Cast: John Abraham, Sonakshi Sinha, Tahir Raj Bhasin
Director: Abhinay Deo
A barrage of back-and-forth action sequences, interspersed with smart one-liners, a few unexplained killings, a dash of mystery thrown in, a sudden adrenaline rush that infuses not merely the lead characters but everyone among the audience and you have a concoction of thrills, fights, chase and 127 minutes of this Abhinay Deo directed actioner Force 2. Alas, with all its hard charging action, this muscle-bound steroid-induced John Abraham-Sonakshi Sinha (who looks good, but must shed some more kilos) starrer remains undistinguished and entirely uninvolving as a narrative. There’s some pleasant outing in picturesque places like Budapest and Berlin in this sequel that comes after a gap of eight years, and as expected, packs in as much action as possible. Some nonetheless, at the end of it, one gets tired of something that doesn’t have a story worth digging into. After all, the fizz in your cola turns insipid after a while, and the savoury cravings for popcorn soon leave your palate satiated if the cinema itself doesn’t offer much. After all, some hard-hitting knockout punches cannot be a valid substitute for a story in a film.
Force 2 has a chilling start when out of a total of 20 R&AW agents, three spies get killed one after the other in Budapest. Enter ACP Yashvardhan (Abraham) who has been chosen to bring down a mastermind terrorist Shiv Sharma (Tahir Raj Bhasin). He teams up with yet another R&AW agent Kamaljit Kaur or KK (Sonakshi Sinha) in this rather formidable task to track down and outsmart Shiv. Yash, whose wife (Genelia D’Souza) got killed by a drug dealer he had hunted down in the earlier film, is much wanted by the Indian intelligence agency, which is worried sick. It instructs both Yash and KK to track down Shiv and stop the mayhem. Making full advantage of tough guy Abraham’s biceps and his sculpted athletic body, director Deo makes sure all the human targets get blown to smithereens. He is joined in by a rather, pretty, but shaky Sonakshi, who would think twice before pressing on the trigger.
Thankfully she isn’t the damsel-in-distress, and is ever ready to add her two-bit pieces of advice at any given opportunity. Till this far, it’s a fun ride that has enough to keep the viewer engaged. Now, don’t expect a Hollywoodian punchiness here; there’s much pizzazz that’s though typically Indian, is enjoyable. Sonakshi is probably trying to get into a slot that had only a Tapsee Pannu deliver the right punches in Baby earlier: the fiery, gritty female lead in out-and-out action thrillers. She would do well if she decided to lose some more weight and not try too hard to outdo the male counterparts in the action game. Abraham has never been a deep thinking actor with a vast emotional range. His deadpan expressions work perfectly well in his stoic stances that make him seem to merely go through the motions. Tahir Raj tries a reassuring look with a face that doesn’t look menacingly vice.
The idea must have been to not make him an utterly believable character, whose back story may be undercooked, and may find justification of his wicked ways. One may be pleased with some scenes that have Abraham and Tahir run up all the way to the terraces of endless buildings in a fiercely choreographed chase sequence. But all the fights leave few moments to ponder a little beneath the surface since the majority of the action scenes are forgettable. If, despite all the conflict, combat and clash between the agents or the mastermind who is on the run while looking for his next prey, the plot sounds exciting, you may as well blow up your Rs 200 ticket on a film that’s replete with stock cookie cutter images in this demonetised state of affairs. Other than that, it’s pretty much the “been there, done that” stuff!
The writer is a film critic and has been reviewing films for over 15 years. He also writes on music, art and culture, and other human interest stories.
