Baaghi 2: Dumb action, no plot, but Tiger rocks

There are a few things which Hindi filmmakers should realise now. It's high time and it has become unbearable now; the army is not God; police is not always corrupt; and for God's sake, leave the country’s flag alone!

Baaghi 2, which should primarily have been a thriller, offends you with Ronnie’s (Tiger Shroff’s character) excessive love for the national flag right from the word go.

The real thrill of the supposed thriller is lost in the scuffle of 'army vs police’, so much so that the DIG has to intervene, who declares, Police ka kaam nyay karna hai ( the job of the police is to administer justice).

Excuse me, then what will judiciary do?

The film has such dialogues despite having three screenplay writers (earlier, when three screenplay writers were involved, iconic film like Mughal-E-Azam came into being). The dialogues, at times, refer to contemporary political buzzwords such as swachhta abhiyan and vikas (may be to woo the government but they sound ridiculous instead of driving across any meaningful message).

The film’s plot has reflections of Hollywood thrillers and a South Indian film- a crime has been committed, the victim is saying so, but all other people and evidence indicate otherwise. Attach a love story with it and you can have a gripping drama-plus-action. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Although, wherever the film starts to slither, excellent character actors like Deepak Dobriyal, Randeep Hooda and, of course, Manoj Bajpayee try to spice it up. Randeep Hooda actually shines in his small role of LSD. Bajpayee also doesn't disappoint.

But the film has Tiger in every frame and when he is on screen, you are supposed to watch his body, muscles and action only. He is now a few films old. It's high time he learned some acting and had some kind of expression on his otherwise stone face. His voice is also quite weak. The boy has to really work hard to be called an ‘actor’.

Disha Patani doesn't disappoint as a vulnerable mother, desperately trying to find her daughter. But it is sad that today’s actors are not able to pronounce nukta or the soft sounds of Urdu. As it is, the beautiful language has been usurped by English in our Hindi film industry. Since it's really not possible to negate the influence of Urdu on Hindi, so it's expected of Hindi actors to at least have a proper pronunciation.

One must, however, say that the action sequences are commendable. But seeing Tiger Shroff performing such foolish action scenes with such seriousness, I was left wondering, does the director, Ahmad Khan have such a conviction on the foolishness or is it out of pure love for Tiger’s chiselled body that he gave in to the temptation of foolishness?

Last but not the least is Jacqueline Fernandez’ item number, ek, do, teen…. All the controversies aside, Jacqueline has done a really bad job of it, especially because it was a rehash of the iconic performance by Madhuri. Her dance number disappoints all the more.

But all being said, Tiger remains to be quite popular and even when people were apparently bored with the slow pace of the film, they cheered for the lad! It becomes all the more important for him to learn acting to sustain and increase this popularity.

In this era of Hindi cinema, when Hindi filmmakers are experimenting with a wide variety of theme, this film disappoints even as a thriller.