REVIEW 469: COMMANDO 2: THE BLACK MONEY TRAIL

Release date:	March 3, 2017
Director:	Deven Bhojani
Cast: Language:	Vidyut Jammwal, Adah Sharma, Esha Gupta, Freddy Daruwala, Adil Hussain, Satish Kaushik, Shefali Shah, Suhail Nayyar, Thakur Anoop Singh Hindi

It might be natural to assume that the tale of a government-appointed, trigger-happy action junkie on the trail of a murderous, black-money-laundering villain would be a fun ride, especially with His Royal Hotness, His Muscular Majesty Vidyut Jammwal in the driver’s seat.

Jammwal (yes, now with a double “M”) is as good-looking as a man can be. If you watched him on debut playing John Abraham’s bete noir in Force (2011), you probably know that already. As Captain Karanvir Singh Dogra in Commando 2: The Black Money Trail, the character he earlier played in the 2013 film Commando: A One Man Army, he does everything to please a lustful viewer. He executes sleek stunts, repeatedly jumping, spinning, flipping, whirling and twirling his beautiful body through the air. Above all, he wears a ganji in large parts of the film to serve us generous views of his bulky bare arms and shoulders. What more could a hormone-laden viewer ask for?

Finesse in storytelling, perhaps? Hmm, problem alert!

So it goes that India’s Central Government, anxious to show results after the demonetisation exercise, desperately wants to retrieve the crores of black money stashed away in foreign bank accounts and deposit it as largesse in the accounts of the general population at home. The crater-like pothole in its path is the Union Home Minister (Shefali Shah) whose son too has a cache of cash lying abroad. Pretending to work towards achieving the government’s goals, she assembles a crack team of mercenary officials who are at her beck and call. They must travel to Malaysia and arrest Vicky Chadha who is in the business of keeping safe the black money of a large number of corrupt Indians.

Knowing the Minister’s ill intentions, Karan – a trained army commando – sneaks his way into the group. The film is a battle of wits and fists between the honest, patriotic officer who doesn’t mind taking the law into his own hands (when it is for the country, how dare we complain!) and those who would betray the motherland for their personal gain.

Commando 2’s narrative delivers some unexpected twists and turns, but the colours that fill in the outline of the story are weak, amateurishly handled and in the end, amusing in a clumsy effort to play to the gallery. In a film of this sort, aimed at racing pulses rather than thinking minds, it is perhaps pointless to ask why the Home Minister alone is the moving force behind the government’s efforts at retrieving black money from abroad, with the Finance Minister nowhere in sight. But even as the racy action keeps us hooked, it is hard to get past Commando 2’s cliches and loopholes.

Karan & Co zip around Malaysia with such confidence and ease, it would seem that country is in India’s pocket and barely has a police force of its own. Adah Sharma plays Karan's teammate Bhavna Reddy, an irritating encounter specialist who harks back to the old Hindi film stereotype of a south Indian. Bhavna is a double whammy of sorts since she serves as a ditsy, frivolous female sidekick to Jammwal’s grim-as-hell Karan, a sort of female Chris Tucker to every serious white cop in Hollywood history. Besides, the romance between them feels terribly contrived and silly because of the complete lack of chemistry between the two.

Then there is their colleague Zafar, the most awkwardly written, stereotypical ‘good Muslim’ seen in recent years in Hindi cinema, the kind that – in my humble opinion – could only emerge from the pens of writers over-compensating for their deep-rooted suspicion of the community, a suspicion they may possibly not even be conscious of.

The film’s impressive action scenes and pretty hero cannot make up for its limited substance, which matters particularly because the action is not unrelenting. While Karan is bashing up baddies, it is hard to look away from the screen. When he is not, it becomes easy.

Sadly, there is more to Jammwal than that face, body and his fighting skills. Someone give this man a more substantial film, please.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	124 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/commando-2-movie-review-his-royal-hotness-vidyut-jammwal-in-a-super-silly-story-with-super-action-3313374.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_2:_The_Black_Money_Trail

REVIEW 268: HOLIDAY – A SOLDIER IS NEVER OFF DUTY

Release date:	June 6, 2014
Director:	A.R. Murugadoss
Cast: Language:	Akshay Kumar, Sumeet Raghavan, Sonakshi Sinha, Farhad (Freddy Daruwala), Zakir Hussain, Govinda Hindi

Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty is designed as a cloying tribute to our defence forces, with a populist they-can-do-no-wrong tone. Instead of extending the courtesy of basic research to our men and women in uniform though, writer-director A.R. Murugadoss serves up an ill-informed, far-fetched film so filled with lacunae and platitudes that even its pacy action scenes, occasional humour and charismatic hero can’t save it from being embarrassingly stupid.

Holiday is a remake of Murugadoss’ own 2012 Tamil hit Thuppakki starring Vijay and Kajal Aggarwal. A hit machine in south India, the director made his Bollywood debut with Ghajini starring Aamir Khan and Asin. That film offered us the novelty of a shirtless Aamir with ripped muscles and a tragic past plus a successful south Indian film heroine debuting in Bollywood. Holiday, on the other hand, gives us a re-run of the Akshay Kumar we’ve seen repeatedly in action comedies, with Sonakshi Sinha once again playing a pretty showpiece in the background.

It’s one thing to defy logic in masala entertainers that ask not to be taken seriously, quite another to serve up a puerile plot in a film that clearly deems itself extremely intense. Consider this… While on holiday in Mumbai, Captain Virat Bakshi (Akshay) of the Indian Army witnesses a bus bombing. He captures the man responsible for the blast and hands him over to the police, but when the fellow escapes, guess what? Our hero – a member of the khufiya Defence Intelligence Agency – nabs the terrorist and keeps him imprisoned in his own bedroom! The chap is there for almost three days, Virat even tortures him, but no one hears a sound! Not Virat’s family. Not neighbours. Not even the large Mumbai police contingent stationed outside for Virat’s security.

This episode takes place early on in the film. Without giving away any details, let’s just say the rest of the film is devoted to Virat saving Mumbai from a dozen bomb blasts with the help of a dozen fellow Armymen who are also on holiday. The people who are actually on holiday seem to be the clueless Mumbai Police, the state and Central governments who do nothing in this matter, unless you count Virat’s sidekick, the inexplicably ignorant Sub-Inspector Mukund Deshmukh (Sumeet Raghavan). Also in the picture is a romance with a girl called Saiba (Sonakshi).

For the most part, Holiday is a carbon copy of Thuppakki, with a new cast. The differences are crucial though. The terrorists’ boss in Holiday is played by the ineffectual Freddy Daruwala a.k.a. Farhad. The original had the sexy, always effective Vidyut Jamwal. In the absence of a worthy opponent, Virat makes the terrorists look even more foolish than the script intended.

Holiday also departs from Thuppakki with its clumsy efforts not to be labelled anti-Muslim. In one scene when Virat relates an anecdote about the patriotic family of an Indian soldier serving on the border who was tortured by the enemy, the soldier in question is given an overtly Muslim name, unlike in Thuppakki. Okay I guess, but the effort becomes laughable when a terrorist who is set to infiltrate the Indian defence establishment in Holiday is given the Goan Christian name Allwyn D’souza – which is silly and off the mark considering that India has so far not seen terror networks emerging from the Christian, Parsi and Buddhist communities.

Another dissimilarity is that while Vijay is about a decade older than Kajal, he does not look like her daddy. On the other hand, the two decades separating Akshay-Sonakshi are glaring, although he’s beautifully trim whereas she’s tubby and large. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not expecting 46-year-old heroes to retire. Point is, Akshay makes an effort to dress and prance around like a boy, especially in the song Tu hi to hai. In Blame the love she wears a babydoll dress and looks like a kid yet to lose her puppy fat, dancing with her slim papa. It’s also amusing when he’s part of a ladka ladki ko dekhne aaya hai scene where Virat’s age is not specified, so one assumes we’re expected to view this ‘ladka’ as Saiba’s contemporary. C’mon Akki, you’re the fittest of your male contemporaries in Bollywood, but please start acting your age and with women your age.

Kudos to Murugadoss for remaking his inane-yet-entertaining Tamil film by adding new flaws instead of plugging those in the original. This must be a new milestone in the history of remakes.

As a civilian I can only point out what common sense tells me are failings in the terror-related sequences in Holiday (eg: cars in the vicinity of the aforementioned bus bomb blast are engulfed in flames, but Mukund standing right next to the bus is unharmed). I found so many factual errors, clichés and stereotypes in a barely-few-minutes-long Christian wedding scene – a milieu I’m familiar with – that I can’t begin to imagine what police and Army personnel would spot in the entire film. In that single church scene, Virat and his friends are shown laughing and talking loudly next to the altar, the wedding cake is set up next to the altar, and the wedding guests hang around inside the church eating cake after the ceremony. Err…churches are strictly solemn spaces and none of the above would customarily be allowed. Besides, how about for a change showing a sari-wearing Christian bride, considering that that’s the way a majority of Indian Christian brides dress? And puhleeease, it is not the custom for Indian Christian brides and grooms to kiss in church at the end of the ceremony! It’s irritating when our filmmakers persist in showing Christian weddings that are not inspired by Indian Christian weddings but by the many Western films and teleserials they’ve seen! I think I might just re-watch this film with a friend from the Army to see what s/he thinks of the Captainsaab’s functioning.

Lack of authenticity, populism and playing it safe are in fact the hallmarks of this film which justifies torture, deifies Armymen in a maudlin fashion, and casually portrays the sexual harassment of the heroine by the hero as legitimate courtship. When a woman has clearly stated that she isn’t interested in you, it’s not acceptable to kiss her reflection in your mirror while she is watching, or to stalk her, grab her on a basketball court and smooch her. In a clear bid to appease its mass male audience, the film later even has Virat telling Saiba that girls like her blame boys for responding to sexual signals that the girl is deliberately sending out.

The sillyfest might actually have worked if it weren’t for the manner in which Holiday alternates between illogical-but-energetic action scenes and Virat’s fluffy song-and-dance-led romantic interludes with Saiba. Tu hi to hai and Aaj dil shayarana lagta hai are at least nice tunes. The latter is that mandatory feature of most Hindi films these days – a song shot in deserts and forts with the heroine in flowing costumes and the couple posing around – while the rather tuneless Blame the love is that mandatory nightclub number. Throughout Holiday, Akshay intermittently shows us flashes of the talent and charm that have made him the star he is today. In some comic sequences, Sonakshi gives us glimpses of an aspect of her acting skills that remains untapped while she persists in picking up mindless scripts in which she is a marginal player. To be fair, this film is neither loud nor crude like Akshay’s recent misadventures Boss, Khiladi 786 and Rowdy Rathore. The problem with Holiday is that the formulaic comedy and romance end up diluting the thriller that it is intended to be, while the entire film is weighed down by its senselessness.

The Indian Army, Navy and Air Force are not peopled by saints, but they remain institutions this country can be proud of. They deserve better than this immature tribute.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	171 minutes

Poster courtesy: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday:_A_Soldier_Is_Never_Off_Duty