So I just got back from watching my first Tiger Shroff movie. Hollywood has superhero franchises and Bollywood has Bollywood movies with Bollywood heroes. Bhaagi 2’s trailer looked good, reminded me of one of those Hollywood action movies from the 90s, and seeing Tiger in action in the trailer had me thinking that the much touted Rambo remake would be something to look forward to. And there were glimpses of Manoj Bajpai and Randeep Hooda too, in the trailer. What else then can a fickle mind do but book tickets, and that’s exactly what I did.
The movie begins with the kidnapping of a child in Goa. The child’s mom happens to be Tiger’s ex girlfriend, the bad guys chose the wrong kid indeed. There, thats the plot of the movie if I may call it that. Tiger is a commando stationed at the Kashmir border and still prefers to keep actual photographs of his ex in his trunk. This is one smart soldier who knows that privacy is a myth when it comes to smarphones or maybe he’s just being resourceful for the days when his phone runs out of battery. After a display of his mean skills as a soldier with a heart and mind of his own, he sets out to meet his troubled ex girlfriend in Goa. He is a one-man army, as proudly advertised by his superior officer who also doubles up as a therapist with a shoulder to cry on later when Tiger runs out of villains to beat up.
Tiger starts off the investigation into the kidnapping by kicking and punching a bunch of policemen inside their police station, which ultimately turns out to be a sneaky plan by Tiger to show off his sculpted body during third degree, which he confesses is just warm up as far his gym hardened body is concerned. The action sequences which lured me into the movie hall took the longest time to pop up and I guess Tiger was frustrated too when I saw him kicking dead bad guys up screaming “Tum Mar Nahi Sakte”. Obviously he had’nt kicked and punched them to his heart’s content. His climactic showdown is set in a gangster hideout deep in Goan jungles. The economic slowdown has hit the Mafia too it seems when you see that they have gone for outsouricing, the henchmen are all Asians and the few Russian gangsters are saved for the final punches. The greatest twist in the film is that it’s not the soldier who is suffering from PTSD, its the soldier’s ex gf. In fact the ex’s current husband has to explain the acronym to Tiger. Mind bending role-reversing stuff that you get to see only in Bollywood.
The hidden gems in Bhaagi 2 are Manoj Bajpai and Randeep Hooda,reminded me of Om Puri’s turn as a cop in Gupt but that’s another time and another director entierly. They hold the movie together until Tiger does his thing in the climax. Manoj Bajpai doesn’t get to stretch his acting muscles as much as we would’ve liked him to but he still owns every scene he is in. Randeep Hooda on the other hand matches Tiger’s acrobatics with his swag. If it were not for the lines and roles of Hooda and Bajpai I would’ve turned into a Bhaagi myself, out of the exit. Hooda just waltzes through the role here and his exchanges with Bosco, the unseen cop are hilarious. In fact I feel they should make a whole movie based on the Hooda cop character. Those are the scenes where you actually feel the presence of writers in a movie that otherwise looked and talked like one filmed by stunt coordinators entirely.
gopakumarpurushothaman 