Baaghi 4

During the pan-Indian wave, one thing that has reached Bollywood shores from the South is the toolkit of the Iron Age. Armed with cleavers, these days our heroes are slashing and slashing hard. It is not always when the stakes or tempers run high. It is just for the hack of it. Bored of firing gunshots from a distance, now they wield an axe and a hammer to grind the opposition to pulp. With an adult certificate becoming a sign of misplaced maturity, the makers can play with as much blood as they want. There is nothing like excess anymore. If Ranbir Kapoor can do it, how can Tiger Shroff be far behind? In this fourth installment of the action franchise, Ronny (Tiger) is madly in love with a girl named Alisha (debutante Harnaaz Sandhu), who the world feels doesn’t exist.

Baaghi 4 opens with a shot of a truck hurtling into a man driving his car at full speed. The next shot shows him wounded, bloody and suspended upside down in the totaled vehicle on a railway track, with a train heading straight for him. It’s fitting that these are POV (point-of-view) shots where the camera places us in the position of the hero — because watching the rest of this film feels like being hit by a truck and a train, again and again and again. The fourth installment of the Baaghi film franchise suggests that there were three before this one. They were all Hindi remakes of Tamil and Telugu action thrillers, and Baaghi 4 continues the tradition by being heavily inspired from Sasi’s Ainthu Ainthu Ainthu (2013). But it doesn’t matter. Instead, just imagine Devdas as a muscular Animal fanboy, except nobody is sure whether his Paro is real or not. Blood flows rather than booze. Chandramukhi is a Punjabi call girl (Sonam Bajwa) pretending to be a Spanish escort named Olivia. The fictional city of Chandara is composed of St. Xavier’s College Mumbai corridors and bad CGI skies, and there’s a psychotic villain (Sanjay Dutt) who’s a hybrid of Shah Rukh Khan in Darr and Bobby Deol in Animal. And of course, there’s Saurabh Sachdeva as the baddie’s eccentric brother, hamming it up in reaction shots like the action-film equivalent of Rocky’s bestie’s physical subtitling in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani.

Producer Sajid Nadiadwala returns after a five-year hiatus with his nearly one-decade-old action franchise, which is perhaps like no other in the world. All the films in the series, including the one being reviewed here, are standalone ventures with Tiger Shroff in the guise of an overly belligerent rebel being the only common link between them Baaghi 4 foists upon us more of what the franchise has done before in abundance - gratuitous violence - in order to peddle a brand of toxic masculinity that the world can certainly do without. Shroff, of course, has the chops to plunge headlong, with his action hero poise intact, into spitfire sequences and give them all he has - and then some. But what can an actor do when what is on paper is only superficially visceral and does not pack the sort of punch that can inject some credibility into the protagonist’s exploits.

एक्टर टाइगर श्रॉफ को युवा पीढ़ी के एक्शन स्टार के रूप में स्थापित करने में ‘बागी’ फ्रेंचाइजी का बड़ा हाथ रहा है। साल 2016 में शुरू हुई इस फ्रेंचाइज की पहली फिल्म हिट रही थी, तो 2018 में आई ‘बागी 2’ उससे भी ज्यादा कामयाब रही। लेकिन कोविड महामारी के बीच 2020 में आई ‘बागी 3’ वो जादू नहीं चला पाई। शायद यही वजह है कि अब इसकी चौथी कड़ी ‘बागी 4’ पांच साल बाद सिनेमाघरों में पहुंची है, वो भी बिना किसी शोर-शराबे के। शायद मेकर्स को खुद इस फिल्म से ज्यादा उम्मीद नहीं है और वो सही भी हैं, क्योंकि ऐसी बिना किसी सिरे वाली बेदम फिल्म से किसी भी तरह की आस लगाना बेमानी है। कहानी का सार यूं है कि डिफेंस का धाकड़ ऑफिसर रॉनी (टाइगर श्रॉफ) एक एक्सीडेंट के बाद कोमा में चला जाता है। सात महीने बाद वह कोमा से उठता है, तो अपने प्यार अलीशा (हरनाज संधू) को उस हादसे में खोने के गम से उबर नहीं पाता। जबकि, डॉक्टर से लेकर उसका भाई (श्रेयस तलपड़े) और हर कोई उसे यह यकीन दिलाता है कि अलीशा नाम की कोई लड़की कभी थी ही नहीं। यह सब उसका हैलुसिनेशन यानी वहम है।

Baaghi 4, led by Tiger Shroff as Ronnie, follows his love affair with the idea of passionate and unapologetic love that can only be expressed through violence. The film explores yet another love story where the villain is also in love with the same girl as the hero, but in this case, he is played by Sanjay Dutt, who is twice the age of the actress. But the makers knew it was an issue and still decided to go through with it, and added a dialogue explaining how love is beyond someone’s age. But it isn’t beyond everything that happens in this film. The film begins with Tiger Shroff’s Ronnie in an accident, almost being crushed by a train, but in the next scene, he is taken to the hospital. After several very dramatic scenes of Shreyas Talpade crying in front of the doctor, it is revealed that Ronnie has been brought back from the dead, but as his brain is dead, he goes into a coma for seven months. When he wakes up, he asks for a girl, Alisha, but no one knows who she is, not even his brother.

पहली वाली ‘बागी’ 2016 में, ‘बागी 2’ 2018 में और ‘बागी 3’ 2020 में रिलीज़ हुई थी। पहली वाली को छोड़ कर बाकी दोनों में जो कचरा मनोरंजन परोसा गया था उसके बाद मुमकिन है कि प्रोड्यूसर साजिद नाडियाडवाला को लगा हो कि अब की बार कोई बढ़िया कहानी तलाशेंगे। यही कारण है कि पिछली वाली फिल्म के करीब साढ़े पांच साल बाद अब ‘बागी 4’ आई है जिसकी कहानी और स्क्रिप्ट का श्रेय निर्माता साजिद नाडियाडवाला ने खुद को दिया है। तो आइए, ठीकरा उन्हीं के सिर फोड़ते हैं। पहले सीन में एक एक्सीडैंट में रॉनी बुरी तरह घायल हो जाता है। कई महीनों बाद होश में आने पर उसे अपनी गर्लफ्रैंड अलीशा याद आती है। लेकिन हर कोई उससे कहता है कि अलीशा नाम की कोई लड़की कभी थी ही नहीं और यह सिर्फ उसका दिमागी भ्रम है। न कहीं कोई तस्वीर, न नाम, न पहचान…! तो क्या सचमुच अलीशा नहीं थी…? और अगर थी तो कहां गई…? गई या छुपा ली गई…? कौन है जो ऐसा कर रहा है…? क्यों कर रहा है वह ऐसा…? या सचमुच रॉनी को भ्रम हो रहे हैं…?