Singham Returns (2014)

This movie celebrates the successful actor-director partnership of Ajay Devgn-Rohit Shetty and the Mumbai Police. Of course, the full movie has a good enough story line and a popular heroine. But, in spite of being substantial, they haze out in the aforesaid celebration. Also, it is one of the very sequels, which is better (also read original) than it’s prequel i.e. ‘Singham’! Instead of a core story, there is a core villain Satyaraj Baba (Amol Gupte), who is a religious preacher with enough power and clout, enabling him to have a substantial say in the functioning of the ruling political party! In contrast to him, there is Guruji (Anupam Kher), the party mentor, who is a man of principles and enjoys great respect of inspector Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn), as well as the Maharashtra CM (Sanjay Manjrekar).  

Guruji’s strategy of introducing new and young candidates for the upcoming elections is not well received by Baba. While Guruji perceives their enthusiasm, professional training and capability as the door to better functioning of the new government, and thereby better living of the common man, Baba cares a damn about any of this and worries about loosing constituencies, in the absence of old and popular candidates. Soon Guruji gets assassinated by masked and heavily armed professionals. Alongside, a van is found in a river body, along with a dead driver, crores of rupees and a free download cheack. The dead driver is a trusted subordinate of Bajirao. Both these events and their repercussions instigate the super cop in Bajirao and he goes into full fledged investigations, interrogations, arrests and secret follow-ups, so as to obtain enough proof to – a) arrest Baba, and b) clear his subordinate’s name. The movie has good energy, cool stunts, weak villain, new but not in tandem story-line, and for a change, it only highlights the glory of the police force. It highlights – the demanding and risky nature of their job, unrealistic expectations from an aging cop, thankless attitude of media and public in general, mass attack protocol (‘lathi’ charge) followed only in times of sheer crisis and the perennial chance of nullifying of all their hard work by anyone in ‘power’. As expected, Ajay Devgn is the ‘Singham’.  

If he throws a punch, then it is a real punch and not a make believe one. And he is particularly good in depicting pain and anger simultaneously through his eyes which is fun to watch online. Kareena Kapoor plays his friend cum girlfriend (Avni), runs a beauty parlour and is supposed to eat like a glutton. She has well experimented with a new style of comedy. But for the glutton part, you instantly miss the hogging of Aamir Khan in ‘Rang De Basanti’. You will find Kareena picking on many foods, making enough face and hand gestures, but her food bites are very small and very few actually go into her mouth! But she is adorable all the same. Sadly, Kareena seems to be making the sole attempt in establishing the hero-heroine chemistry! Amol Gupte has performed well. But you need a much bigger (impactful) villain for a movie of this caliber. Anupam Kher, Mahesh Manjrekar, Ashwini Kalsekar (reporter) have small roles and they have done justice to it. Earlier Dayanand Shetty (cop ‘Daya’) was breaking doors on TV (soap ‘CID’) and now he is doing the same in films! Like TV, herein too, he has well played the second-in-command. Zakir Hussain (Prakash Rao) and Pankaj Tripathi (Altaf Khan) have now become constant with important side roles. Ganesh Yadav (Mahesh Jhadav, the dead cop) and Sharat Saxena (Shiv Rathod, Bajirao’s senior) have also acted well.