raj sorely missed

Starring: Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Amole Gupte, Dayanand Shetty, Anupam Kher
Rated: 6/10
They are back — Rohit Shetty with his tribute to Mumbai Police, and Ajay Devgn with his aata majhi satakli kind of action sequences pegged on bulging muscles, roaring dialogues and a lion-hearted honesty that seems as amazing as his ability to throw men and cars and all else helter-skelter. Remember, this one is about brawn points and not brain bods. It is about being OTT with elan and calling it a larger than life depiction of a committed police force. It is also about having fun at the expense of the villains but that’s where the movie stops short of being shoulder to shoulder with the original Singham.
For here, in a much felt casting gaffe, there is no Prakash Raj. This sequel needed his brand of badness and buffoonery mix which is missing in his successors — this time an OTT sadhu and an alliance partner of a ruling party. Together, they make a mess of this very important part of Singham, something that Prakash Raj did with elan and style. While the baddies in the present one have overdone the buffoonery bit to the level of irritability, the vile quotient is not up to the standards of Raj. Singham would have Returned well had this very important part of the cast retained from the original one.
Kareena Khan Kapoor does her bit, but it’s only a bit she needs to do and is really not too impactfull for the movie. As a side-dish, she is spicy enough but this one is only about the cops and their good stories.
Other than that, it is an expectedly full-on paisa phenk ticket bech entertainer for the front benches and times well with the long festive weekend where desh ki azaadi comes in handy to enhance the need of an honest police officer, and the janmashtami angle is taken care of by the effortless victory of good over evil. For those wanting anything meaningful, please stay home and do whatever.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, 17 August, 2014

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nil Battey Sannata: Endearing, real and simple

Cast :  Swara Bhaskar, Ratna Pathak Shah, Pankaj Tripathi Rated :  8/10 Nil Battey Sannata is a confusing title but an endearing, simple, gentle and real film. Besides, the title confuses only till Swara Bhaskar as Chanda explains it to you with endearing simplicity much ahead in the movie. It literally means zero understanding and zero marks — in her and her daughter’s case, in Mathematics. But this one is not just about the mind-boggling numbers that have become the bane of students and parents alike. It is about the maths, algebra and geometry of life itself — an equation that director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari puts on the blackboard in an engaging, simplified format. Nil Battey Sannata  is a film sitting on a very real firmament, a very you-and-me story about the in-your-face problems that everyone encounters. In here, it is about misrani  (cook) Chanda and her full of life but anti-studies daughter Apeksha Sahay’s daily churn. Thankfully, it is not the drudg...
Read more

Criminal: Arresting memory transplant

Cast : Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds, Jordi Mollà Rated : 6/10 Big names, big imagination and good execution make this memory transplant thriller a good one to be with, especially with Kevin Costner doing a pretty good job with a character he has never played – that of an emotionless, incarcerated, brutal killer in whose brain a do-good, wife and daughter loving dead CIA’s agent’s (Ryan Reynolds) remembrances are inserted for a trail that is important for the organisation. The underdone role has been handled well by Costner, much like a successful experiment. As he gets acquainted with emotions of love, caring and affection that have been alien to him, he starts turning from a monster to a human being but the director does well to not completely erase his original personality. So, there is a mix and match, there is brutal violence as also gentle gestures, like battering a man to death in a car hijack and saving a hair brush for the little one. The f...
Read more

Mission impossible: Rogue nation -- Ethan Hunt back with bang

Staring:  Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris, Jeremy Reyner & Rebecca Ferguson Rated : 8/10 Last time Ethan Hunt had your jaw dropping and you praying fervently for his life when mounted the sky scraping Burj Khalifa in Dubai to dangle from dizzying heights. This time, he does the same — and in all earnestness — when he dangles from the outer door of a military aircraft carrying nerve gas all those 20,000 feet high swaying with terrifying winds, hanging on to dear life literally with his finger nails. This is the fifth time since 1996 that Tom Cruise, as the inscrutable Ethan Hunt, has kept his promise of entertaining his loyal viewers with thrills, fills, kills and a little bit of unsaid romance — of course with a fellow agent. Rogue Nation was initially being touted as the last of the Mission Impossible series but seeing the youthfulness of Hunt, and probably the meticulously ‘kept-high’ entertainment value that this James-Bond lookalike series always delivers, C...
Read more