Tiger Shroff has, undoubtedly, contributed significantly towards improving the quality of action in films. Earlier, the tougher action sequences in the film would be (and continue to be) executed by body doubles who would be experts in doing death-defying stunts. The actors would have their (and understandably so) their limitations in performing such stunts and the ones they are not comfortable would be executed by their body doubles. Actors like Vidyut Jammwal and Tiger Shroff changed the game in a big way as they were leading men who were adept at performing the most difficult action scenes. While Vidyut Jammwal is yet to become a saleable star, Tiger Shroff has managed to achieve huge popularity among the audience, especially the masses and is one of the most popular young actors around. The two films in the ‘Baaghi’ franchise have been hugely successful – the second film a much bigger hit than the first one. So, now when ‘Baaghi 3’ arrives, one expects an action-pacjed entertainer which would also have at least a decent plot to boast of.
Vikram (Riteish Deshmukh) and his younger brother Ronnie (Tiger Shroff) were born to Charan Chaturvedi (Jackie Shroff) a daredevil cop in the North Indian city of Agra. Inspector Chaturvedi suffered from bullet shots while trying to control a riot in the city and passed away. In his final moments, he made a young Ronnie promise him that he would always protect his elder brother Vikram who is very docile. The brothers are extremely close to each other and an otherwise tough Ronnie gets teary-eyed whenever somebody hurts Vikram and then, he makes sure he teaches the person, who has hurt Vikram, a lesson he will never forget. “Mere pe aati hai toh main chhod deta hoon, mere bhai pe aaye toh main phod deta hoon”, he declares before bashing up anybody who hurts Vikram. Vikram is in Syria when he gets abducted by a bunch of terrorists working for Abu Jalal Gaza, a man who serves as the leader of xxxxx. Ronnie, along with Syria (Shraddha Kapoor) heads to Syria to get Vikram back home.
Just like the two ‘Baaghi’ films, this one, too, is a remake of a South Indian film. This time, it is the 2012 Tamil film ‘Vettai’ which serves as the base material for ‘Baaghi 3’. Sajid Nadiadwala has written the adapted story and the screenplay has been written by Farhad Samji. The film, as indicated by the promos itself, has been mounted on a huge scale – much, much bigger than the mounting ‘Baaghi’ and ‘Baaghi 2’ had. This time, the hero is against a terrorist organisation and he goes all out against them without any support. As the villain wonders whether America or Russia has waged a war against them, we see Ronnie facing military tanks and fighting it out with an army of terrorists all by himself. It is a treat to see Tiger Shroff pulling off some mind-boggling stunts with effortless ease but one just wishes he had a more engaging script to complement the wonderful action he brought to the screen.
The screenplay is as good as the one we came across in ‘Baaghi’ and ‘Baaghi 2’ – functional but could have been so much better given the basic premise it was based on. The inciting incident – of Vikram getting abducted in Syria – should have come halfway through the first half and not right before the arrival of the intermission point. A lot of time is devoted towards showing the bond between the two brothers, Vikram’s misadventures as a police officer and Ronnie showing up at multiple junctures to save him. A lot of these plot points do not contribute much towards setting up the larger picture. Countless creative liberties have been taken, especially in the second half wherein Ronnie is in search of Vikram. In ‘Baaghi 2’, there was a scene which showed Ronnie tying up a civilian from Kashmir, who was involved in stone-pelting, to his jeep. This scene was inspired from a real-life incident which itself has sparked a debate about the action of the army man who committed the act. In this film, there is a scene involving an illegal encounter which might also start a debate among the audience.
Tiger Shroff showed a marked improvement in his acting abilities in his last film ‘War’. In this film, there are a bunch of scenes laced with emotional energy and he does reasonably well in them. He is brilliant, as ever, in action scenes and one sees in him developing a good understanding of how to project oneself on the screen. Shraddha Kapoor puts across a cute act as Siya. Riteish Deshmukh delivers a very sincere performance as Vikram. There was a chance of him going overboard owing to the way the character was written but he strikes a fine balance between being a man-child and acting the character’s age. Ankita Lokhande does well in the limited scope she gets. Jaideep Ahlawat and Vijay Verma perform well, though their characters could have been etched out much better. Virendra Saxena leaves a mark in a brief role. Jackie Shroff’s cameo has been weaved in nicely in the film. Satish Kaushik does his best but his cameo appearance fails to raise laughs owing to the lines given to him.
With every film in the franchise, the makers have made a conscious decision to up the scale of the franchise. The fact that Tiger Shroff’s stardom has seen a steady ascent in these years has definitely helped in this regard. ‘Baaghi 3’ has all that its target audience would expect from it. The script does not match up to Tiger’s on-screen bravado but the film, in the end, turns out to be a fairly well-packaged entertainer, the success of which should pave the way for another film in the franchise. The next time around, one just hopes the makers give more importance to putting together a more coherent script in place.