(This review contains spoilers but the attempt has been to include only the absolutely necessary ones (for analysing the story and screenplay).
Reliance Entertainment, PEN and Sunshine Pictures Pvt. Ltd.’s Commando 2 (UA) is the second in the Commando series. It is a commando’s war to get back the black money of Indians, parked out of India.
In a daredevil operation, ace commando Karan (Vidyut Jammwal), part of the government’s special squad, unearths the Indian black money racket by exposing and getting arrested Vicky Chaddha in Malaysia. Vicky Chaddha is the agent who transfers the black money of the rich people of India, into foreign bank accounts. The pressure on the Indian government to bring the black money and Vicky Chaddha to India is mounting.
The home minister (Shefali Shah) forms a core team of four persons – ACP Bhaktawar Khan (Freddy Daruwala), police inspector Bhavna Reddy (Adah Sharma), hacker Zafar Hussain (Sumit Gulati) and police officer Pandey (Chitranjan Tripathi) – to bring Vicky Chaddha to India from Malaysia. This is seen as a step to putting an end to the black money menace. However, since the home minister’s own son, Dishank (Suhail Nayyar), also has black money parked outside, the home minister is sending a weak team so that the black money of her son and others close to him, like businessman Runwal (Satish Kaushik), is safe.
Commando Karan gets wind of the home minister’s machinations and he manipulates things in such a way that he replaces police officer Pandey in the four-member team which goes to Malaysia. ACP Bhaktawar Khan and Karan can’t see eye to eye for obvious reasons. In Malaysia, Maria (Esha Gupta), wife of Vicky Chaddha, gives Karan a sob story and asks him to take them to Bangkok instead of India so that he would get the black money he wanted to take to India, but she and her husband would be spared action in India as they were forced into the racket and were, in that sense, innocent. Karan agrees, but Maria ditches him once they reach Bangkok. Maria is joined in Bangkok by KP (Thakur Anoop Singh) and she escapes from the custody of Karan. Joining her now is ACP Bhaktawar Khan who, it is clear, has sold his conscience for money. Maria also reveals something about Vicky Chaddha, which leaves Karan speechless. What is that?
Karan must now not allow Maria to escape. He has the support of Bhavna Reddy and Zafar Hussain, but Zafar is soon killed. With not much to fall back upon, Karan and Bhavna do their best to nab Maria and ensure that the black money comes to India. Their investigations lead them to Jimmy (Siddharth Kher) who has been asked by Maria to hack into the accounts of dead persons for a purpose. Another person is asked by Maria to get her the briefcase kept in a bank locker, which will allow her to access her account through high-security codes, and transfer all the black money to various accounts. How commando Karan thwarts Maria’s plans is what the crux of the drama is. In the end, there is an entire chain of suspense tracks, which is revealed.
Suresh Nair has penned the story and Ritesh Shah has written the screenplay, both of which are full of holes. For one, the suspense about the home minister (what the suspense is, is not being revealed here) doesn’t make sense because everyone in the team knows it. And those who don’t know it, are not at all concerned about it. In other words, the suspense is created only and only to mislead the audience, not any character in the film. This is the worst way to write a suspense drama. Again, the question that arises in the end, after the suspense is revealed, is: why did the home minister select the team which she did? Shouldn’t she have opted for a better team? Besides, it is not clear (after the revelation of the suspense) why ACP Bhaktawar Khan joins forces with Maria? Since the suspense revelation underlines a secret (not being revealed here), couldn’t commando Karan have joined hands with Maria? Karan had already won Maria’s confidence, so where was the need for someone else to join Maria? Frankly, the two writers have only written a script which has twists and turns galore but most of the twists and turns look fake and uncalled for, once the climax is over. It is as if the audiences were a character in the film, and the writers were all along misleading that character rather than any other real character in the drama. Put differently, since everyone knows everything, whom was the drama of pretence being staged for? The characters, who were not supposed to know, could have been kept in the dark without many of the twists and turns and suspense angles. The final scene of the drama, in which the black money gets transferred into the bank accounts of the poor farmers of India, is unintentionally hilarious and would find the audience, especially in the cities and multiplexes, mocking at it. Ritesh Shah’s dialogues are okay.
Vidyut Jammwal does his action and stunts so splendidly that the audience watches him in awe. But he definitely needs to improve his acting and also needs to take more care of his looks. Adah Sharma is entertaining. Her make-up in some scenes is odd. Esha Gupta does a fairly good job. Shefali Shah makes her presence felt. Freddy Daruwala is quite effective as ACP Bhaktawar Khan. Sumit Gulati is alright in a role which isn’t too significant; his death scene, designed to evoke patriotic feelings in the viewers’ hearts, fails to do so. Thakur Anoop Singh (as KP) impresses in the fight sequence with Vidyut Jammwal (Karan) but that’s about all. Adil Hussain, as Karan’s boss, Roy, leaves a mark. Suhail Nayyar (as Dishank), Satish Kaushik (as Runwal) and Siddharth Kher (as Jimmy) lend decent support. Atul Kumar (as Reza), D. Santosh (as Bala), Anjum Rajabali (as the prime minister), Chitranjan Tripathi (as police inspector Pandey), Chirag Vohra (as the doctor), Kanan Arunachalam (as Shreenath Iyer), Rashmi Phanse (as Erica), Vansh Bhardwaj (as Vicky Chaddha), baby Avisha (as Vicky’s daughter), Abhiroy Singh (as the briefcase man) and the others provide average support.
Deven Bhojani’s direction is okay but could have been far better. He seems to have concentrated mostly on action scenes and stunts but has been quite careless about the progression of the story and its logic. Mannan Shah and Gourov Roshin’s music is more functional than entertaining. Lyrics (by Aatish Kapadia and Kumaar) are alright. Firoz A. Khan’s choreography is routine. Prasad Sashte’s background music is too loud and imposing at times. Chirantan Das’ cinematography is effective. Action direction by Franz Spilhaus and action choreography by Vidyut Jammwal and Sunil Balu Pala are extraordinary. Production designing (by Sheetal Duggal and Aparna Raina) is adequate. Editing (by Amitabh Shukla and Sanjay Sharma) is suitably sharp.
On the whole, Commando 2 is high on breathtaking action and stunts but the job of the script writers is so shoddy that the film will not be able to make profits and, maybe, not even break even despite its limited budget and fairly good recoveries from non-theatrical sources.