Raid 2 Movie Review: Ajay Devgn shines, but the sequel slips into perdition

Raid 2UA Drama thrillerDir Raj Kumar GuptaCast Ajay Devgn Riteish Deshmukh Vaani KapoorRating 35Not that Raid 2 has a sutradhaar narrator mdash but a cute portly prison inmate Tau played by Saurabh Shukla appears at regular intervals to drop truth bombsOne such is to a flunky cop in jail who sucks up to him ldquoLamba kheloge Chaatne ki kala hai tumme chaato GirdharirdquoMaking the point about how a sureshot way to tell a middling underling is they make up for their mediocrityby lauding their supposed superior alwaysLikewise he suggests politicians never get caught for their crimes Unless itrsquos an inside job Who is this Tau otherwise unrelated to the rest of the filmFor that you will have to vividly remember Raj Kumar Guptarsquos Raid 2018 the prequel to this pictureWhich was essentially about an income tax IT raid set in 1981 Lucknow netting a top UP don That was Saurabh Shukla Rameshwar SinghRajajiTauRaid was based on a true story detailing what perhaps still remains the longest IT raid conducted on a private individual By the looks of it and I could be wrong here Raid 2 isnrsquot adapted from an actual episodeOr at least not one such anyway maybe a bunch of themWhat remains in common of course is Ajay Devgn as the IT sleuth in hot pursuit of black money hidden by a prominentpopular heartland politician Itrsquos been eight years since The prime minister is evidently VP Singh it was Indira Gandhi in the first partThe lead character it seems has got himself a new wife Vaani Kapoor switched over from Ileana DrsquoCruz But his reason of existence remains the sameThis gent is Amay Patnaik that in itself is such a nonfilmy name mdash with Devgn in shirt trousers Relaxotype floaters hardly ever allowing his heroic swag to overwhelm this governmentservant charactermdashthat as an audience you subconsciously stay with his sincerity all throughAnd he never lets you down onscreenWhatrsquos kinda unclear to me is the size of his opponent In the sense that the film starts off in Rajasthan 1989 with the action shifting to a town called Bhoj where the honest sarkari hero is on his 74th transferIf Irsquom not mistaken Bhoj is a smalltown in Karnataka This one is perhaps fictional mdash lorded over by one man who runsowns practically the entire town including its peopleRiteish Deshmukh smartly plays this excessively sober politician as most politicians actually are mdash so powerful that the state government runs on his borrowed MLAs while if I saw right hersquos also a member of parliamentIn the real world this would be a mismatched David vs Goliath kinda story What follows however is a Tom amp Jerry chase with both protagonist and antagonist inevitably turning a corner mdash turning the film in turn into a proper thrillerRaid 2 is an actionpacked film Yet not one knuckle gets broken with neither leadbloke swinging in the air in multiple directionsItrsquosthe form of sorted theatrical writing that we seem to be progressively moving away from mdash heading instead towards stunts for stuntsrsquo sake You neednrsquot pour blood to hold peoplersquos attention right And director Gupta No One Killed Jessica Aamir gets this rightSo far as the genre is concerned itrsquos certainly a comeback of sorts for him since Indiarsquos Most Wanted 2019 Which in a similarly realisticspace felt relatively underwhelmingWhat was the impact of the OG Raid One tends to overjudge movies by their consumer reviews and more so boxoffice numbersI recently met a young Indian Revenue Service IRS officer who actually joined the service because he was so influenced by this picrsquos prequel Would you imagineIrsquove got to learn a lot more about how honest IRS officers operate from him And my sense is as bureaucrats like Amay in this movie show mdash they do have the freedom to act against the immeasurably corrupt In some cases there may not be much freedom after the actGoing back to lsquotruth bombrsquo Taursquos line in this film when the lead character has been suspended from service for going after a big cat ldquoFor a khuddarselfrespecting man worse than going to jail is living off your parentsinlawrdquo Amay doesWhy have I incessantly compared this sequel to the original that was so much more an indoorsy talkie drama thoughBecause the filmmakers expect you to mdash repeating so many of the tropescharacters as tributes that some may feel like theyrsquore like watching a rehash or the second season of the same show They arenrsquot mistaken in their view It could also be a complimentBut this stuff is suitably different in its sameness It belongs more to postpandemic cinemas of 2025 As in written as two distinct halves mdash separated by an item song and an intervalWherein the second instalment is more about unleashing a separate lot of characters for comedy thriller mysteryhellipBloating up the script a bit much after halftime hence mdash to make it all the more accessible to wider audiences Yes itrsquos a stretch But all of it serving the purpose of popular entertainment So no sweat No sweat at allatOptionskeyd0ddb8ef8f1a62a8cdd22fac27fc5ea7formatiframeheight90width728params

Raid 2 Movie Review: Ajay Devgn shines, but the sequel slips into perdition

Raid 2
U/A: Drama, thriller
Dir: Raj Kumar Gupta
Cast: Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Vaani Kapoor
Rating: 3/5

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Home / Entertainment / Bollywood News / Article / Raid 2 Movie Review: Ajay Devgn shines, but the sequel slips into perdition

Raid 2 Movie Review: Ajay Devgn shines, but the sequel slips into perdition

Raid 2U/A: Drama, thrillerDir: Raj Kumar GuptaCast: Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Vaani KapoorRating: 3/5

Trending Stories

Latest Photos

Latest Videos

Latest Web Stories

Mid-Day Fast

Raid 2
U/A: Drama, thriller
Dir: Raj Kumar Gupta
Cast: Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Vaani Kapoor
Rating: 3/5