Filmmaker Ahmed Khan seems to have a fetish for installation art, that too the kind that involves modes of transport. So you have one action sequence shot against the backdrop of several hundreds of colourful cars piled up, one atop another, in a circle. In the middle of this car, Tiger Shroff displays his chops. Homage to Rohit Shetty films? Not quite. Some hours into the film and there is another automobilian sculpture — three helicopters, one over the other, with Tiger on top, burning bright, seemingly signalling to the baddies below — “I am the cub (if not the tiger king) of the world”.
In the third instalment of the Baaghi franchise, Tiger returns as Ronnie, as does Shraddha Kapoor as his lady love Siya. Ronnie goes on a one-man mission to Syria to save his elder brother, cop Vikram (Riteish Deshmukh) who has been kidnapped by an Islamic terrorist organisation while on an assignment there.
- Director: Ahmed Khan
- Starring: Tiger Shroff, Riteish Deshmukh, Shraddha Kapoor, Jaideep Ahlawat, Vijay Varma, Jameel Khoury
- Run time: 143 minutes
- Storyline: Ronnie (Tiger Shroff) goes on a one man mission to Syria to save his elder brother, cop Vikram (Riteish Deshmukh) who has been kidnapped by an Islamic terrorist outfit while on an assignment
In keeping with the nationalistic fervour of the times, Baaghi 2 had shown a lot of respect for the army; cops can be bad, army men can’t, it seemed to say. Here it’s a cop who is handily eulogised for protecting innocent people and laying down his own life in riots. Given the current state of affairs, it’s not unusual then to wonder if the entire sequence was truly prescient or was it programmed into the script later, considering the police is otherwise not shown in a great light the film. The nod to the recent ‘Bollywood police’ genre — Dabangg and Singham and the foreshadowing of Sooryavanshi — also seem intentional.
The rebel Ronnie who breaks bones, teeth and jaws of the street side taporis to begin with becomes “America, Russia, Mossad”, all rolled into one against the might of the dreaded Islamic terrorist Abu Jalal (Jameel Khoury). Bombs, explosions, landmines: nothing can stop him from wreaking a vengeance which becomes laughably improbable and inane in the climax. In the middle, many stereotypes gets reinforced, visually, and in the writing and dialogue. Asinine jokes about the towers in the men’s loo and about surnames like Kute abound in the name of humour.
Despite sporting an impassive face, a perennially faraway look and moist eyes, Tiger Shroff has managed to forge his way ahead in Bollywood with some lithe, aesthetic stunts. He is agile and athletic, poses and posturises with a choreographed grace and daintiness. An overmuscled, overbronzed body demands display. So, somewhere down the line, a rag of a shirt hung loosely on his body also gets conveniently ripped apart. Beyond this Tiger voyeurism, there is little else to the film. Seasoned actors like Jaideep Ahlawat and Vijay Varma are made to ham, Shraddha Kapoor is more of a comic relief in the name of being the leading lady and Riteish Deshmukh appears to keep eating dahi for good luck. There is a phrase in Hindi: dimaag ka dahi , the curdling of brain. That’s what the film does to your mind, leaves you all woolly-headed.
