In 2008 a fast-paced twisty thriller came named ‘Race’ directed by the thriller specialist director duo Abbas-Mustan, and now they come back with its sequel ‘Race 2’, which was released last Friday and here’s the review for you. Abbas-Mustan is very famous not only for making fast-paced action thriller movies but also for smartly modifying the original lifted stories from Hollywood movies, and they have done this in almost all of their movies. Race 1 was a multi-starrer movie and it was said as the adaptation of a Hollywood movie ‘Goodbye Lover’, though I cannot verify the fact as I haven’t seen the Hollywood movie (just going through Wikipedia details), but Race 1 was a nice movie, a good fast-paced thriller, with lots of twists & turns, making it a thorough enjoyable ride. Performances were good, and everything was good. But now, let’s look at the sequel of it.
As per the directors, they started the movie well, well, I don’t think so. There was a hitman who was hired to shoot a car, and as a result our car explodes and thrown in the air in what you can call as a VERY BAD COMPUTER-GENERATED EXPLOSION EFFECTS. No problem, as I thought that I can stick to the plan of watching the movie. And then entered a street fighter cum millionaire billionaire guy Armaan Malik (John Abraham) and his sister Elena (Deepika Padukone). Poor John! He got Deepika as a sister! Well! Moving forward. And soon we saw the charming and dashing main hero of the movie Mr. Ranvir Singh (Saif Ali Khan) who first conned Vikram Thapar (Rajesh Khattar) and stripped him of his 5 casinos as per the deal he did with Armaan. Ranvir has a secret agenda to meet Armaan and he got introduced to him through retired cop Robert D’Costa (Anil Kapoor). Later on we come to know that Ranvir is actually trying to avenge the death of his wife Sonia (Bipasha Basu). Then comes many twists and turns in story with fast-paced storyline, though at starting film looks confused, but later on it got opened bit-by-bit. Oh! I forgot to mention two more ladies of the movies – the girlfriend of Armaan, Omisha (Jacqueline Fernandes) (well I still don’t understand from where they got this name Omisha!) and a dumb and se*y secretary of Robert, Cherry (Amisha Patel). And yes there was one more cameo by Aditya Panscholi in the role of Godfather Hamza. And then in the end we were able to see one more disastrous special effect of plane crashing etc. let’s talk about all these different aspects in my next para.
Well, as told movie started on a bad note, 2 special effects both are equally bad, and I am the guy who cannot excuse anybody on special effect department. Then we got one more right at the end of movie – the scene of plane crashing and all characters jumping off it while pilot didn’t have any idea as to what the hell was going on inside it. He comes to know only later that airplane is losing balance! Two characters jumped using parachutes while two jumped through car which is held firm by parachutes! Well, are you kidding me! BTW I have seen many unimaginable special effects in Hollywood movies and some Balakrishna movies, these were just pathetic, I don’t say that you should not dream about good unimaginable situations but if you’re not able to perform it, just don’t think then! If you have budget issues just forget these high thinkings! Aditya Panscholi’s role was short and he looked good in the costume (Anaita Shroff) provided, but his walks and talks spoil his character. Also, there came one fencing scene in between the two lead characters played by Saif and Jacqueline, it was shot very well but hey! Have you watched ‘The Mask of Zorro’; there was a ditto scene between Antonio Banderas & Angelina Jolie. Well we are surely short of thinking too! And the scene of car exploding in trailer somehow looked different to me in the movie, in trailer the car was changed before explosion, here they just show a bad computerized explosion, and looked changed from the trailers. And in one place John’s expression looks suddenly changed, it looks like to me that editing (Hussain Burmawala) missed the place, and John’s expression suddenly comes to his default emotional self or is it the direction mistake!. There were some more loopholes in the movie, for e.g. the stealing of ‘Shroud of Turin’ scene. Exit plan looks so simple that I actually thought that why did Saif’s character took the difficult route to enter, he could use the exit route for entering as well, it just make us look as duffer or extra-smarty in front of Hollywood movies. Amisha Patel’s character and acting was the worst, she was playing dumbo, ALLRIGHT! But she looks like dumbo in dumboes!
But I will recommend this movie as it was still a good timepass and better than many movies of 100 crore club, it has its share of twists & turns, it is a fast-paced action-thriller, and Abbas-Mustan did a decent job in making it. Saif looks the best out of lot, and the dialogues given to him are equally good, take for example “Ye race hamesha se meri thi aur meri hi rahegi, main is race ka sabse purana khiladi hoon” (This race was mine and will always be. I am the oldest player of this race). The dialogues given to Anil-Amisha were double-meaning. The twists & turns were good, though not as good as Race 1. But still I liked them here. Cinematography (Ravi Yadav) and photography alongwith locations are very good, nice camera work, beautiful scenery (Art Direction – Ashish Ranade). The songs are good too, shot quite nicely, I liked the videos of songs and the music is also catchy (Pritam). 2 songs came before interval, while interval is paused at correct juncture. The songs ‘Party on my mind’, ‘Lat Lag Gayi’ are good party type songs with beats, while ‘Be intehaan’ is a good romantic composition. ‘Allah Duhai hai’ reprises its magic from previous movie. Music justified the genre of movie, and adds value to it (Lyrics penned by Prashant Ingole, Mayur Puri, Gaurav Bansal). John, Jacqueline & Deepika did their roles okay, while Anil Kapoor’s role was only a side-role.
All-in-all Race 2 is a good one-time watch even with so many faults as it is timepass for its duration (146 mins) and enjoyable. I may be watching ‘David’ and surely watching ‘Special 26’ over the coming weeks, while I am watching ‘Student of the Year’ on TV (still not done with it), but here I will give Race 2 a thumbs up with 3.5/5 rating.
GRuchirG.
Jai Raam ji ki :)