Ghayal Once Again: Out of sync but sincere

Cast: Sunny Deol, Soha Ali Khan, Om Puri, Tisca Chopra, Aanchal Munjal
Rated: 5/10
Ghayal .... once again.... because it is not in sync with the times at all. Sunny paaji is all sincere, angry, frustrated and earnest as he was in Ghayal. But he is also much older, much more bloated and looking somewhat bored with the proceedings himself.
Which is sad to say because, well, he is a good (old) man of this constantly moving and very unforgiving film industry. In all these years that he has been away from Bollywood, tending to businesses abroad, things have moved, emotions have moved and issues have moved. No longer does a dhai kilo ka haat impress, or even make sense. No longer does the politics plus corporate vs aam aadmi conflict spew fire. Ghayal Once Again suffers from this out of time syndrome and only the Sunny fans (if there are any left after such a long hiatus) would appreciate this rekindling of an iconic movie.
In any case, as compared to the original, this one is strangely muted in all the gamut of emotions it battles with. Deol is hardly fire and fury, or at least a very mellowed down version of it. The villain is a shade of good and bad, battling to save his smack-crazed son on a shooting spree. As the one to take on Deol, he is too busy fighting his own guilt of bad parenting. Even the guys he employs to kill the good ones are lax and mostly incompetent.
Yes, Sunny has introduced contemporary campaigns like RTI activism etc but as I said, Bollywood has moved on from the good old version of Indian badlands.
Also, what Soha Ali Khan is doing with him is still a question begging for an answer. Looks almost like his daughter, what with Sunny paaji not even once wanting to romance her.
Amid all this, one has to, however, insist: It’s paaji’s genuine effort to rekindle his type of movies and his association with an industry he has so many times admitted to having become a stranger to him.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, 7 February, 2016

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