Cast: John Abraham, Divya Khosla Kumar, Gautami Kapoor, Harsh Chhaya, Anuup Sonii
Director: Milap Zaveri
The lives of some of our political leaders provide enough grist to the mill, more so, for a lot of Bollywood screenwriters. Their idiosyncrasies, controversies, hypocrisy, dishonesty, and other vices that are constantly under a microscope in the media make for some very interesting gossip. Some of these men and women, not to forget their statements made by these ministers, besides being great fodder for tabloids, are often caricatured in films, and don’t we all love it when some of these public figures are ridiculed at?
Written and directed by Milap Zaveri, 'Satyameva Jayate 2' is one such effort which willy-nilly gives us a ludicrous story of a Home Minister (no less!) who as a vigilante would bear none of the nonsense created by all those people in power – doctors, builders, police personnel, etc. And though it’s a serious-minded unsmiling attempt at presenting before us the seamy side of our country that is responsible for severe mishaps, one can’t help laughing at virtually every scene – so amateurish, ham-handed, and clumsy they are.
To justify action almost spilling over one atop another, a series of mishaps are shown in quick succession. And therefore, we see the home minister Satya Balram Azad (John Abraham) in Uttar Pradesh tries to pass an anti-corruption bill in the assembly, his own alliance partners oppose. Around the same time, some doctors in a government hospital are seen going on strike, as a wailing mother pleads with them to treat her daughter who has met with an accident. The team of doctors refuses pointblank and the victim dies as the protesting doctors and the media look on. No prizes for guessing what happens next - a vigilante kills the doctor leading the strike in an act of revenge, and as expected his death leads to the strike being called off, making the self-appointed law enforcer an overnight hero. It is then that the case of an unidentified man teaching the culprits a lesson irks the chief minister Chandra Prakash (Harsh Chhaya), who orders an enquiry headed by Jay Balram Azad (Abraham), who is the twin brother of Satya Balram Azaad. Soon, another scandal rocks the state as many children fall ill after consuming a meal in a madrasa, and the government hospital where they get admitted runs short of oxygen cylinders, leaving the children to die. When Satya gets to know that the supplier of the food happened to be a relative of the members of the alliance political party, he vows to punish the wrong doers. In just a few days later, a flyover constructed by Madan Lal Joshi’s company (Ritu Raj) state collapses. The rest of the 142-minute script borders on such absurdity that it’s travesty of a film.
And if you’ve had a surfeit of a wooden Abraham trying hard to do a Salman Khan act, there’s more – yet another John Abraham who happens to be the father of the twin brothers, emerges in the flashback that accounts for the backstory. All those sitting in the theatres are so fagged out by then that no one cares what truly happened earlier, and about a dozen characters get killed, or what lies in store for the remaining ones. In short, just anything goes!
Produced by as many as five - Bhushan Kumar, Krishan Kumar, Monisha Advani, Madhu Bhojwani, and Nikkhil Advani - 'Satyameva Jayate 2' reminds you of the 70s cinema when technology was poor and actors needed to scream, roar, and shed tears to be heard. Abraham, who has a perfectly chiseled body shows some serious signs of ageing, and in some scenes looks like an oddball and much older than the role he plays even as he tries to defy age. Divya Kumar would do well as a clotheshorse; she can neither emote nor wriggle to pass off as a believable individual.
Anyone who has doesn’t have a good script but is keen on making a film anyway, should approach the aforementioned producers- they would, in all probability, oblige!
