Rajkumar Gupta's hammy treatment and bombastic score strips the realism to turn Raid 2 into another hail the hero exercise, observes Sukanya Verma.
Whether or not a film is crying for a sequel is decided by its box office success or an actor's desire to return in a role promising sure shot glory. Audiences rarely have a say in these matters.
When Raid, Rajkumar Gupta's moderately budgeted tribute to the income tax department's unsung heroes came out in 2018, it offered a welcome change of pace from Ajay Devgn's brooding, bashing heroes.
Watching him peacefully pursue the path of justice in a tax-defaulting MP's home along with a battery of officers, while the mood continually shifted between humour and hostility, rendered Raid an unshowy strength.
A muted Devgn is back on the fore as the 1980s' IT star Amay Patnaik in Raid 2 with bigger targets in mind. Though he is as nonviolent as ever, there's little originality by way of script, which is a classic case of more of the same.
Giving original writer Ritesh Shah company are four other writers -- Jaideep Yadav, Karan Vyas, Akshat Tiwari and director Gupta -- but Raid 2's bag of foreseeable tricks are no match for its predecessor's focused onslaught.
Smarts make way for scale as little thought is put in to explore new facets of ransacking a big shot's premises.
Instead, we have a chappal maker-turned-minister called Dada Manohar Bhai (Riteish Deshmukh exudes the threat of a plastic knife) wielding his hold on the common man to launder wealth as and where he pleases.
Even his washing the mother's (Supriya Pathak) feet in rose petal water while reciting mantras every morning to demonstrate his devoted son act while a #MeToo controversy lurks in the corner is, ultimately, just a ploy for the scattered screenplay to wrap up.
For all its pretence of diplomacy, Amay's courtesy and Dada Bhai's grovelling tone are dead giveaways of the game of outsmarting they are about to get in.
Much of Raid 2 is squandered on these silly, predictable games of wolf in sheep's clothing when not slipping in one needless song after another to justify Vaani Kapoor's presence as Ileana D'Cruz's replacement.
The significance of Amay's personal life is further diminished in the sequel. Even if only for a fleeting seconds, the wife was an intelligent, vulnerable figure.
But in Raid 2, Vaani's role is limited to offering rotis on the dinner table.
At the receiving end of Patnaik's wrath in the first Raid, Tauji (Saurabh Shukla showing off his wry wit) volunteers to pitch in as some sort of sutradhar to the sequel that takes place seven years after his sentence.
His commentary of ridicule and the boisterous insincerity of Amit Sial and Yashpal Sharma as the Lokis of Amay's Avengers army are the only time Raid 2 exhibits some life in its monotonous war on corruption.
One felt unexplainable glee as worlds of wrongfully accumulated wealth came crashing down amidst righteous schadenfreude. But Gupta's hammy treatment and bombastic score strips the realism to turn Raid 2 into another hail the hero exercise.
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