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Bollywood Film Review

Johnson Thomas

Stunted, Rebel without cause



Film: Baaghi 3

Cast: Tiger Shroff, Shraddha Kapoor, Ritesh Deshmukh, Jaideep Ahlawat, Vijay Verma, Satish Kaushik, Virendra Saxena, Ankita Lokhande, Jackie Shroff, Jameel Khoury, Disha Patani

Director: Ahmed Khan

Rating: * *

Runtime: 143 mins



The title may imply sequel but this third edition merely takes a ‘stunted’ franchise to further depths. Remake of Tamil Film Vettai (2012), the makers call it a spiritual sequel( Don’t know what that means?) to Baaghi and Baaghi2. A one-man army against fierce terrorists in a foreign land, this Tiger Shroff stunts showcase displays a whole lot of brawn…but, hey! Where’s the brain? Vikram(Riteish Deshmukh), a cop, older brother and much beloved to Ronnie(Tiger Shroff), gets abducted by a dreaded terrorist group, Jaish-e-Lashkar in Syria and Ronnie who has been fiercely protective all along( we see him rescue his brother from umpteen dicey situations before this happens), goes all out to rescue his brother. The mystery here is that Vikram has a handicap and no one (not even the director or scriptwriter) knows what it is…(sic).



Of course, one can’t figure out why Ronnie needs to rescue Vikram when the Indian Police force and various diplomatic missions exist for that purpose. But the film’s tagline ‘…Bhai pe aati hai, toh main phod deta hoon’ makes it clear that its his job alone.



Even though the film isn’t technically snazzy ( the CGI is patchy, camerawork is headache inducing and background noise is deafening) Tiger Shroff makes it battle worthy. His impressively sleek musculature is definitely a work of art. His moves are athletic, the stunt choreography (Ram Laxman & Khecha Khampadkee) is Hollywood worthy and the sheer speed, power and almost balletic smoothness of execution allow for quite an adrenaline gush. And there’s enough arsenal around, to fight a war. But an over two-hour runtime cannot sustain on adrenaline alone. Tiger’s expressiveness remains one note, while Riteish fails to register his emotive capabilities because he is hampered by a badly written role. The villain Abu Jamal, played by Jameel Khoury looks impressively menacing but even that seems too simulated a performance. Shraddha, Ankita and Disha add up to a fair bit of window dressing. The rest of the cast (and that includes able performers like Jackie Shroff, Jaideep Ahlawat & Vijay Verma) have little to do other than provide the maddening masala for this mayhem. The film has some obvious bromantic overtures which could well have been misconstrued and the sometimes double edged dialogues are mostly dead-weight in a narrative that is pumped-up with senseless action.

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