Force 2
Director: Abhinay Deo
Stars: John Abraham, Sonakshi Sinha, Tahir Raj Bhasin
Two stars
Force 2 isn't a bad movie, it's just a frustrating one. To be fair, action, as a genre, is a difficult one to nail. Things get old, viewers get bored easily with anything that seems repetitive. What can you do that hasn't already been done?
The most obvious answer would be to invest heavily in the script and create compelling main characters. You could pay extra attention to the seemingly unconnected details that combine to save a film from being written off as a half-hearted, middling effort.
Force 2, has none of that, to no one's real surprise.
John Abraham reprises his role as ACP Yashwardhan in this sequel to 2011's Force. He's still mourning the death of his wife and is now cold-hearted and seriously messed up in the head.
Since this is a level of complexity that cannot be conveyed through Abraham’s solitary expression – his only concession to acting – the writers felt the need to provide dialogue for Abraham that literally spells this out to the audience.
Joining Abraham in his quest to round up the baddies is RAW agent Kamaljit Kaur (Sonakshi Sinha). Although not exactly an original plot device, the inclusion of a female cop who means business does give you hope – but not for long. For an agent trained in analysis, Sinha displays spectacularly poor decision-making skills, is almost always wrong in her assessment and scurries behind Abraham’s muscles every time something goes wrong.
Adding to the problems, the plot is threadbare, as Abraham and Sinha’s attempts to hunt down the linchpin of an international crime syndicate leads them to Budapest. An exhausting number of long, pointless action scenes and one unsurprisingly patriotic climax later, they have their guy. They leave in their wake major plot holes that no one even attempts to explain – we are simply expected to accept, for example, that an international criminal mastermind would be dumb enough to attempt a high-level security breach with an incredulously large crew in tow, because a covert, quiet operation would not give Abraham reason enough to rip off his shirt at the slightest provocation. That is the film’s only real aim: to give us an eyeful of its star’s muscles from every conceivable angle.
Given the insipid narrative, Tahir Raj Bhasin as the main villain, Shiv Sharma, delivers a surprisingly impressive performance. His menacing delivery is easily the best thing about the film – although he does not have much in the way of competition.
The only other good thing there is to say about Force 2 is that it is not as bad as it could have been. If that is a movie standard you can live with, have fun.
artslife@thenational.ae