Release
date:
|
March 6, 2020
|
Director:
|
Ahmed Khan
|
Cast:
|
Tiger Shroff,
Riteish Deshmukh, Shraddha Kapoor, Ankita Lokhande, Vijay Varma, Jaideep
Ahlawat, Jackie Shroff, Satish Kaushik, Virendra Saxena
|
Language:
|
Hindi
|
Yes Tiger Shroff
fans, he does take off his shirt in Baaghi
3. Unlike some Bollywood films of the past decade in which male stars have
stripped off their tops for no apparent reason right before a big fight, here
an excuse to display that ripped torso is written into the script: the hero’s
shirt catches fire so he has to tear
it off to save himself.
With such tweaks
and touches does Baaghi 3 convince
itself that it is different from the templated ventures in which Shroff has
been acting since his fists exploded on screen in 2014’s Heropanti. Clarification: it is not.
Baaghi 3 is a remake of the Tamil film Vettai (The Hunt), which starred Arya as the omnipotent brother of a cowardly
policeman played by R. Madhavan. Team Baaghi’s
poor attitude to quality is confirmed once and for all when the closing credits
announce that Vettai was a Telugu
film. I suppose because Tamil, Telugu = saaaauth = Madrasi? Ki farak painda? Same same,
no?
Anyway, in the
Hindi version, Shroff plays Ronnie Chaturvedi who has been aggressively protective
of his elder brother Vikram since they were kids. Their father once exhorted
Ronnie to forever take care of Vikram who has always been a cowering kitten.
When they grow up, Ronnie encourages his sibling to become a policeman, hoping
that the uniform will give him a sense of self-worth. Until that happens, one bhai bashes up gangsters of every shade
in Agra on behalf of his policeman bhai
who then takes the credit.
In Vettai, the brothers’ area of operation
was Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu, but since gang wars in a single Indian city are
small change for Shroff I guess, Baaghi 3
travels to Syria where the story becomes about – as the trailer has already
grandly informed us – “one man against the whole country”.
The foray into
Syria is a departure from the post-2014 trend in Bollywood of demonising
Muslims to cash in on rising off-screen Islamophobia. Unlike Kesari, which distorted history to fit
this narrative, and unlike Kalank, which
was selective in its account of Partition for the very same reason, Baaghi 3 makes an overt, clumsy attempt to state that Indian Muslims are not villains,
that Indians and Pakistanis are bhai-bhai,
and that we are all helpless victims of
demons from the Middle East.
One of the many
problems with this line though is that you can hardly hope to counter the din
of prevailing Islamophobia with a new round of stereotyping and
with immature writing in a film whose primary purpose is not this anyway, but
to show off its special effects, its action choreography and Mister Shroff in
all his well-muscled, topless glory.
Of course Baaghi 3 does not have the intellectual
depth to take the conversation further either, to ask why the word terrorist in
our country is habitually applied to those killing in the name of Islam and
never to those who organised the mobs that murdered and raped Sikhs in
Delhi in 1984, Muslims in Gujarat 2002 and Christians in Odisha in
2008. A counter to Islamophobia can come only from the thoughtful writing of
films like Raazi and Gully Boy in which Muslims are portrayed
as normal human beings of all hues – good, evil and the in-betweens.
If “nuance” were
the last word left on Earth, you could not apply it to Baaghi 3. Well-intentioned, loud, gory, clichéd – yes. Nuanced –
absolutely not. And to be fair, director Ahmed Khan makes no such promise. Nor
did the trailer, which makes his intentions clear with this juvenile
tagline: “Whack smack attack, never look back.”
Farhad Samji, who
has written Baaghi 3’s screenplay
and dialogues, initially gives characters a few bombastic,
rhyming lines of the sort that were once common – and often fun – in commercial
Hindi cinema, but that have become boring with decades of over-use. Ronnie
gets this one: “Mujhpe aati toh main
chhod deta, mere bhai pe aati toh main phod deta hoon.” And this
one: “Jo uniform pehenta hai, voh hamesha form mein rehta hai.”
And Vikram’s senior is saddled with, “Yeh
gaadenge jhanda, jo sambhaal nahin sakte danda,” because Vikram is clumsy
with the baton in his arms. (Sorry, non-Hindi speakers, I am not
making the effort to translate those lines for you.)
This formulaic element is dispensed with early on though, as the leading
man’s action skills, his naked torso, fisticuffs, bombs, flying cars,
helicopters and tanks take centre stage.
Shroff’s body looks
intimidatingly muscular in Baaghi 3 –
and that is my sole comment on his acting in this review.
Riteish Deshmukh as
Vikram over-acts less here than he did in the insufferable Marjaavaan last year, which is sad, because he actually does
deserve better than such films.
 |
| Disha Patani in Baaghi 3 |
Women hang around
on the margins of Baaghi 3 to look
pretty, to love, be loved and protected by the men, to occasionally dance and
wear tiny clothes. Towards this end, Shraddha Kapoor has been cast as
Ronnie’s girlfriend Siya whose carefully constructed wavy hair does not get
mussed up even during a string of terror attacks in Syria. And Disha
Patani makes an appearance swaying in her underwear to a boring song called Do You Love Me?. If I did, I swear,
lady, I would have fallen out of love with you by the end of that drab number.
Along the way, the
wonderful Jaideep Ahlawat from Gangs of Wasseypur and Raazi turns up to
make no impression at all as an Indian gangsta called IPL (short for Inder
Paheli Lamba...ooh, so clever). Vijay Varma, who has proved his
fabulousness in Pink and Monsoon Shootout among other films, is
wasted in the role of a clownish, good-hearted Pakistani. And Israeli actor
Jameel Khoury gets to play a game of terrorist-terrorist as a certain
Abu Jalal Gaza, mastermind of a certain Jaish e Lashkar.
How can any actor’s
performance be justly assessed in a film in which a murderous terrorist
generously gives Ronnie a break in the middle of a battle unto death, so that
little bro can look moony-eyed at big bro and have an emotional conversation?
Everyone and
everything in Baaghi 3 is incidental
though in the face of the film’s determination to
foreground Shroff’s nimbleness. I was reduced to a gawking, envious, emotional
mess when I saw his legs stretch out at a 180-degree angle in mid-air as he
leapt out of (or towards, I have forgotten which) a flying helicopter. Even
that scene, however, could not beat the split he performs to slide
smoothly under a moving armoured tank and emerge on the other side.
You can imagine how
uninspiring the script is that despite all this high-adrenaline action, Baaghi 3 lacks fire. There is a scene in
the film in which a wounded terrorist tells Abu Jalal
Gaza: “We have not been attacked by America...or Mossad. There is only one
man looking for Vikram.” Aiyyo. To
use that very Indian English expression: too much!
It was bad enough
that silly Vettai was inflicted on
the world. Baaghi 3 is more ambitious
than the original and ends up being worse.
Rating (out
of 5 stars): 1.5
CBFC Rating (India):
|
UA
|
Running time:
|
147 minutes
|
This review has also been published on Firstpost:
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