Singham Again

Can we let the epics be? Rohit Shetty’s latest film Singham Again - a part of his elaborate cop universe essembles some of the biggest stars of Bollywood to narrate an unoriginal story and borrows the full plot from Hindu epic mythology Ramayan. But at a time when films like Adipurush and the anime Ramayan are already available in the digital space, how good an idea is it to again refurbish a known story and force-feed it through Shetty’s larger-than-life, over-the-top cop universe? Questions such as this and a few more remain unanswered throughout the runtime of the film.

They say that the fount of all Indian fiction are the two epics, Ramayan and Mahabharat. Rohit Shetty seems to have taken this old saying to heart because Ajay Devgn’s eponymous Bajirao Singham is none other than a latter-day Maryada Purushottam Ram, his wife Avni (Kareena Kapoor Khan) is the faithful Sita, and all the other characters play their parallels in this version of Kalyug-ke-Ram Ki Katha. The result is loud and tedious, and instantly forgettable.

Of all the improbable things in Rohit Shetty’s Singham Again, like a car flying over a helicopter, like the same car landing without a scratch, like gifted actors dialling down their craft to match the trite script, like six people writing that script, like Ajay Devgn mistaking walking for acting, like the film mistaking walking for acting, the one that sticks out the most is Shetty assembling half the Hindi film industry (an exaggeration but you get the drift) to combat Arjun Kapoor.

There is not a single subtle bone in Singham Again’s action-packed, slo-mo loving body. While over-the-top has always been the signature of not only the Singham films but also of director Rohit Shetty’s cinema as a whole, Singham Again takes it to level next. Which really isn’t a good thing from the point of view of the art and craft of cinema but perhaps works in giving fans of this kind of filmmaking ample bang for their buck.