The movie Commando was a refreshing and a somewhat unique take on a simple love story between an army officer and an exploited girl. The sequel Commando 2 is sadly not at all refreshing and certainly not unique. It’s just like any other mainstream Bollywood movie trying to make as much money as possible on the box office, using the popularity of its star-cast and success of the prequel. Vidyut Jamwal has proven in his short Bollywood stint that he is brilliant in action and a quite natural actor. With this movie he adds on to his short but impressive list of Bollywood movies, which is sure to expand in the near future. Sadly Commando 2 as a movie can’t be called a success –both in terms of box office and cinematic expertise- just because of the acting penchant of Vidyut Jamwal.
Let’s just put it all
The plot it seems was written by a 10-year-old who thought it would be a good idea to assemble each and every current topic, with irrelevant and illogical twists so that audience from every walk-of-life can enjoy the movie. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. Though the goal of attracting maximum audience groups with different tastes to increase the movie’s box-office total was intelligent, execution of the goal wasn’t up to the mark. Actually it was very far off the mark.
The movie starts with mention of a black money launderer Vicky Chadda who has duped the Indian banks and consequently Indian citizens of their hard earned money. He had been arrested in Malaysia and a team of four police officers were being sent to deport him, so that the supposed black money could be brought back.
Maybe he was roaming around with the money in his pant pockets. Who knows?
Moving forward, as the Home Minister’s son is also involved in the money laundering, it is decided by the Home Minister that she would send a team of her own trusted and corrupt police officers to kill Vicky Chadda. This way her son would remain safe and no political backlash would come her way. But to her dismay ex-commando Karanveer Singh Dogra (Vidyut Jamwal) sniffs up the plan and joins the team. After that it is literally a rollercoaster of twists and plot-points. Initially, Vicky Chadda is a man with a sad story and bad-acting disease. After that the mantle of Vicky Chadda passes to Esha Gupta who does nothing but smirk aimlessly throughout the movie. Also, it’s found out that the said money can only be accessed through some kind of briefcase which is kept in a bank locker; the key of which is hidden in a mall.
With me so far?
A Bible is then found which gives clues about dead people whose accounts will be used to embezzle the already embezzled money. Honestly it didn’t take my finance degree to find out that something fishy was going down with the money part. Running along with this loose and un-directional story are several kickstarted and subsequently forgotten plotlines like love story of Esha and Vidyut, love story of Adah Sharma and Vidyut, love story of Freddie Daruwala (ACP Bakhtawar) and Vidyut, patriotism of a Muslim police officer. Honestly, I could have told you whether the climax was a double bluff or triple bluff or something more than that if after some time I hadn’t lost the count. Not for the lack of trying though.
In the end it seemed the producers thought it would be best to just put it all and not think about the asymmetry generated due to the approach. The result? A bowl of fish soup with a single delicious fish but every colored and non-colored vegetable put together to make a hotch-potch which neither had the taste nor the smell to attract the audience.
Who’s turn is it to act?
If I say, Vidyut Jamwal was the only person actually acting in the entire movie it would not be far from the truth. At times it felt like the actors were waiting for each other to start acting so that they could also do so. But that never happened. Funnily enough sometimes the effect of someone else’s (read everybody else) horrific-acting affected Vidyut Jamwal too making him lose track of his dialogues and flow. I assure you when the movie started hopeless was a word for me, but when the movie ended the word personified into a movie for me.
Except Vidyut Jamwal, the only person who stood resolute and calm between the various bad actors delivering his lines with perfect poise was a new guy named K.P. (Anoop Singh Thakur). Though I haven’t seen him in any other movie his acting was quite natural along with his actions scenes with Vidyut Jamwal.
Commando vs. Monster
Our own Indian Para-commando was in for a competition with the Hollywood monster Wolverine (Check out Logan Movie review here). Both movies released on 3rd March and although Commando managed to garner a higher box office total on the first Friday in comparison to Logan, the 1st week total of Commando 2 is quite lower. The first day total can possibly be attributed to the massive marketing campaigns that the Commando team has been undertaking across the country. The success of the first Commando movie and the rising action-film oriented image of Vidyut Jamwal had certainly added on to the anticipation of the audience. The box-office total saw a downward trend on Saturday and Sunday, which might be due to the early negative-reviews resulting in an unfavorable word-of-mouth for the movie. In the end our home grown pseudo-superhero ironically lost to a Hollywood release which is quite out of trend, even if the competitor was Wolverine.
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