Race 2

Rating : 4/10
Release Date : 25th January, 2013
Time : 146 minutes
Director : Abbas-Mustan; Writer : Shiraz Ahmed; Music : Pritam
Starring : Saif Ali Khan, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, Jacqueline Fernandez, Anil Kapoor, Ameesha Patel, Aditya Pancholi




The template of the film franchise requires beautiful locations (half-tick with Turkey, glitzy overwhelming resorts), beautiful bodies (tick for Jacqueline, double tick each for Deepika, Saif, John plus bonus point for getting Anil ‘You could lose an orangutan in my chest hair’ Kapoor to wax his foliage) and more twists, and turns than your average cork-screw (yep, done). Now, if only the makers had paid attention to also getting a halfway plausible story…

Saif is a hundred Agent Vinod’s rolled into one in this film. He can effortlessly shoot bullseyes in archery, fence, last a few minutes with an undefeated, indestructible prize fighter, charm the knickers off women and jump fifty-sixty feet walls with time to spare. He is pitted against John Abraham – ex-fighter, now billionaire and card cheat. Also happens to be Jacqueline’s boyfriend and Deepika’s brother. Anil Kapoor is the person who brings Saif and John together but with his new sidekick, Ameesha provide the most irritating side track with really horrible, disgusting jokes in which they leave the modesty of no fruit untouched.

The plot includes an unintentionally hilarious con of a casino owner, a robbery of a national artifact (ludicrous, makes you squirm with the stupidity of its execution) and several other points that insult your intelligence (the characters of the film, to make their multi-million dollar decisions, rely on that beacon of authentic news reporting, India TV, for their breaking news, for example).

There is a serious problem with the way the characters are built up. None of them really seems to be real or does stuff consistent with their character. They seem to be more driven by a script-writers whims and fancies than any real, credible motivations.

The music is also a disappointment, not a patch on the original which had the soulful ‘Pehli Nazar’ and the iconic ‘Zara Zara Touch Me’, the song that had a whole generation of harried mom’s begging their daughters not even to hum it, lest it be taken literally.

I guess this one is more about being easy on the eyes than taxing either your brain or the mind of the story-writer. The eye candy is good with no dress ever covering more than 30% of the female form (and I’m just exaggerating slightly), the locales glitzy and the sets blingy in a Versace gone mad kind of way. Kind of alright if you’re willing to detach your brain and watch. Painful, if you’re not.