Dabbang 2

Director: Arbaaz Khan

Cast: Salman Khan, Sonakshi Sinha, Prakash Raj

Dabangg 2, unlike most sequels does not let you down. The blockbuster supercop phenomenon has charmed millions of hearts not only because of Salman’s crowd-pulling personality, but also in the way that it celebrates the ordinary and the common. From trouser-pulling to belt-swivelling dance moves, to the motley dance extras that include kids, classical dancers, sabjiwallas and small town shop owners, Dabangg 2 comfortably straddles both the rustic and the urban in its stride. Of course there is the usual Bollywood dose of bone-crushing, body wheeling, slow-motion punches and fight sequences coupled with Sonakshi’s simple and rustic glamour quotient not to forget the cameo item songs by Malaika and Kareena. Prakash Raj as Bachcha Bhaiya adds to the stereotype with his role of the oppressive and the duping politician.

Supercop Chulbul Pandey is transferred to Kanpur and moves there with his wife Rajjo (Sonakshi), his father (Vinod Khanna) and his dim-witted brother Makkhi (Arbaaz Khan). Chulbul’s band of loyal but ordinary policemen consists, among others, of an obese, pizza-eating superior, a senior citizen and an ex-hernia patient. Chulbul and his policemen right many cases which include a kidnapping, a murder and molestation. In all the cases, the details are left hazy while the audience is hurled headlong into the instant handing out of justice to miscreants. Justice in Dabbang2 has nothing to do with righteousness. Chulbul and his cops lie to the media, use violence, break laws, murder with impunity all in the name of welfare. There are only two things that justify them. One is the notion ‘Do unto others what you would have them do to you’; if the oppressors cannot take their own oppression, then they should not oppress. The other is: Salman Khan.

While most of the women in the movie are sidelined as the housewife or the item girl, Chulbul undoes his macho chauvinism by asking his wife to scold him when he orders her around. Chulbul’s charming interjections each time he remembers to ask about other people is an interesting touch. He grabs a fist of groundnuts from the cart-pusher and remembers to ask him about his son, while a gulab jamun in the middle of a fight sequence reminds him of his subordinate who had hernia. With all the right proportions of Bollywood masala and romance, this movie is a power-packed Salman dose.