Force 2 is little more than a pretty good-looking film where some well-staged action set pieces try unsuccessfully to overcome a flimsy plot.
At the end of the film, there is a title card dedicating the film to those RAW agents who have sacrificed much for the country, several of them languishing in jails, disowned by the Indian government once caught. It is ironic then that the film shows the trained RAW officer, KK (Sonakshi Sinha), to always be two steps behind the macho Mumbai cop, Yashvardhan (John Abraham), in both, the brains and brawns department. More over, it is he who figures out the true identity of the villain from his network in the Mumbai police and helps her get over her baggage of failure in the past as well. Really, what would RAW do without the Mumbai police? In fact, KK is wrong every time and Yashvardhan always right.
Otherwise, the well-mounted film, tracing the killings of three RAW agents in China through a clue leading to the Indian embassy in Budapest, does still have its moments of high-octane action set pieces and the film, mercifully, pretty much sticks to its plot without typical Bollywood diversions. The problem is that it is a weak story with too many loopholes and needed better plotting and twists and turns. The film tries to rectify this by jumping from one action scene to the other with small pauses in between to lead onto the next action sequence. This actually works well enough for the film in one aspect. John Abraham’s muscles have always acted better than his face. The film, thereby, keeps him from giving a (non) performance overall although the few moments he does not fight and has to act, he ends up reinforcing just how wooden he is. Sonakshi Sinha is defeated by the script and can’t do much beyond going through the supporting act. While she does look like she can kick ass given the chance, her weak characterization (with laughable rookie mistakes) just kills her. In the midst of the two non-actors, Tahir Raj Bhasin comes off best as the villain even if there is much verbal diarrhea to him, thereby giving us several tell-don’t-show moments. His flashback to give him some depth too isn’t quite pulled off well-enough for you to feel for his motivation or lead the film into an ambivalent grey territory. Genelia’s scenes add nothing to the film while Adil Hussain is wasted.
As mentioned, the film is well-mounted and filmed nicely in Budapest. The action sequences – the roof top chase for one – work well enough and thankfully, the romantic track and songs have largely been done away with. However, a Budapest nightclub with the dancers dancing to a reworked version of Kaate Nahin Katate from Mr India (1987), is plain gobsmacking. The sound design and background score is energetic enough to try and sustain life into the film, succeeding only partially. The editing tries to ensure the film has a heady enough pace to gloss over its shortcomings, which, to be honest, are quite plentiful.
For me, Force (2011) was, as it is, a mediocre attempt and a rather lousy re-make of Gautham Vasudev Menon’s cracking Tamil film, Kaakha Kaakha (2003). Force 2, even if bigger and perhaps just that little bit better, does nothing much to give one hope that we have an interesting franchise on hand. Let’s just say you don’t have to force yourself to see this one.
Hindi, Action, Color