Bollywood review: RGV's 'Satya2' doesn’t do much for his image

Once upon a time in Bollywood, a filmmaker hit the box-office jackpot after his world of inglorious heroes were honoured with fame and adulation.

He had, until then, dabbled with romance, ghosts and other such stories, but it was his take on the Mumbai underworld that won him instant gratification.

The rewards obviously motivated him, and many like him, to cash in on those brutal dealings.  Leading to overkill. 

So, when Ram Gopal Verma decided to make an unlinked sequel of his 1998-hit ‘Satya’, 15 years since it created cinematic history of sorts, the forecasts weren’t too promising. And, RGV is to be blamed for his own debacle.

For he had remade ‘Sholay’ into something unforgivably trashy.  That’s not all, he even ruined his own glory by remaking his 1991-hit action thriller ‘Shiva’ 15 years later, into something tasteless.

But, since we try not to judge a filmmaker by his earlier flops, we ventured out nevertheless. Only, the experience proved to be daunting.

In his second installment, RGV uses a string of violent incidents to create a hero of an unhappily, grouchy man – named after the hero of his first ‘Satya’.

As his name blares in the background, we witness him planning to cleanse the system of all evil. Ironically, he indulges in bloodshed to do it.

He attempts to conquer an entire city by setting up a nameless ‘company’. Even reasoning that the downfall of earlier dons is linked to their eagerness to glorify themselves and not the cause.

Appalled? Well, there are more such inane theories (one that even pegs Tom and Jerry cartoons) packed into RGV’s tale of intrigue and conquest.

His Satya is given the responsibility to rewrite the “destiny of the city of Mumbai”, a point that the narrator constantly justifies during the tedious screenplay. A deafening background further establishes the murky trade, and the lanky hero’s journey from a nobody to one of the most conniving and invincible criminal in town in a matter of months. 

Surely, RGV believes being bad is quite easy.  He also throws in random issues of injustice, and builds an entire episode on rape, hoping to win some brownie points. But, it falls flat due to his insincere show of sympathy and revenge.

RGV’s new Satya leads a dual life, one that’s excessively romantic, and the other that’s gruesome.  It’s in the first track that he sings and smiles abundantly, and even plays a loyal friend. In the other, he conspires and executes the rich and powerful.

Debutant Punit Singh Ratn tries, a bit too hard, to give Satya an intriguing touch. Apart from wearing an unkempt beard, leaving his hair ruffled and speaking in a gruff, he is unable to give much depth to the character. He could probably blame his lack of experience and his laidback director and an incoherent script for this flaw.

Even his on-screen lover and B-town first-timer Anaika Soti isn’t allowed to showcase her acting talent, if any. She is, in fact, asked to flaunt her physical assets and pout often. Her only “achievement” would be that she got to slap the hero, “133 times” and sing-and-dance in elaborate, slow-motion shots. That’s not much, given every Bollywood heroine pretty much does the same drill.

RGV also tries to spruce things up with an interesting item number, where the girl’s face is completely concealed, leaving the focus only on her physicality. It works, and throws light on the real purpose of such raunchy tracks. But, that’s about all that RGV achieves in terms of novelty.

Among the many music tracks, there’s one featured on a ‘special’ girl, where the lyricist claims that for a movie to become a hit, they must cast Salman Khan.

Surely, RGV didn’t pay enough attention to the lyrics. If he had, maybe the fate of ‘Satya2’ would have been a little different.
 

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.