Singham Again Review: Logic on vacation, brakes fail as Ranveer Singh plays life support to this fading cop drama

2.5/5

Singham Again Review: Plot - Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn) is now posted in Kashmir, where he heads the forces, trying to keep terrorists outside the borders while also saving young men from becoming radicalized. While on this mission, he encounters an old enemy (Jackie Shroff), whom he arrests, only to face a new foe, Danger Lanka (Arjun Kapoor—and yes, that is his name in the film). When Danger Lanka kidnaps Avni (Kareena Kapoor Khan), the forces must unite to rescue her and stop him from spreading terrorism across the country. 

Singham Again Review: Analysis

You know when those Hollywood movies show the transition of a franchise from an elderly superstar to a newer face because they know not much is left to explore with the superstar because he has been at it for a very long time? The attempt there is to keep the franchise going while respectfully making the OG face a revered personality, a mentor of sorts to the new corp, and making sure money keeps flowing and the storyline continues to spread and progress. Singham Again somewhere maybe wanted to be that. Ambition is laid out on the board, but the question is, would the legacy stars dare and bear taking the backseat in a country like India? Certainly not. So here we have another Rohit Shetty movie with massive names and a little effort in story, but hey look a car is flying over a helicopter with Deepika Padukone in the driving seat, one blew a whistle, and the rest of the cinema hall followed.

Singham's (2011) first film was rock solid because of the way Rohit Shetty told the story. There was no baggage of a franchise, the urgency to have a future, or even desperation to make his muse Bajirao Singham a Messiah equivalent. Problems like police brutality are not even a part of conversations on the tables where makers shape these films, so maybe we will be fools to expect them to be addressed and handled with care while discussing these films. So the first film worked because it was a blend of action, powerful dialogue, some great actors (Suchitra Bandekar and Sachin Khedekar still stand the test of time), and very good underlined humor that complemented Ajay Devgn’s straight-face act. The second movie also continued the same formula, but the magic was gradually fading.

Now as we enter the third, that formula has become old. It doesn't hold water, and that becomes the very reason why the first half of the Rohit Shetty directorial Singham Again doesn't have any crescendo other than a couple of dramatic sequences that come from Arjun Kapoor and Tiger Shroff. Surprisingly somehow, they both fit well in this world because the latter’s over-the-top approach and the former’s subtle act kind of balance the block right before the interval finally giving this movie some life before Ranveer Singh enters and takes it a couple of levels higher.

So the problem with Singham Again seems like the legacy stars have contributed what they could to this franchise, and now the new ones must take over because they have a lot more to offer. Deepika Padukone, however, needs to find her way back to her Chennai Express self to bring more life to Shakti because what she does here is not enough to establish her as the mighty Lady Singham. You can see the effort she is putting to come across as someone she isn't in real life. That facade that she wants to create breaks when she cries because she knows how to cry on screen pretty well (Thank you, Imtiaz Ali!), and you realize that what is happening other than this is hard to believe and far from looking organic.

Also read: Singham Again villain Arjun Kapoor has this quirky name in the Rohit Shetty-directorial

If you take out Ranveer Singh’s over-the-top Simmba, who takes this movie notches higher with his hilarious dialogues and act, a very good-looking Tiger Shroff who gets to do the best action pieces, and Arjun Kapoor who actually acts well here, Singham Again's script seems like it was written by an 80-year-old man who was in hibernation for 30 years and has suddenly come out to see that there is a metro in Mumbai. Because the way it looks at Gen Z, or how it says ‘Ye aaj kal ke bacche to culture aur sanskar bhul gaye hai,’ it sounds so outdated that even a teenage guy beside me chuckled. Kareena Kapoor’s Nita Ambani transformation for the first half and quite spectator character for the second talks of Ramayan like she wrote it, and we are never told why she is so obsessed. Only because she works at the Cultural Ministry?

Singham Again also tries to cash in on the current political scenario of the country by showing a Kashmir where young men do not pelt stones, and it is the Naya Bharat, Jo Ghar Mein Ghusega Bhi Aur Marega Bhi. Maybe the leading party needs to mark royalty on the dialogue now. There is a clear attempt to spoon-feed viewers that this is Ramayana by juxtaposing till an extent where you feel like maybe the Ramayana Project led by Kareena’s Avni should have been the main film. People randomly go missing, even the cars that aren't shot are blasting, logic takes a back seat, and no one in this world knows what hand brakes are for. They just get out of their cars without caring about the fact that their vehicles are rotating in the background, and they are on a temple premises. I hope the car has insurance and the people around have hefty medical claims or life insurance if worse.

The first half deserved the signature Singham humor, but that is completely missing until Ranveer Singh comes in and does his Simmba act. There is also an attempt to give the film a meta twist where Ranveer hints at Deepika Padukone’s pregnancy and the Khiladi references. However, characters come in and disappear quite conveniently to a point they are forgotten only to return randomly. But then who cares, the climax has them all sitting together like the Avengers and later confirming that Salman Khan is joining with a very weird prosthetic beard.

Singham Again Review: Final Verdict

Singham Again is a Rohit Shetty film minus his USP humor for the most part of it and only sets the ball rolling after almost an hour when Ranveer Singh and Tiger Shroff enter the game. But the question is, can the legacy stars take the backseat?

Singham Again releases in theaters on November 1, 2024. Stay tuned to OTTplay for more updates on this and everything else in the world of streaming and film.

Also read: Did Kartik Aaryan take a dig at Ajay Devgn's Singham Again? Says Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 doesn't need any cameos