Rohit Shetty’s latest has everything needed to make a movie sell in the current political environment – military propaganda, Hindu mythology, and over the top action and violence sequences.
‘Singham Again’ has a star-studded cast, featuring Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Tiger Shroff, Ranveer Singh, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Arjun Kapoor, and Jackie Shroff. The movie feels like Shetty’s attempt to recreate the magic Farah Khan created in the song ‘Deewangi deewangi’ from ‘Om Shanti Om’. However, he fails terribly. With the audience having already witnessed their entry sequences in the trailer, the big names fail to impress. Keeping a few characters under wraps would have done the movie a great deal of good. The plot of the movie revolves around revenge and uses the ‘Ramayana’ as a crutch. It follows the cookie-cutter template of all movies from Shetty’s cop universe. There is zero suspense.
While it’s a given that you leave logic at the door when watching a Rohit Shetty movie, some scenes will truly leave you baffled. The movie struggles in the first half. It tries too hard to draw comparisons with the ‘Ramayana’. You are forced to watch the same scene, in two different contexts, in the name of symbolism. It only picks up after the interval.
The performances too are a mixed bag. While Arjun makes for a half-decent villain, Deepika has delivered one of her worst performances yet. Ajay brings a subdued version of the original ‘Singham’. Ranveer’s comic timing is worthy of a mention, helping lift the second half of the movie.
While propaganda does sell, it might not hurt to tone it down a little. Dialogues like ‘India ghuskar maarta hai dushmanon ko’ are getting a bit too dated and maybe it’s time we stop using Kashmir and its people as props in movies.