He doesn't even need a gun, he just has to cock a thumb and finger and the armed goon drops down dead. Bajirao Singham is "ati shreshtham" the soundtrack yells accompanied with deafening drum beats.
In Rohit Shetty's "cop universe," there is more slow motion swagger, more cops, and so much action, that the ‘normal’ scenes look like they are interrupting the flow. Every character gets a loud, noisy, entry—two of them literally with a carnival in the background with thousands of extras.
In Bajirao Singham, the plot is not just borrowed from the Ramayan, just in case “today’s generation” has forgotten its mythology and tradition, a Ram Leela runs alongside, as if to explain what is happening or is about to happen. It begins with Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn, also co-producer) in Kashmir, where he deflects an assassination attempt and wipes out terrorism. This is Naya Bharat, he explains to the last of the terrorist kingpins Omar Hafiz (Jackie Shroff), “jo ghuske maarta hai.”
After all that speechifying, Danger Lanka aka Zubair Hafiz (Arjun Kapoor), like Raavan, abducts Mrs Singham aka Avni (Kareena Kapoor), who works with the culture ministry, has created the new-fangled Ram Leela, and lectures her son Shaurya (Viren Vazirani) about Indian values. The teen, to their horror, believes not in true love, but in “situationship.”
Shakti Shetty (Deepika Padukone), who calls herself Lady Singham, is mysteriously absent when Zubair burns her police station and kills all the cops in it, to spring the three henchmen she captured earlier. Next, Satya (Tiger Shroff) enters the cop universe, as Laxman, and a Kallari expert, so there’s an action sequence set in a forest ashram. Daya Shetty, has his bit as Jataka, who is ordered to “darwaza todo") and attempt a rescue of Avni, before being slashed to death like his mythological counterpart.
All this is impressive, but also heavy-going, till Simba (Ranveer Singh) arrives, and brings in that element of fun that was part of the original Singham. He gets the funny lines, the cute Marathi accent, and is sent to Lanka to meet Avni and prove that she is alive and well. With all the high-tech gadgetry on display, Zubair could not simply organize a Zoom chat?
But then, the full extent of the planned pyrotechnics is saved for the Sri Lanka sojourn, where Simba destroys all those cars Rohit Shetty lines up for the purpose, so substitute for the Lanka Dahan episode. Then, the final cop universe character, Suryavanshi (Akshay Kumar) drops from a helicopter, as he is wont to do.
The action set pieces are the raison d’etre of this film, and they are fabulously done, even if a couple of them are somewhat derivative—cars flying over helicopters is a bit Mission Impossible style.
The actors just have to believe they are enjoying the mayhem, and nobody is expected to take anything seriously, except Devgn, who barely cracks a smile and gets to speak some lofty lines about duty and patriotism. Rohit Shetty’s films were not supposed to strain so much to entertain. This film is like his tribute to himself, and assumes people have seen the earlier films and memorized the scenes and dialogue so full of in-jokes and allusions it is. If it were not for Ranveer Singh, Singham Again would be borderline boring. It ends with a brief appearance by Chulbul Pandey (Salman Khan), who will presumably join this universe. Poor Pathan will feel lonely all by himself.
