Gadar 2 Review: Strictly For Sunny Deol Fans

Producer-director Anil Sharma is still stuck at the turn that his career took twenty-two years ago. His fossilised cinematic sensibility is evident in every frame of his sequel to 2001’s Gadar. The film serves up dollops of nostalgia that is bolstered by harking back to two of the original film’s most popular songs, Ghar aaja pardesi and Main nikla gaddi leke..

Monty Sharma’s background score and the acting style – obstreperous and melodramatic – adds to the retro feel that the film exudes. But no matter what, the world has moved on. Gadar 2 appears to be oblivious of the changes that have swept away much of what once defined Bollywood movies.

The strident and exhausting Gadar 2, set in the year of Bangladesh’s war of liberation, sends intrepid truck driver Tara Singh back into Pakistan to rescue his son from the clutches of a villainous Pakistani general who is foresworn to wiping India off the face of the earth.

The bad guy has a reason for the vitriol that he spews – his parents were killed by a mob in the Partition riots. His angry rhetoric turns him into a grotesque caricature deserving of the comeuppance that he is going to receive in good time at the hands of Sunny Deol’s invincible hero. Not one word that escapes the man’s mouth sounds sane.

Tara Singh launches a precision strike inside Pakistan and lands, in the nick of time at that, exactly where his son, Charanjeet “Jeete” Singh (Utkarsh Sharma, who at age 7 played Tara Singh and Sakeena’s child in Gadar), is about to be stoned to death.

A massive crowd is on the verge of lynching the young man but Tara Singh’s reputation as the slayer of 40 Pakistani soldiers back in the immediate post-Partition years precedes him. His advent not only stops the gathering in its tracks but also allows the unwelcome visitor to break into a slanging match with General Hamid Iqbal (Manish Wadhwa).

Everything in Gadar 2 is exactly as it was in the film that it is a follow-up to. The Pakistani general hurls a challenge at Tara Singh that harks back to the latter’s handpump-wielding avatar that has remained etched in the minds of Hindi movie fans. He says: “Dekhte hain aaj yeh kya ukhadta hai“.

The protagonist responds to the dare with befitting enthusiasm. He pulls out a bullock-cast wheel from its pivot and hurls it at his foes like Lord Krishna’s Sudarshan chakra while a shloka from the Bhagavad Gita plays on the soundtrack.

Tara Singh follows that eye-popping feat up with a couple of others. One has him lifting and swinging a massive hammer in the manner of a baseball bat and causing serious damage to many a body and limb. He then uses an entire horse carriage as an offensive shield against a mob of attackers.

When Tara Singh aims hammer blows at the men in his way, his dhaai kilo ka haath inevitably comes into play and makes the weapon much more powerful than it would be in lesser hands. For all this to work, the audience has to be in tune with Bollywood storytelling codes of an era long gone. Those that can manage to make the leap back in time might actually enjoy parts of what Gadar 2 has on offer.

Not to forget, the handpump does make an appearance in the film but stays rooted to the ground this time around. Much water has flown down the Beas and Chenab in the past two decades, but the dread of Tara Singh’s prowess still persists.

Witness this: a marauding bunch of bloodthirsty, sword-wielding men chases him. But they freeze when they spot a handpump. It is within Tara’s reach and they know what he can do with it. He does not even have to pull it out. The mob, suitably petrified, beats a hasty retreat.

These action high points are all reserved for the second half. The first half of the nearly three-hour film is devoted to setting up the big, extended showdown in Lahore that is to come. Sunny Deol fills up the screen, does a good job of hollering and hectoring, be it in anger or despair, and the Pakistanis who are in pursuit have a healthy respect for the havoc that the one-man army is capable of wreaking.

Backtracking a bit, as the war clouds gather in the border area where Tara lives with his wife (Ameesha Patel) and his son. The boy bunks classes and furtively rehearses for a theatre production of Sohni Mahiwal. His heart is set on becoming a movie actor. His father will have none of it. Tempers fly between the two men.

A skirmish erupts on a hill that separates India and Pakistan. Tara Singh leads a group of truckers into the battlefield to aid the Indian army at the behest of Colonel Devendra Rawat (Gaurav Chopra). Eight men, including three civilians, are captured by the Pakistan army. Tara Singh disappears.

Sakeena is distraught. Her son decides to act. Assuming a fake identity, Jeete reaches Lahore to look for his father. Another love story begins to take shape when he meets Muskaan Khan (Simrat Kaur), daughter of a man in whose household he finds employment as a cook. Like Jeete, Muskaan is a Hindi movie enthusiast. She is an inveterate Rajesh Khanna fan.

Her entry scene is heralded by the opening riff of a song from Aradhana. Jeete plays along and does an imitation of a cross between Rajesh Khanna and Dev Anand. Muskaan is floored by his charms.

Eid is round the corner. The girl tells Jeete that she will make her feelings for him public on the auspicious day. Jeete develops cold feet because he isn’t in Pakistan to find a match for himself. His mission is to figure out where his father is and take him back to India.

In the moments leading up to the intermission, the tables turn. It is now Tara Singh’s turn to assume the mantle of rescuer. Because of who he is, when he makes his intentions known, that audience has nothing more to know. The rest of Gadar 2 centres on the adventures of Tara Singh and his son in Pakistan.

Gadar 2 loses no opportunity to play up the us-versus-them binary, with the guys across the border generally coming across as fiends without human feelings. But occasionally, in a perfunctory balancing act, the film develops the sense to throw in a stray benefactor here and a do-gooder there as the father and son pair try to get out of Pakistan in one piece.

Gadar 2 is strictly for three categories of people: Sunny Deol fans, those that miss the unbridled excesses of Bollywood of yore, and those that believe that “hate thy neighbour” is an axiom worth cheering for in a movie theatre. The film has enough to please them all – and then some.