Race 2 Review

There is this bad hunk and the smart guy. The smart guy is a hunk of sorts and the bad one a smart guy of sorts. The bad hunk has a half-sister and the smart guy a half fiancé. Let’s fill the space with three more persons. The hunk has a fiancée too who is doing part time with the guy. Then there is an irrelevant vulgar couple one talking the act and the other wanting it always. These six run into one another every time with the sole intent to double cross. Now this is the plot. Give to Abbas Mastan and they dress this with myriad chases, fight, thrills, chills. Blood spills and cars crash like everyday occurrences and even if the guys at it are not tired, the audience is. Not all the theatre caffeine can keep you engrossed beyond a point unless you are one of those who wants to be quickly done with the cubic puzzle before you.
To start with Abbas Mastan are a brand and Race 2 now threatens to be a product that would hit the stands every now and then with a newly packed product with the same content within. Even if the film is to sell on its style quotient, it lacks the flamboyance that pushes towards grace and class and loiters around being loud and crass. We journey into a world of all bad guys and gals and suddenly you feel it is the Devil who made the world and Eve bit too big a chunk of the apple. Talking of fruits you have this guy RD (Anil Kapoor) who is always binging on fruits and taking anatomical compares on various of them and even the banana – so much for class. Talk of disregard for gender you have him tell his mate Cherry (Ameesha Patel) Cherry I have no time to pop your cherry (yeeks!!)
In the story line the Smart Guy (Saif) is out to avenge the death of his gal from Race days and gets cracking first on Vikram Thappar (Rajesh Khattar). Lo and behold our Smart Alek out smarts the owner of multiple casinos with game plans that are as complicated as a game of Ludo or Snakes and Ladder. His next suave move is to get even with Bad Hunk (John Abraham) the mind behind the killing. Bad Hunk loves money more than anything else. He lives in a mansion which in compare would lead the Buckingham Palace to be called: the hut. His half-sister (Deepika Padukone) is half dressed and vampish by needless design and habit. She seems to have acquired it in the genes. Bad Hunk’s gal is a small time pick pocket who specialises in archery and sword fighting – she is passing off as the sister of the earlier gal in the life of Smart Guy. Now layer after layer the script shows one or the other character trying to outsmart the other and each act in retrospect is so juvenile that you wonder what all this talk about being smart is heading.
Saif Ali Khan is woefully miscast in the role of a muscled brain. He is neither brawl nor brain. John Abraham continues to flex his muscles and not the facial ones even by accident. The gals are willing to reveal what they have (and surely you know the threesome are not exactly known for their acting skills!!). Anil Kapoor is a tapori turned suave and Ameesha Patel is …..well she is and thus is all.
Race 2 is racy but it fails to take you fast from point one to another. It pushes you into another orbit and the thrust is frighteningly loud, purposelessly destructive, amusingly intelligent, belligerently irrational and exhaustingly long. Turkey, Italy notwithstanding.

L. Ravichander