Release date:
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February 5, 2016
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Director:
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Sunny Deol
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Cast:
Language:
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Sunny Deol, Narendra
Jha, Tisca Chopra, Shivam Patil, Aanchal Munjal, Diana Khan, Rishabh Arora, Om
Puri, Soha Ali Khan, Manoj Joshi, Nadira Babbar, Abhilash Kumar, Harsh
Chhaya, Sachin Khedekar
Hindi
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Ghayal Once Again marks the return of Sunny
Deol as one of the best-remembered characters he has ever played on screen.
Ajay Mehra from 1990’s Ghayal,
directed by Rajkumar Santoshi, preceded the signature “dhai kilo ka haath” Sunny held up in court as a lawyer in
Santoshi’s Damini (1993). These two
films gave the actor the two National Awards of his career and were a source of
much viewing pleasure, even to some among us with increasing reservations about
flaring nostrils, red eyes and yelling in the midst of flying fists.
The sequel to Ghayal – directed by Sunny himself –
seems to be the star’s effort to do a balancing act between an emerging
audience with changing tastes and his own traditional following. It works for a
considerable part of the film; but after a while it is neither here nor there
and it all goes downhill.
The hero himself
enters the frame 15 minutes into the proceedings, in a scene that is
surprisingly low key in comparison with the many grand entries Sunny has made
on screen in the past. When it is hinging itself on action alone, Ghayal 2 is effective, even when you
cannot but be aware of the improbability of it all.
Sure there is
silliness along the way, plenty of over-the-top action too, but it is nothing
that we have not willingly swallowed in the past from Hollywood action
adventures such as the MI, Die Hard, Indiana Jones and Bond series, all of which demand a suspension of disbelief from viewers. Admittedly too, there are
spots of tackiness elsewhere, especially when the writers are trying too hard
to be youthful and cool (such as a completely superfluous song and dance
sequence involving the four kids at the centre of this story, or another where
they hang out with the grandfather of one of them). Yet, not counting the
needlessly extended ending where schmaltz is injected into what should have
been some good old-fashioned, absurdly unapologetic dishum-dishum, Ghayal Once
Again’s stunt sequences are fun.
In Ghayal, Ajay went on a rampage to
execute a treacherous villain (Amrish Puri) for preying on his businessman
brother (Raj Babbar). After the events of that film, he spent 14 years in jail
and on his return, has been running a corruption-hunting media platform called Satyakam with the support of
good-hearted souls he met in prison and a wide underground network of concerned
citizens. The pivotal plot point of Ghayal
2 emerges when four students unknowingly shoot a video of a crime being
committed by a powerful individual and decide to hand it over to Ajay.
The opening quarter
hour of the film, which includes black-and-white flashbacks to the previous
one, are deceptively calm. The chases that follow are nail-bitingly
suspenseful, even though it makes no sense that not a single soul stops to help
the children or Ajay, despite the latter’s evident popularity among the public.
Besides, when blood-thirsty goons go on a rampage in a Mumbai mall, how on
earth, in this day and age does it come about that not a single eye-witness
manages to clandestinely shoot their violence and upload it somewhere?
No doubt police,
politicians and a pliant or scared media have in real life colluded to cover up crimes committed by influential
individuals. Those though did not happen before the eyes of thousands of
witnesses. The initial murder in the film occurs in a private space and is
hidden in a believable fashion. That part of the screenplay is convincing. But
the effort to abduct the children and to punish Ajay for helping them, are both
done so publicly that the silence of the onlookers is ridiculous.
Really? Not one person
steps forward? Not even a few seconds of the bloodletting surfaces on Youtube
or any other online space? Not even one media house, not even a marginal
off-mainstream platform or unknown blogger, has the courage to report these
very openly conducted goings-on on the roads, malls and trains of Mumbai? Really?
It is a measure of
the effectiveness of the film’s well-paced action choreography that these chase
scenes manage to keep even a cynic on edge despite this.
The script’s bigger
failing though is that it skims over too many characters without giving them
enough flesh. The murderer had particular potential because of his lack of
redeeming factors, but we get to know little about him beyond the fact that he
is a spoilt brat. Of the quartet who set out to expose him, you may remember
Aanchal Munjal as the young artiste who played Kajol and Arjun Rampal’s child
in We Are Family (2010). She and
Shivam Patil – Anushka and Rohan here – are worth watching out for.
The execution of Ajay’s relationships in Ghayal 2 are too reliant on fan
affection for Sunny and nostalgia for the first Ghayal. Sunny’s acting too remains dated, with every emotion over-stated and over-done.
There is, however,
another note-worthy dynamic at play here. It is interesting to see an
omnipotent industrialist (Narendra Jha, nice) and his wife (Tisca Chopra) torn
between their conscience and their natural parental instincts when they
recognise the potential for evil in their offspring; a wealthy father’s
arrogance tempered by paternal fears; a mother who is shocked at the
wrongdoings being committed in her presence yet does not stop them; another
(Nadira Babbar) who points out to her son that it is the job of a parent to
cover up a child’s mistakes, not his crimes.
This and the film’s
well-executed chases are dragged
down by its stupid improbabilities, its lack of focus, too many loose ends and
oh yes, those bad white extras. When one of them tells Sunny in the end to drop
his gun and follows that up with a laboured, “Now we are going to beat you up
with our bare hands,” I laughed out loud. It reminded me of cars reversing with
twangy, recorded voices warning bystanders, “Attention please, this car is
backing up.” What is it with Bollywood producers that they will hire a
helicopter for a grand finale but will not spend on above-average Caucasian
actors for incidental roles or invest in good writing?
The name of Ajay’s
newspaper in this film is no doubt a bow to Dharmendra’s 1969 film Satyakam in which Deol Senior played an
idealist struggling against a corrupt world. That classic deserved a
better-thought-out tribute than this one.
Rating
(out of five stars): **
CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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126 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
