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Release date:
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May 4, 2012
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Director:
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Kunal Deshmukh
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Cast:
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Emraan
Hashmi, Randeep Hooda, Esha Gupta, Manish Chaudhary, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Arif Zakaria
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A friend mentioned the other day that she’d just
realised she has so far not seen an Emraan Hashmi film. Not surprisingly
though, many of her favourite Hindi film songs from the past few years have
featured this least acknowledged of Bollywood’s reigning stars.
It’s
a given then, but it merits a mention … as in the case of every Emraan
Hashmi-starrer, there’s plenty of hummable music to be had in Jannat 2, a film about the nation’s
flourishing illegal arms trade. Emraan plays a small-time gun runner in Delhi
who ends up becoming a police informer. Somewhere along the way, he falls in
love with a woman and decides he wants to clean up his act. Let it be stated
for the record that this film is not a sequel to Jannat which was released in 2008.
Jannat 2 starts off in quite an entertaining
fashion but fizzles out through the second half. Some of this has to do with
the fact that it’s too obvious in its effort to be clever, possibly aiming at the
style of the 2010 gangster film Once Upon
A Time In Mumbaai starring Emraan and Ajay Devgn that hit the jackpot at
the box office with its 1970s-Bollywood-style dialoguebaazi. We get an early
indicator of Jannat 2’s pretensions with
the name of its hero: Sonu Dilli KKC (kutti
kameeni cheez). Such subtlety!
Still,
there’s interesting chemistry between Emraan and Randeep Hooda playing ACP
Pratap Raghuvanshi who virtually blackmails the small-time crook into becoming
a police informer. Their love-hate relationship could have carried this film
through, if it weren’t for the under-written, under-acted asides in Jannat 2 that fail to draw us in.
So
there’s Manish Chaudhary playing the big gun in the gun trade who remains
nothing more than a trying-too-hard-to-be-menacing presence with really strange
motivations. His is a small role that could be excused, but there’s no
overlooking Dr Jhanvi who is running away from her past even as she runs a
charitable clinic where Sonu first meets her. The lack of sparks between the
two and the utter predictability of their relationship graph make the film’s
romantic track decidedly dull. It’s also hard to empathise with this woman when
the writer/director’s treatment of the character and actress Esha Gupta’s
acting limitations reduce Jhanvi to nothing more than a showpiece. Yeah, so we
know that she has flawless skin, a fabulous figure and (don’t hate me for
saying this but) she looks like Angelina Jolie … So what?! Making matters worse
is the placement of the love songs in the story and the completely
unimaginative settings of these songs. The ending may have been heart-wrenching
if Esha could act, but since she just about gets by in that department, the
final portion comes across as overly stretched in a desperate attempt to wring
tears out of the audience.
But
Jannat 2 is not a hopeless case
either. It features some
action and chase scenes that made me
sit up and take notice. It’s
also nice to see a deserving actor like Randeep Hooda being given substantial
roles in two mainstream films in quick succession (last year he had Sahib Biwi aur Gangster). Emraan too is
convincing as the rascal with a heart. In fact, the two leading men are so good
together that I found myself wishing Sonu Dilli had fallen in love with ACP Pratap
instead of Dr Jhanvi! When these gentlemen are not sharing screen space, one of Jannat 2’s more moving moments
comes from Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub in a small but impactful role. Ayyub had earlier played
Jessica Lal’s killer in No One Killed Jessica and the hero’s friend in Mere Brother ki Dulhan. I don’t see myself ever making the effort to watch this film a second time, but despite its many flaws, it’s only fair to say that Jannat 2 is a mildly entertaining even if unmemorable film.
Rating (out of five): **1/2
CBFC Rating: A
Running Time: 133 minutes
Language: Hindi
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