In Gadar – Ek Prem Katha, Sunny Deol uprooted a hand pump. Now in Satyameva Jayate 2, John Abraham goes the next level. He stops a car with his bare hands, pulls off its bonnet and well, with his bare hands uproots an entire engine (it must be ultra hot, isn’t it?) and hits the baddies with it. Wait, it doesn’t end here. In the narrative to follow, he kills more baddies with a trishul while being atop a moving car, puts countless baddies on fire, doesn’t even flinch as all sorts of furniture hit him from all directions and fights with just one hand as the other is busy donating blood (live, no less). The best is reserved for the finale though. He goes ahead and even stops a chopper from taking off. That’s not all, he defies gravity by stopping it even mid-air and pulls it back on the ground.
That’s each of the three John Abrahams bringing on their inner hulk into action for this Milap Zaveri directed film that wears patriotism up its sleeves and takes on all the bad guys, be it politicians, builders, cops and what not. Well, Kamal Haasan had done that in Hindustani so John Abraham can do that as well in Satyameva Jayate 2.
It’s just that the Shankar directed film had a core conflict at the midst of it all with even father and son taking on each other. In this Emmay Entertainment production, father and his two sons are all on the same side, and the trio looks alike too, just like it was in John Jaani Janardan where the two Rajinikanth sons took on those who had killed their Rajinikanth father. Perhaps that’s what gave Milap Zaveri an idea to rope in John for this John Jaani Janardan redux version that is in fact closer to the first instalment of Satyameva Jayate than the South original.
It’s just that how one wishes there was a core storyline thread that knitted the overall narrative in a manner that you would get a concrete storyline coming into play. That isn’t the case here as after the first 15 odd minutes, what you get to is an episodic treatment to the film where one highlight sequence arrives in no time but not necessarily connected to the scene before or after. Yes, Manmohan Desai formula of having something happening every 10 minutes is definitely followed but a more cohesive treatment would have helped.
In that context one has to acknowledge the conviction of John Abraham who is clearly enjoying his time out in a triple role where he can let his hair down. So he flexes his muscles as a cop and even gives a biceps and triceps show, breaks a board room table into two as an angry politician and then roars so loud as the ‘kisaan’ that it sends a shiver down the earth, leave aside the spine of the goons.
He is supported by Divya Khosla in the current times and one has to acknowledge the actress for actually doing well in quite a few scenes of hers, especially the dramatic ones where she has to mouth heavy duty dialogues and keep her expressions in line with the mood of the film. Especially in the second half, she has a lot to do beyond her homely wife and rival politician act and especially impresses in the ‘Maa Sherawali’ sing as well as an intense scene that she delivers as a politician. As for Harsh Chaya who has a part similar to that of Sachin Khedekar from Baadshah, he is adequately placed.
The film as a whole too is adequate, especially for its target audience that likes its drama to be loud and spelled out with a lot of dialoguebaazi coming into play. Yes, a lot of the rhyme stuff, especially the kind that features in the first 15-20 minutes of the film, had been seen in the promo itself and also seems to be a bit overdone. However, go beyond that and one can see see that everyone in the cast, including Nora Fatehi with her Kusu Kusu act, is indeed enjoying their time out in this 80s style action drama that has producers Nikkhil Advani, Monisha Advani and Madhu Bhojwani drop their Batla House and D Day sensibilities and back something remarkably different for their director Milap Zaveri.