‘Raid 2’ Movie Review: Ajay Devgn’s Taxman Thriller is Taxing and Overstaffed
Raj Kumar Gupta’s sequel to his 2018 hit is better than recent mainstream fare, but it’s still not good.
Director: Raj Kumar Gupta
Writers: Ritesh Shah, Raj Kumar Gupta, Jaideep Yadav, Karan Vyas
Cast: Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Supriya Pathak, Amit Sial, Yashpal Sharma, Vaani Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla, Rajat Kapoor
Language: Hindi
There are two ways to process a movie like Raid 2. First, relatively — as the latest star vehicle in a mainstream Bollywood landscape gasping for air, originality and audiences. The bar is lower than working-class spirits on a dry day (Raid 2 releases on Labour Day). By this yardstick alone, the film is alright. It’s not bad. Watchable, even. The sequel to Raid (2018) — which continues the retro adventures of painfully honest IRS officer Amay Patnaik (Ajay Devgn) — sticks to the basics: a colourful supporting cast (to offset a stiff hero), Amit Sial and Saurabh Shukla in full form, a bad guy (Riteish Deshmukh) pretending to be a messiah, a pulpy score, a raid-redemption-rise story, loads of money and gold and gotcha grins and one-liners.
On a side note, I found myself thinking that Salman Khan’s character in Sikandar — a benevolent royal with a vengeful streak — is exactly the kind of ‘villain’ that Patnaik would go after. That Gujarat palace is begging to be raided. Imagine a Raid multiverse featuring Devgn’s chain-smoking glare going up against Khan’s chaste swag (title: Hum Bill De Chuke Sanam). But we cannot imagine. Because imagination is taxable: what else explains the current standards of big-screen Hindi entertainment?
Jokes aside (or not), Raid 2 is not a very good film on its own. If it were a football team not named Liverpool, I’d accuse it of winning the league because the other teams had an off season. For starters, it inherits the problems of its predecessor — especially the supremely unnecessary and speed-breaking songs. The first song is a happy-family anthem. Amay, his wife Malini (Vaani Kapoor replaces Ileana D’Cruz, because what female roles in masculine crime thrillers are not interchangeable?) and his little daughter (whose first line naturally includes a “papa yaar”) are moving to a new town because of his 73rd transfer. The intent is to show that they’re so used to his transfers that they take it in their stride. Instead, they sing like they’re going for a Rajasthani picnic; displacement trauma is for losers.
The second song is a random romantic one: Amay and Malini throw a Holi dinner party for his new colleagues, but while she’s pining for him, he sneaks out to set the stage for a secret raid. I’m going to resist making a pun about them being raiders of the lost (narrative) arc. The third song is an ‘item song’ featuring decidedly vulgar dance moves while the covertly corrupt town godfather, Dada Bhai, celebrates pulling a fast one over Amay. This is after Dada Bhai sweet-talks a polite Amay in their first meeting; they’re the equivalent of a shady B-movie producer and a self-righteous film critic circling each other. The fourth track is ‘Paisa Yeh Paisa’ from Karz (1980): it scores a campy montage where Amay ends up pulling a fast one over Dada Bhai.
Which brings us to the essence of the Raid franchise. Beneath all the slow-mo entries and narrative mic drops, it’s a (slightly) more rooted version of the Race franchise. It’s just men outsmarting each other and out-outsmarting each other. Nothing is unplanned: Amay is transferred for taking a bribe, but then he’s revealed to be one step ahead of the system (insert flashback) only for Dada Bhai to soon reveal that he always knew that Amay was one step ahead (insert double-flashback) and so went two steps ahead. Dada Bhai’s only weakness is his mother, whose feet he cleans and worships every morning, but the lady is so delusional about her son’s legacy that it’s easy to believe she’s putting on an act too; she looks at him so adoringly that it’s Haider-level creepy.
The second half revolves around Amay launching a comeback and going three to four steps ahead — a new character (a corrupt lawyer, a tax successor) is introduced in every other scene, but even they pretend to be on one side only to ‘reveal’ that it was all a charade. At one point, the twists come so hard and fast that Amay’s deputy officer — a fangirl who has a scrapbook (!) of all his famous raids and transfers — asks for a break because her head is spinning. Same, sis. Same.
This battle-of-wits formula is an old genre staple. Raid 2 is no different, except it tries to conceal its predictability beneath a layer of social angles (Malini’s role is to galvanise a group of exploited girls), dull integrity and derived style. Even the background score — particularly the theme that punctuates every heroic act — sounds a bit like the opening riffs of ‘Oo Antava Mawa’ from Pushpa (2021). For a film about civil services and oppressive ministers, it’s also strangely apolitical and cautious about its relationship with power. You’d think the white-knight hero and his outfit were an MI6-coded organisation that acts in isolation of any consequences. All we know (or do we really know?) is that Amay ruffles feathers everywhere he goes. It’s the late 1980s, so perhaps this lack of cultural identity is par for the course.
The concept of Saurabh Shukla — Amay’s ‘victim’ from Raid — existing only to deliver wry commentary and punchlines on parole is probably a cooler film. As is the journey of Sial’s character, a gleefully amoral government servant who replaces Amay and sucks up like it’s an artform. Or Yashpal Sharma as a Delhi-based shark who’s made a career out of cheating, drinking and lawyering rich people. Or Rajat Kapoor as Amay’s brave but ambivalent boss. Or even Deshmukh’s Dada Bhai, a single sociopath posing as a philanthropist. In other words, Raid 2 is the least interesting part of Raid 2. Relatively speaking, of course.