Deepika Padukone Archives

Review: ‘Singham Again,’ starring Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar, Ranveer Singh, Tiger Shroff, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Deepika Padukone and Arjun Kapoor

November 6, 2024

by Carla Hay

Kareena Kapoor Khan and Ajay Devgn in “Singham Again” (Photo courtesy of Reliance Entertainment)

Directed by Rohit Shetty

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India and in Sri Lanka, the action film “Singham Again” (a sequel to 2011’s “Singham” and 2014’s “Singham Returns”) features an all-South Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A deputy commissioner police officer battles drug dealers who kidnap and assault his wife.

Culture Audience: “Singham Again” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headlines and utterly predictable action movies with mediocre acting.

Arjun Kapoor in “Singham Again” (Photo courtesy of Reliance Entertainment)

Even with the benefit of having a star-studded cast, the action film sequel “Singham Again” is quite lackluster and dull in its storytelling. It’s yet another trite, uneven and predictable story about violent fights between criminals and law enforcement. “Singham Again” is a sequel to 2011’s “Singham” and 2014’s “Singham Returns,” which were all directed by Rohit Shetty.

“Singham Again” was co-written by Shetty, Yunus Sajawal, Abhijeet Khuman, Kshitij Patwardhan, Sandeep Saket and Anusha Nandakumar. It’s usually not a good sign when a movie has at least five screenwriters because the movie willl most likely have “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome for the screenplay. The end results for “Singham Again” seem to prove this theory because “Singham Again” is a muddled mess of disjointed ideas and tonally off-kilter scenes that want to cram too much into the movie but almost none of it adds up to good filmmaking

The title chaacter of the “Singham” films is Bajirao Singham (played by Ajay Devgn), a deputy commissioner police (DCP) officer from Shivgarh, India. Even though these movies are not science fiction or superhero movies, the characters in these movies have unrealistically superhuman fight skills in the many ridiculous action scenes. Bajirao is an upstanding law enforcement officer who is nothing but a stereotype with no surprises.

In “Singham Again” (which takes place in India and in Sri Lanka), Bajirao is now married to Avni Kamat (played by Kareena Kapoor Khan), who was his love interest in “Singham Returns.” Bajirao and Avni (who works for the Cultural Ministry) have a son named Shaurya (played by Viren Vazirani), who’s about 16 or 17 years old. Bajirao has been transferred from Mumbai to Srinagar for three years.

There are some tensions between Bajirao and Shaurya because Shaurya wants to establish his independence, but Shaurya thinks Bajirao is overbearing. Bajirao has a reputation for being a tough cop, and his son Shaurya is embarrassed by Bajirao’s domineering tendencies. Meanwhile, Bajirao is concerned about Shaurya being rebellious and thinks Shaurya needs to be more disciplined.

Near the begining of the movie, Shaurya complains to Bajirao about how Bajirao embarrassed Shaurya because Bajirao showed up uninvited to a recent party hosted by one of Shaurya’s friends. At this party, Bajirao lectured the teenage attendees, which ruined the party atmosphere. Bajirao eventually gives an apology to Shaurya, but Bajirao will soon have more to worry about than whether or not Shaurya is annoyed with him.

Bajirao is the leader of the arrest of a major drug dealer named Omar Hafeez (played by Jackie Shroff), who is nicknamed the Chef of Lashkar. Omar has left Pakistan to set up an illegal drug import/export business from Sri Lanka to India. During the sting operation that led to Omar’s arrest, his drug-dealing sons Riyaaz and Raza were killed. And you know what that means: Omar wants revenge.

Omar is also involved in terrorism funded by the money he makes from drug dealing. Bajirao finds out that Omar is planning a terrorist attack on India. But with Omar arrested, there are other people who are willing to carry out Omar’s plan. Meanwhile, Home Minister Raj Jaishankar commissions a team called Shiva Squad, led by Bajirao, to stop Omar’s planned terrorist attack. Also on the Shiva Squad are Devika Singh (played by Shweta Tiwari) and Daya Shetty (played by Dayanand Shetty), who are loyal sidekicks.

Two years later, Bajirao leads a confiscation of drugs from another major drug dealer named Danger Lanka (played by Arjun Kapoor), a one-dimensional villain who is one cliché after another. Three of Danger Lanka’s men are arrested. Bajirao recruits DCP Shakti Shetty (played by Deepika Padukone) to take these arrestees to Mumbai. However, Danger Lanka arrives to help his men escape, and he kills some of the police officers on duty. Shakti feels extremely guilty about the deaths of these colleagues. Bajirao comforts her and assures her that it’s not her fault.

Meanwhile, Avni is presenting a theater production of “Ramlila,” to portray the journey of Lord Ram and Sita. “Singham Again” clumsily draws parallels between certain characters in this play and the characters in the movie’s story. The staging of this play is awkwardly placed in the movie.

Also getting involved in the mind-numbing battles are assistant commissioner police (ACP) officer Sangram “Simmba” Bhalerao (played by Ranveer Singh) and anti-terrorism squad official Veer Sooryavanshi (played by Akshay Kumar), who have their own agendas and rivalries with Bajirao. The spinoff films “Simmba” (2018) and “Sooryavanshi” (2021) put the focus on each of these two namesake characters. Simmba, who is Avni’s brother-in-law, is corrupt and slightly unhinged. Veer is the “cool” law enforcement officer. ACP Satya Bali (played by Tiger Shroff) is an eager character who admires Bajirao and wants to prove his worth to Bajirao

It should come as no surprise in an unimaginative movie like “Singham Again” that a loved one of the chief hero is put in danger, which motivates him to rescue the loved ones and get revenge on the criminals responsible for harming the loved one. In this substandard movie, the loved one in peril is Avni, who is kidnapped and seriously injured by Danger Lanka. You know the rest: Car chases, explosions, and fights with guns, fists and bladed weapons. All of the action scenes look very fake and have no suspense. The movie’s bombastic and loud music score just adds to the annoyance.

“Singham Again” has principal cast members who are capable of being charismatic in other movies if they have the right screenplay and direction. In “Singham Again,” the main characters have such hollow personalities, they don’t elicit much emotional connection from viewers. The cast members in these roles don’t seem to care much either, based on their formulaic performances. Although the cinematography of “Singham Again” is eye-catching, these visuals don’t mean much when the rest of the movie is so soulless and vapid.

Reliance Entertainment released “Singham Again” in U.S. cinemas and in India on November 1, 2024.

Review: ‘Kalki 2898 AD,’ starring Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, Kamal Haasan, Deepika Padukone and Disha Patani

June 28, 2024

by Carla Hay

“Kalki 2898 AD”

Directed by Nag Ashwin

Telugu with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India in the year 2898 (and briefly in 3102 B.C.), the fantasy action film “Kalki 2898 AD” features a predominantly Indian cast of characters (with some white people and black people) who are mortal humans or immortal gods.

Culture Clash: A bounty hunter gets caught up in a race against time with heroes and villains to find the woman who will give birth to a deity named Kalki.

Culture Audience: “Kalki 2898 AD” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching overly long action movies that have more style than substance.

Amitabh Bachchan in “Kalki 2898 AD” (Photo courtesy of Prathyangira Cinemas and AA Creations)

Bloated and incoherent, “Kalki 2898 AD” is weighed down by bad acting, a rambling story, uneven pacing, and erratic visual effects. This fantasy action film, based on Indian mythology, rips off well-known franchises “Star Wars,” “Mad Max” and “Pacific Rim” for much of how the movie looks. The characters in the movie also have hollow personalities and lackluster or terrible dialogue. And this nearly three-hour movie does not justify its overly long run time, when the story could’ve been told in a movie that is two hours or less.

Directed by Nag Ashwin, “Kalki 2898 AD” was co-written by Ashwin and Rutham Samar. It’s one of those unfortunately long-winded and bombastic movies that seems to think over-the-top visual spectacles will automatically make an action film entertaining. The characters are so poorly written, viewers will have a hard time remembering anything memorable that these characters said after the movie ends. “Kalki 2898 AD” just careens from one fight scene to the next.

“Kalki 2898 AD” (which takes place in a fantasy version of India) does a substandard job of introducing characters and explaining the purpose of the story. The movie’s opening scene takes place in 3102 B.C., after the Kurukshetra War. Ashwatthama (played by Kushal) is the young adult son of a warrior named Dronacharya. While invoking the Brahmashirastra, Ashwatthama shoots an arrow at a pregnant princess named Uttarā (played by Malvika Nair), whose unborn son is Parakshit, in an attempt to kill Uttarā and her unborn child.

The deity Krishna then confronts Ashwatthama on a battlefield filled with dead bodies, Krishna curses Ashwatthama to a life of immortality. A magical gem that Ashwatthama has is then taken away. Much of this movie is about Ashwatthama trying to find this gem so he can place it back in his forehead and regain certain powers.

The only way for Ashwatthama to break the curse is to find an unborn child named Kalki, who is supposed to be the last living representation of the god Vishu. Ashwatthama knows that Kalki will be born centuries in the future. And so, finding Kalki is villain Ashwatthama’s main quest in the story.

“Kalki 2898 AD” then cuts to about 6,000 years later, in the year 2898. Even though Ashwatthama received this immortality curse when he was a young man, he somehow still grows up to look like an elderly man who’s stuck looking like he’s in his 80s. Amitabh Bachchan, who has the role of elderly Ashwatthama, was in his early 80s when he filmed this movie.

If the “Kalki 2898 AD” filmmakers had more imagination, they would have made Ashwatthama actually look like he’s more than 6,000 years old. There was certainly enough money spent on visual effects in other aspects of the film, but none was spent on imagining what a 6,000-year-old immortal person would look like. The visual effects in “Kalki 2898 AD” are hit-and-miss: Sometimes, they look spectacular. Other times, they just look tacky.

Most of the action takes place in a desolate desert city called Kasi, which looks like imitation production sets from “Mad Max” and “Star Wars” films. Kasi is a city populated by survivors of an apocalypse. Kasi is ruled by a tyrant god king named Supreme Yaskin (played by Kamal Haasan), who lives in a pyramid-shaped structure called the Complex, which hovers above Kasi. The Complex uses Earth’s resources to have an idyllic oasis existence for those who can afford to stay there.

Yaskin is aided by two nefarious subordinates who carry out Yaskin’s orders of oppression: Commander Manas (played by Saswata Chatterjee) is the head of an army called Raiders. Counsellor Bani is on the frontlines in a lot of the dirty work. There’s also a group of rebels resisting this totalitarian government.

It’s all very much a concept copy from the 1977 “Star Wars” movie. Just substitute Emperor Palpatine for Yaskin, Darth Vader for Commander Manas, Grand Moff Tarkin for Counsellor Bani, and Stormtroopers for Raiders. “Kalki 2898 AD” didn’t even bother changing the name of the rebel group to something that doesn’t used the word “rebels,” which is the same word that the “Star Wars” movies have for the group of resisting fighters.

In the city of Kasi, fertile females are kidnapped and sold into imprisonment as part of a scientific experiment called Project K. These female prisoners are impregnated through artificial insemination. The fetuses of pregnant women who are trapped in Project K are supposed to be used as serum to extend the life of Yaskin.

Only fetuses that are more than 120 days old can effectively be used for this serum. The problem is that most of these Project K women can’t carry their pregnancies past 120 days. However, there’s a pregnant woman named Sumathi (played by Deepika Padukone), who is given the code name SUM-80 in the Project K program, and she has a pregnancy that lasts for more than 120 days. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who her unborn child is.

The “Star Wars” influences abound in the presentation of “rogue warrior” Bhairava (played by Prabhas in “Kalki 2898 AD” Bhairava, who is a bounty hunter and frequent thief, is obviously a version of Han Solo from the “Star Wars” movies. Bhairava is a sarcastic and reluctant hero, who would rather carouse and get drunk in nightclubs, but he gets pulled into this “good versus evil” saga anyway. Bhairava is the pilot of a space ship and has a talking robot co-pilot named BU-JZI, also known as Bujji (voiced by Keerthy Suresh), which is a less-entertaining version of C-3PO from the “Star Wars” movies.

Unlike the movies in the “Stars Wars,” “Mad Max” and “Pacific Rim” franchises, “Kalki 2898” has more female characters and gives them slightly more to do. But that’s not saying much when these characters are so shallow, and much of their worth is defined by how fertile they might or might not be. The female characters who are part of the action include Mariam (played by Shobhana), the leader of a secret city called Shambhala; Kyra (played by Anna Ben), a Shambhala rebel; and Roxie (played by Disha Patani), who is Bhairava’s love interest. Roxie is nowhere close to being as charismatic and intelligent as Leia, Han Solo’s love interest in “The Star Wars” movies.

The space ships and costumes in “Kalki 2898” are influenced by how space ships and costumes look in “Star Wars” movies. Many of the large, roving land vehicles in the desert are straight out of what can be seen in “Mad Max” films. The heroes in “Kalki 2898” operate giant robots that look like they could be siblings of the giant robots in the “Pacific Rim” films. All of this unoriginality gets tiresome to watch and even more irritating because the characters are so sloppily written.

There are people presented as holograms, and there are attacks from clones (in other words, more “Star Wars” concept ripoffs) that are part of the “Kalki 2898 AD” story. Some of this movie’s viewers might be dazzled by all the high-priced visuals in “Kalki 2898 AD,” but the movie’s story is just a complete mess that doesn’t have much innovation. And even worse: The movie ends on a cliffhanger because of planned sequels, thereby prolonging this excessively long and tedious saga. “Kalki 2898 AD” became a huge and immediate hit in India. But just because a movie is popular doesn’t mean it has good or imaginative filmmaking.

Prathyangira Cinemas and AA Creations released “Kalki 2898 AD” in U.S. cinemas on June 27, 2024, the same day that the movie was released in India.

Review: ‘Fighter’ (2024), starring Hrithik Roshan, Deepika Padukone and Anil Kapoor

January 26, 2024

by Carla Hay

Deepika Padukone, Hrithik Roshan and Karan Singh Grover in “Fighter” (Photo courtesy of Viacom18 Studios)

“Fighter” (2024)

Directed by Siddharth Anand

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India and in Pakistan, the action film “Fighter” features an Indian and Pakistani cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Fighter pilots in the Indian Air Force battle against Pakistani terrorists led by a ruthless sadist.

Culture Audience: “Fighter” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of simple-minded and lengthy action movies that overload on jingoistic messages.

Rishabh Sawhney in “Fighter” (Photo courtesy of Viacom18 Studios)

“Fighter” has plenty of energetic action and musical numbers. There’s equal-opportunity eye candy. But it’s also awfully predictable and aggressively jingoistic. It looks like wartime propaganda and a very long recruitment ad for the Indian Air Force.

Directed by Siddharth Anand and written by Ramon Chibb, “Fighter” (which takes place in India and in Pakistan) rips off some elements of 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” and injects the movie with the cinematic version of steroids. “Fighter” knows that many of its action scenes are unrealistic. It knows that the way the hero zips in and out (and back again) of his military job completely misrepresents the real procedures in military protocol. That’s not the main problem with “Fighter.”

The main problem is that for a movie that is 166 minutes long, there is no real suspense. It’s just a series of high-octane fight scenes (the best part of the movie) with a predictable romance and a very sloppy subplot of the movie’s “hero” having career problems. After a while, it all becomes so formulaic and corny.

The jingoism in the movie also borders on xenophobia against Pakistan. The terrorists in “Fighter” happen to be from Pakistan, but there are parts of the film that make it look like Pakistan is to blame overall for much of the mayhem that ensues in the story. In the movie, all the Pakistani people with significant speaking roles are terrorists, which is a terrible and offensive stereotype.

The “hero” of the story is Shamsher “Patty” Pathania (played by Hrithik Roshan ), the squadron leader of his Indian Air Force team of fighter pilots. Patty (just like Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell character in the “Top Gun” movies) is a charming and handsome daredevil who often defies orders, which sometimes gets him into trouble and often frustrates and annoys his commanding officer. Patty reports to Rakesh “Rocky” Jai Sing (played by Anil Kapoor), a no-nonsense group captain who frequently reprimands Patty when Patty gets out of line and does something careless while on duty.

Patty’s obvious love interest is Minal “Minni” Rathore (played by Deepika Padukone), who is on the same fighter pilot team. Minni is strong and independent. Every time Patty tries to impress her, she acts like she doesn’t care. She doesn’t play hard to get with Patty because she actually is hard to get. Because “Fighter” is a completely predictable film, you can almost do a countdown to the parts of the movie were Patty and Minni have verbal disagreements when Minni tries to pretend that she’s not attracted to him, and then things happen that change her attitude toward him.

Minni has an emotional barrier around herself because she has a vulnerability that she doesn’t like to talk about: She is estranged from her parents Abhijeet Rathore (played by Ashutosh Rana) and Usha Rathore (played by Geeta Agrawal), because her airline executive father vehemently disapproves of her being in the Air Force as a pilot. Abhijeet thinks that women shouldn’t be in military combat, and he expects Minni to be a traditional wife and mother.

And it wouldn’t be typical action hero movie if the hero didn’t have some emotional pain too, usually because of a death of a loved one. In Patty’s case, he had a fiancée named Naina, nicknamed NJ (played by Seerat Mast, shown in flashbacks), who was a flight lieutenant in the Air Force. She died in a helicopter crash because of a decision that Patty made. Patty has been living with the guilt ever since. NJ’s relationship with one of Patty’s colleagues is revealed later in the movie. This revelation isn’t a complete surprise.

The other people on this Air Force team are squadron leader Sartaj “Taj” Gill (played by Karan Singh Grover), squadron leader Basheer “Bash” Khan (played by Akshay Oberoi), squadron leader Sukhdeep “Sukhi” Singh (played by Baveen Singh), Rajan “Unni” Unninathan (played by Mahesh Shetty), flying officer Manoj “Birdie” Bhardwaj (played by Nishan Khanduja) and wing commander Harish “Nauty” Nautiyal (played by Chandan K Anand). Along with Patty and Minni, they are all tight-knit and spend a lot of their free time with each other.

Unfortunately, everyone on the squad except Patty and Minni are utterly generic characters. It’s one of biggest failings of “Fighter,” which is trying desperately to be India’s version of “Top Gun: Maverick.” At least in the “Top Gun” movies, there are at least four fighter pilots who have personalities that viewers can tell apart from each other. That’s not the case with “Fighter.”

Meanwhile, the chief terrorist is Azhar Akhtar (played by Rishabh Sawhney), a muscular brute who does what terrorists do in movies like “Fighter.” When he’s not killing people with bombs, guns or other weapons, hate-filled Azhar snarls, stomps around, and yells at people. His personality is just a soulless void, as he says nothing that is memorable in “Fighter.”

How do you know that “Fighter” wants to be like the “Top Gun” movies, besides the airplane stunt scenes? Patty spends some of his time courting Minni by giving her rides on his motorcycle, just like Tom Cruise’s Maverick character does with his love interest in the “Top Gun” movies. Something happens to Patty as “punishment” for being reckless, and this plot development is straight out of “Top Gun: Maverick.”

To its credit, “Fighter” delivers some variety for people who don’t want to see fight scenes all of the time in an action movie. There’s some emotional drama, some romance, and the obligatory scenes of scantily clad Patty and Minni as they frolic on a beach or cavort in large groups during the movie’s song-and-dance numbers. The acting isn’t horrible, but neither is it great.

“Fighter” is sure to be a crowd-pleaser for many people in the movie’s intended audience. The movie obviously had a large budget for visual effects, some of which look dazzling and realistic, while some of the other visual effects look ridiculously fake. However well-intentioned the movie is in portraying Indian patriotism, it shouldn’t have to be at the expense of making another country look like the enemy when the two countries are not at war with each other in this story. “Fighter” just took the lazy way in telling this story, which comes across as a big-budget, derivative video game.

Viacom18 Studios released “Fighter” in U.S. cinemas and in India on January 25, 2024.