Personally I feel that director should arrange a press conference and describes the why and how of incidents happened on screen in film. It is irritating collaboration of copied visuals because you do know that it is happening just for makers whims and fancies. For example, Police barricade to nab Hero. He comes as if he was damn sure of his escape, he gives throttle of his bike, screeching shots of bike tyre, then Police SUVs start colliding to each other, and after few fist fight, Hero lands with Inspector in a dense forest which was villain den!!! Villain must have decided to make his den in forest not for safety reason but for scenic beauty of film as Hero destroys it like anything. Epitome of convenience. It is not a love story because love remained in Director mind only. Posters and trailer were many fold better than movie. Army Captain (Hero) beats Police Inspector and constables in Police Station, like he is himself a goon and gets behind lockup finally. Army chief miraculously gets information about his arrest and arranges for his release but when Captain suddenly decides not to join the army even after order for the same, but go for finding someone, Army chief even didn't bother to know the reason behind his absence. Movie is full of illogical stuffs. Main plot is kidnapping of a kid. A person himself hates someone and wants to get rid of that but another person blackmails him for making hostage of that thing!! Performance wise Tiger Shorff has grown up but still not easy to hold high octane emotional and anger scenes. Manoj Bajpeyi, a fine actor but somehow looks reluctant to perform. Randeep Hooda is fine. Rest are just for sake of being there.

The usual Bollywood action film with the usual near perfectly sculpted males & females. Dance scenes for the females & somewhat fake martial arts fight scenes for the guys. Only recently have guns become a major influence in Indian cinema & in this case there's plenty of firepower at a not very believable level i.e. our warrior hero dispatches either by pummeling or just plain old killing in total between 130 & 140 baddies using all types of methods. The customary reverence to the Indian military & national flag (must be the Kashmir issue). Couple of twists to keep from being too straight forward a plot. Story tends to meander at times w/a few holes in the storyline, but nothing outrageous. Acting was OK.

There's an expansive show of artillery towards the third act of the film which reminded me of a lot of pop culture media. One of the references was that of the legendary Konami video game Contra which I used to be engrossed in for hours at a time during my childhood. Ahmed Khan's Baaghi 2, his first feature film in more than a decade, does that to you - takes you back to familiar popular film and video game references - with its grand production setup and power-packed action sequences despite running on a story that empties itself just before the second act.

Tiger Shroff plays Ronny, a daredevil, super armyman and the superior version of the character he played in the film's prequel Baaghi (2016). He is now away from his gooey romantic days and is instead sharper and meatier than ever. One almost starts to take Shroff seriously, given that he began his career by specializing in such roles in films like Heropanti and Munna Michael. With no hint about whatever happened in Baaghi and thankfully no trace of Shraddha Kapoor, here Ronny scrambles out of his army uniform to help college sweetheart and former lover Neha (Disha Patani) find her abducted daughter. Why Neha, who broke their relationship for a reason unconvincing to Ronny, asks him for help is where the film starts throwing shoots of suspense at the viewer. I am surprised at the degree of suspense that the writers manage to create early in the film, making Baaghi 2 an engaging watch since the start. Ronny, although bogged down by his romantic past, starts his own investigation to find out what happened to his ex-lover's child, which only opens a can of worms. How he does that is where the logic-less story falters to be further aggravated by the overlong second and third acts.

Baaghi 2 can be described as a convoluted mix of thriller, drama, and action, but to be honest, it is far better than what we saw two years ago. This one is a raw take on a soldier's attempt to help the woman he cares about and is devoid of syrupy gimmickry that almost never gels with the genre of action. While the presence of back-to-back songs does dumb down the overall suspense factor, they are fine enough for a Bollywood fanatic to relish between scenes where Shroff effortlessly breaks bones that he cannot count in his fingers. The narrative works chiefly because of three things: patriotism, the essence of the army, and the revenge arc. I should hand it to the writers for conspicuously sampling patriotism in the story; Ronny is an armyman and automatically a patriotic person, which definitely will have a lot of takers in today's India where patriotism (sometimes forced) is ubiquitous. Once the storyline falls into place and when one understands that the missing child is only a start for Ronny, Baaghi 2 starts becoming more interesting. Unfortunately, the convolution begins here and goes on and one until the film ends like a fairytale.

Baaghi 2 is a congregation of actors, and even if you slide out the protagonists, we have Manoj Bajpayee playing a top cop, Randeep Hooda being pretentiously unfunny as a weirdo policeman with a good heart, and Prateik Babbar overacting his way to a character that reeks of unpleasant and trite writing. For an amateur audience, it is going to be tough keeping track of all these characters, plus the obtuseness of the screenplay. The non-linear style may even make it difficult to comprehend what's happening on-screen. But, thanks to Shroff, if you follow his character with rapt attention, Baaghi 2 will be a better treat. He is a one-man army who goes total berserk in the third act, putting off the audience who run out of their own attention. He is dashing, no doubt, flashing his steel body and using weaponry like toys, to become a lovable character that also defies gravity at times. Disha Patani does not live up to the charm, and is clearly a director's puppet here, blurting out sentences by-heart with less to no emotions. She is svelte as usual, but the lack of conviction in her expressions and portrayal makes me doubt her disposition. Bajpayee and Hooda are their usual self, which further reinforces my views about Shroff as the steely-eyed good guy mercenary.

The artillery scene I mentioned at the beginning is where you start getting tired of Ronny's superhuman skills. You also get a faint sense of Rambo from these sequences, which makes you wonder what new Shroff's going to do in the Hindi remake of Rambo scheduled for later this year. But, we will leave that to the makers, because for now, this action thriller seems to be enough for a night watch over some popcorn.

There is a lot happening in these 140 minutes, and in an attempt to look intelligent, director Khan goes overboard with his hide and seek. The non-linear narrative helps him hide important story arcs from us, which when revealed make you go "wow", but the wowness only stays for a minute because the next wow factor is on its way. This is the reason why Baaghi 2 is not great. Some crisp editing and a faster pack-up would have made it a tighter and more relishable recipe. As it is, Baaghi 2 is engaging and worth a shot to quench your action genre starvation. TN.