Satyameva Jayate 2 review: John Abraham's triple role does more harm than good to this ludicrous tale

2/5

Story: Twins Satya and Jay – one a politician and the other a cop – are hellbent on rooting out corruption and a whole bunch of other social evils, even if that means taking the law into their own hands.

Review: Satyameva Jayate 2 is best described as a film with John Abraham in not one, but three roles giving Akshay Kumar competition as the flag-bearer of patriotism in Bollywood. It is also a film that would have been a better fit in the 80s (or earlier). Here, he is Satya, the law-maker (Home Minister of UP) and ACP Jay, who has to uphold the same. But they are also the children of Dadasaheb Azad (also John), who gave up his life in his struggle to fight against corruption. Rooting out corruption and other social evils, like violence against women and children, among others, are Satya and Jay’s primary objectives, which also means that the brothers have to step outside the limitations of the law to this end. One of them even masquerades as a hoodie-clad vigilante who needs no disguise whatsoever.

John Abraham is, perhaps, in the best shape ever; the actor is all muscles and doesn’t miss a chance to show us that. His shirt is off at the drop of a hat and boy, does he ‘pack it in’ – are those eight-pack or those almost impossible to achieve 10-pack-abs? Problem is, his abs and ginormous biceps are on display a wee bit too often that they lose their sheen just as soon. The actor’s all muscle approach also means that he now looks gaunt and that does him no favours; even his dimpled smile doesn’t do the trick.

Also, given all his pent-up anger at the social injustices happening around him and the ease at which he can rip out the bonnet and engine of an SUV with his bare hands, I was half-expecting John to ‘hulk out’. But then director Milap Milan Zaveri steps it up and gives us our own First Avenger(s); remember Captain America trying to stop a helicopter with his bare arms in Captain America: Civil War? Well, something like that. I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at this.

And when there’s so much of John in every frame of the film, there’s not much for the rest of the cast to do, except for Divya Khosla Kumar, who gets to be the love interest of one of the brothers, and even gets ample screen space on account of being the spouse of producer Bhushan Kumar. Her combination with John will be a treat for his naysayers, because Divya’s range of emotions is just as limited as his and all she does is look wide-eyed into the camera. At one point, I was just so focused on figuring out if the actress even blinks or if her eyelids have been taped for effect, that I didn’t pay attention to what was happening.

Verdict: Satyameva Jayate is a badly-written film that is complete disservice to the commercial movie genre. The melodrama surrounding all the issues the film highlights evoke no emotion whatsoever. Amazon Prime Video is the streaming partner, so, it should drop there soon enough. Should you choose to do that, despite fair warning against it, at least you will have the option to fast forward the songs and all other laughable scenes. You may not even have to endure half of the 138-minute run time of the film.