REVIEW 149: JISM 2

Release date:	August 3, 2012
Director:	Pooja Bhatt
Cast: Language:	Sunny Leone, Arunoday Singh, Randeep Hooda, Arif Zakaria Hindi

Let me state this right at the start... Sunny Leone is many galactic miles behind Bipasha Basu! The US-based porn star of Indo-Canadian origin is, as you know, the heroine of director Pooja Bhatt’s Jism 2. It boggles the mind that Pooja would not have realised that while Sunny is pretty, sweet-faced, busty and has a fit body, she has neither Bipasha’s screen presence and charisma nor that same oomph that could out-burn temperatures in the Sahara Desert as Ms Basu has done for about a decade now. To then position Sunny as some sort of successor to Bipasha by casting her in Jism 2 – a title which harks back to the Bipasha-starrer of 2003 – is not just an error of judgement but also misleading to the audience. 

Limp, flaccid, lifeless … I can think of a number of adjectives to describe this yawn-worthy film. The only pertness on screen comes from Sunny’s bosom generously displayed in tiny outfits with plunging necklines and from the obliging shirtlessness of those two very muscular heroes. Jism 2 has been marketed as an erotic thriller, but there is neither erotica nor any thrill in evidence here. The polished production design and good-looking locations can hardly be considered compensation for the failure to deliver on that promise. Film-goers hoping for loads of sex should be warned that there’s not much more love making in Jism 2 than there was in Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna … meaning, there’s not much at all. Mahesh Bhatt has been quoted in the press as saying that the Censor Board cut out 50 per cent of the film’s ‘adult’ scenes. Well whatever be the reason, frankly, there was 10 times more between-and-beyond-the-sheets action in Jism which was released almost a decade back and in the Bhatts’ own Murder 2 just last year. In fact, Jism 2 seems stuck in some sort of time warp and the director seems strangely out of touch with what Indian audiences have been exposed to in recent years. C’mon … a few shots of a bare-backed heroine are hardly likely to shock film-goers who, in 2011, watched those torrid scenes between Randeep Hooda and Mahie Gill in Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Saheb Biwi aur Gangster!

Even for those walking into the theatre hoping for some completely asexual entertainment, this film has nothing to offer. The story – if you can call it that at all – is about a porn star called Izna (Sunny) who is roped in by intelligence official Ayaan (Arunoday Singh) and his boss (Arif Zakaria) to serve as a honey trap for the terrorist Kabir Wilson (Randeep Hooda). Sunny doesn’t act as much as she poses around cutely … and oh boy, is she cute! She also insists on wearing stilettoes almost throughout, although her walk suggests a painful discomfort with those killer heels.

I’ll be honest here … Unlike some of you (yes, I write the words “unlike some of you” with tongue firmly in cheek and a smile) … Unlike some of you, I have not seen any of Sunny’s earlier films. Therefore, I can’t put this present performance in perspective in comparison with her other work. Randeep Hooda and newcomer Arunoday Singh are a different story however. Both are good actors. In films like Saheb Biwi aur Gangster and Yeh Saali Zindagi, both have also shown us that they are uninhibited and capable of steaming up the screen with a strong female co-star in bed (or on rock formations, in the case of Mr Hooda). Yet, look what passionless direction and verbose dialogues can do to even the best of actors … Arunoday comes across as inexplicably wooden in parts of Jism 2 and the otherwise-often-excellent Randeep appears to be hamming uncontrollably here. In fact, his love-making with Sunny’s Izna must rank as one of the most embarrassingly posed and cold examples of sex ever in Bollywood. Hopefully Arunoday and Randeep will have better films coming up soon that will erase this one from our memories. And hopefully next time Pooja will give us a heroine who can act!

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	132 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jism_2