Singham Again

Rohit Shetty’s recent outing from his cop universe, Singham Again draws forcefully from the Ramayana, with Bajirao Singham as a modern-day warrior like Lord Rama. While the film delivers some of Shetty’s signature high-octane action sequences, all accompanied by a deafeningly loud background score, we struggle to uncover even a semblance of a cohesive story beneath all the so-called spectacle.

Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn) is transferred to Kashmir, where he is ambushed by Omar Hafeez (Jackie Shroff), a former Pakistan-based terrorist leader. After a long chase, Singham finally arrests Hafeez and learns of his plan to target him, Sooryavanshi (Akshay Kumar), and Simmba (Ranveer Singh) as revenge for the death of his sons. The Home Minister, Raj Jaishankar (Ravi Kishan), instructs Singham to form a task force, the Shiva Squad, to raze Hafeez’s drug operation in Sri Lanka. Two years later, Singham and his team seized a cargo loaded with drugs. Singham discovers the shipment belongs to Zubair Hafeez (Arjun Kapoor), Omar’s grandson and a brutal figure known as Danger Lanka, operating out of Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, Singham’s wife, Avni (Kareena Kapoor Khan), is hosting a week-long theatrical production of the Ramayana to educate young people on the values of Lord Rama. A critical video related to the programme accidentally gets deleted, and Avni travels to Rameshwaram to re-shoot it. While there, Zubair kidnaps her and demands Singham bring his grandfather, Omar, along with Simmba and Sooryavanshi to Sri Lanka in exchange for her release.

Not that one is even looking for complete logic or any hint of realism, but looking at the shoddy narrative of Singham Again, it almost seems the action scenes and background score of the film were conceived first and then the screenplay crafted (by a team of six writers no less!) to fit around them. Little wonder then that randomness, rather than entertainment, becomes the norm, a jumble of scenes unfolding one after the other like a disconnected series of flashy moments, lacking any organic flow or impact. Brief moments of dramatic exchange are immediately followed by lengthy action sequences, where arbitrary cameos appear out of nowhere. None of the action scenes have any sort of buildup, a character simply appears to beat up his or her opponents and then moves on to the next confrontation in the same repetitive fashion. One would expect at least the showdown between Zubair and Singham to have some sort of whistle-inducing impact, but even that is a complete letdown. The juxtaposition of key events and characters to the Ramayana by resorting to in-your-face connections feels totally forced, superficial and extremely awkward rather then cinematic. In fact, Shetty’s attention to delivering action and scale becomes such a priority that even the minimum time needed to invest in some sort of emotional depth of the characters takes a back seat. The bond between Singham and Avni is never developed to the point where we genuinely care for her when she is abducted. The couple has a young son, Shaurya, whose role in the film remains an enigma as he has almost no purpose in the narrative.

Ajay Devgn portrays Bajirao Singham with the same steely expression throughout the film while Kareena Kapoor Khan as Avni has little opportunity to transcend her role of a traditional, meek, and loyal wife. Arjun Kapoor is little more than a clichéd villain we’ve encountered many times before. Ranveer Singh brings a momentary smile to our faces and adds a certain charm to Simmba, the counterpoint of Hanuman in the story. However, Jackie Shroff, Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone and Tiger Shroff do not rise above their cameo appearances.

Technically, one could say that the film belongs to Ravi Basrur, as without his bombastic background score, the film would not have found its wings to make its feeble flight. Girish Kant and Raza Hussain Mehta’s cinematography and Bunty Nagi’s editing struggle to save the film from its significant flaws as Singham Again is a tiring watch that should have come with a statutory warning regarding the assault on our eardrums. Even an action-based video game would have offered us greater engagement, allowing us at least to immerse ourselves as active participants in the events.

Hindi, Action, Drama, Color