COMMANDO 2 - Focusing on suspense instead of action, Vidyut gets no support in this poor and so casually conceived film unfortunately. (Review By Bobby Sing)

Following the current blind trend, we once again have a ‘not required’ sequel of a ‘not so successful’ film as COMMANDO -2, four years post its original (released in 2013). And in all probabilities this is a cleverly re-designed and re-packaged film post the ‘Demonetisation’ in November 2016, since it isn’t possible to begin and make a complete film talking about the subject post 8th November (amongst the huge shortage of cash) and release it too in less than 4 months flat on 3rd March 2017.

So as I strongly feel everything in this COMMANDO 2 talking about ‘Demonetisation’ was added later in the last couple of months (including the ‘Black Money’ tagline) and the film was deliberately molded as a more socially relevant project with a lot of changes in its dialogues, especially in the climax with references of lakhs of rupees coming in the accounts of all helpless and distressed farmers.

However the truth remains that despite the changes made, nothing works in the film right from the opening action sequence which sadly ends in a typically routine and seen before manner where the hero gets shot twice but suddenly gets back on the job in a couple of days, as if he has got some kind of healing power of LOGAN released on the same Friday.

Based on a casually written and mostly boring plot till the intermission, the film keeps roaming in foreign locations (mentioning Bangkok, Malaysia & Dubai) and the makers weirdly try to bring in some humour through the otherwise responsible character of a police officer played by Adah Sharma trying hard to speak in a fake Hyderabadi accent sounding awkward throughout. Plus another officer in the team plays the Muslim minority card, strongly reminding you of the far superior one seen in Aamir Khan’s SARFAROSH.

Surprisingly focusing on suspense much more than the expected action, director Deven Bhojani strangely doesn’t give Vidyut any exceptional sequences to showcase his famous skills and even the action director fails to bring in some novelty in all ‘monotonous’ fights. Vidyut no doubt does his best in the major actions sequences but it seems even he was more interested in being presented as the usual Bollywood hero moving away from his ‘action-expert image’ following a wrong guidance or vision.

As a suspense based action thriller, COMMANDO 2 offers no edge of the seat entertainment in its first hour, till a twist gets revealed just before the intermission. But instead of coming up with more interesting twists, the film turns into a B grade wannabe Abbas-Mastan kind of thriller in its unimpressive final hour ending in a lame style. Where the cinematography keeps trying to give it a grand look, both the action and background score (along with the music) fail to contribute anything worth mentioning resulting in a pretty lousy film. In fact the background score keeps getting louder as the film progresses and remains a collection of catchy fast beats and nothing else.

Apart from the above mentioned drawbacks COMMANDO 2 actually loses it all when not even a single person in its supporting cast looks serious in his or her efforts, giving below the mark performances mainly because of a (nonsensical) poor writing and direction.

In all, this can easily be called a big opportunity lost for Vidyut Jammval in particular as he could have easily become the Indian version of Van Diesel and Jackie Chan together, focusing on his action and action alone like in the original 2013 film.

So you can easily give it a miss as COMMANDO 2 has nothing to offer in return, in this present costly era of the exploitive multiplexes.

Rating : 1.5 / 5 (with a big one just for the efforts made by Vidyut and his action director)