REVIEW 752: COMMANDO 3

Release date:	November 29, 2019
Director:	Aditya Datt
Cast: Language:	Vidyut Jammwal, Adah Sharma, Gulshan Devaiah, Angira Dhar, Rajesh Tailang Hindi

A study of Bollywood’s Commando series could be the basis for a PhD in opportunism. Commando: A One Man Army, released in 2013, was about a loyal Armyman being abandoned by the Indian government when he is caught in enemy territory. Off screen, India got a new government in 2014 and with it arrived the Hindi film industry’s open subservience to the establishment. So Commando 2: The Black Money Trail in 2017 batted for demonetisation. And now, as Islamophobia rages across India, here comes Commando 3 with its cringe-worthy condescension towards India’s Muslims.

The third instalment of Commando, this one too starring Vidyut Jammwal, is directed by Aditya Datt whose best-known feature so far is the Emraan Hashmi-Tanushree Dutta-starrer Aashiq Banaya Aapne. Jammwal’s Karan Singh Dogra this time is on a mission to track down a London-based terrorist running a conversion racket in India that draws innocent Hindu boys to the Islamic fold and brainwashes them into committing violence for Allah along with other Muslims. Buraq Ansari (Gulshan Devaiah) is as evil as a human can be. We first see him heavily veiled. His face is revealed in a scene in which he forces his little son to watch as he brutally murders a man.

Working alongside Karan is his sidekick Bhavna Reddy played, as she was earlier, by Adah Sharma. The mix this time is sought to be revved up by the addition of the British Intelligence agent Mallika Sood (Angira Dhar) who is based on the same prototype that has yielded the Bond franchise’s ‘Bond girl’.

The women in Commando 3 are occasionally given space to display their fighting skills and in that limited time Sharma and Dhar show us how immensely capable they are, but make no mistake about this: the primary purpose of their existence in this screenplay is to compete for Karan’s attention so that while he goes about the serious business of saving the country, we never forget that he leaves la femmes weak at the knees.

The subordination of women to the hero in Commando 3 is nothing compared to the film’s messaging about Muslims. The problem is not with the depiction of a terror network operating in the name of Islam – that such organisations exist must of course be acknowledged; the problem lies with the manner in which this film seeks to hold all Indian Muslims accountable for Buraq Ansari’s actions in a way that the public discourse has never held India’s entire majority community accountable for the wrongdoings of individual members.

Commando 3 is strategic while building its case. It is careful to prepare alibis for itself even as it lectures India’s Muslims about their duty towards the nation at large and their Hindu brethren in particular. For instance, mention is made of beef-related lynchings and other genuine grievances of the Muslim community, which can be held up to anyone who accuses the film of being one-sided. Here’s the catch though: if majoritarian fundamentalists object to the acknowledgement of these crimes by their group, the defence is no doubt a scene right at the start where a Muslim terrorist was shown instigating his flunkeys to kill a calf to stir up trouble. The insinuation is that even the lynchings of Muslims have been the fault of Muslims.

While the principal evil Muslim in Commando 3 spends his time plotting against Hindus, the good Hindu hero waits for a Muslim terrorist to finish his namaz before capturing him. Oh look ye, respect!

(Minor spoilers in the next two sentences) The sermonising directed at Muslims peaks in a video appeal Karan publishes, aimed at inspiring the Muslim masses to thwart Buraq’s plan to attack the Hindu masses. The video and the subsequent scenes of Muslims rising up in response are dripping with a patronising attitude. (Spoiler alert ends) They are also amateurishly written and in your face, epitomised by that shot before the credits roll of a Hindu man and a Muslim man standing shoulder to shoulder right after they together fire a flaming arrow at an effigy of Ravan.

Those who wish to understand the difference between the mischief-mongering by Commando 3 and a factual portrayal of Islamic terrorism would be well advised to watch Anubhav Sinha’s Hindi film Mulk (2018).

Commando 3’s minuses don’t end with its troubling politics. The Indian agents in London come up trumps despite being dumb, lax, over-confident and foolhardy, because these qualities are what the writing team perceives as bravery. (Some people may deem the next sentence a spoiler) For instance, both Bhavna and Karan, despite being undercover agents, blow their own cover early in the narrative to draw the snake out of his hole: she tweets about Karan from her actual ID and he releases a video to the media revealing his identity, both of which are somehow meant to be clever moves. (Spoiler alert ends)

Jammwal, Sharma and Dhar do what is required of them well enough: she and she scrap over him, all three beat up people, they glare, they stare. I experienced a little heartache though at the sight of a fine actor like Gulshan Devaiah reduced to over-acting as Buraq Ansari.

Commando 3 is technically glossy and the fight choreography is slick. The writing though is contrived. The film is filled with lines like this one tossed at Buraq by Karan, “Pehle purdon mein chhupa karta thha, ab mardon mein?” (Earlier you hid behind a veil, now you hide behind men?) as the latter walks towards him surrounded by armed guards, but the dialoguebaazi is tiresome and soulless. Even if this were not the case, it is appalling that the populist stereotypes in the script target an already vulnerable people.

It becomes evident in the end though that none of this comes from a place of conviction. So unsure of itself is Commando 3, that after all its bloodshed and bhashans the end credits run alongside not one but two formulaic song and dance routines.

First comes this kiddish Hinglish number lip-synced by Karan:

Tere peechhe main

Mere aage tu run-run

Kabhi aage tu

Kabhi peechhe main fun-fun

Dekhega jalwa ab toh tu

With my gun-gun

Ek hi toh bachke niklega

Yeh toh done-done.

As if that is not ludicrous enough, there follows Karan dancing with the two women in skimpy, sexy attire, ending on an image of him in silhouette with a Ravan in the background.

Umm.

Let me try my hand at lyric writing:

Now that this piece is through

I’m gonna run-run

Watching Commando 3

Has been no fun-fun

This series should have stopped

With Commando One-One

Give us a break, please

Just be done-done.

Rating (out of five stars): 1

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	134 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/commando-3-movie-review-vidyut-jammwal-flexes-his-muscles-while-talking-down-to-indias-muslims-7714821.html

Posters courtesy:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8983168/

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