03 May,2025 07:15 AM IST | Mumbai | Mayank Shekhar
Ajay Devgn as Amay Patnaik in Raid 2
Not that Raid 2 has a sutradhaar (narrator) - but a cute, portly prison inmate, Tau, played by Saurabh Shukla, appears at regular intervals, to drop truth bombs.
One such is to a flunky cop in jail, who sucks up to him: "Lamba kheloge. Chaatne ki kala hai [tumme], chaato, Girdhari!"
Making the point about how a sure-shot way to tell a middling underling is they make up for their mediocrity,by lauding their supposed superior, always.
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Likewise, he suggests, politicians never get caught for their crimes. Unless, it's an inside job. Who is this Tau, otherwise unrelated to the rest of the film?
For that, you will have to vividly remember Raj Kumar Gupta's Raid (2018), the prequel to this picture.
Which was essentially about an income tax (IT) raid, set in 1981, Lucknow, netting a top UP don. That was Saurabh Shukla (Rameshwar Singh/Rajaji/Tau).
Raid was based on a true story, detailing what perhaps still remains the longest IT raid conducted on a private individual. By the looks of it (and I could be wrong here), Raid 2 isn't adapted from an actual episode.Or at least not one such, anyway; maybe a bunch of them.
What remains in common, of course, is Ajay Devgn as the IT sleuth, in hot pursuit of black money, hidden by a prominent/popular heartland politician. It's been eight years since. The prime minister is evidently VP Singh (it was Indira Gandhi in the first part).
The lead character, it seems, has got himself a new wife (Vaani Kapoor switched over from Ileana D'Cruz)! But his reason of existence remains the same.
This gent is Amay Patnaik that in itself is such a non-filmy name - with Devgn, in shirt, trousers, Relaxo-type floaters, hardly ever allowing his heroic swag to overwhelm this government-servant character - that, as an audience, you subconsciously stay with his sincerity, all through.
And he never lets you down onscreen.
What's kinda unclear to me is the size of his opponent. In the sense that the film starts off in Rajasthan, 1989, with the action shifting to a town called Bhoj, where the honest sarkari hero is on his 74th transfer.
If I'm not mistaken, Bhoj is a small-town in Karnataka. This one is perhaps fictional - lorded over by one man, who runs/owns practically the entire town, including its people.
Riteish Deshmukh smartly plays this excessively sober politician (as most politicians actually are) - so powerful, that the state government runs on his borrowed MLAs; while, if I saw right, he's also a member of parliament!
In the real world, this would be a mismatched David vs Goliath kinda story. What follows, however, is a Tom & Jerry chase, with both protagonist and antagonist inevitably turning a corner - turning the film, in turn, into a proper thriller.
Raid 2 is an action-packed film. Yet, not one knuckle gets broken, with neither lead-bloke swinging in the air, in multiple directions!
It'sthe form of sorted theatrical writing that we seem to be progressively moving away from - heading instead towards stunts for stunts' sake. You needn't pour blood to hold people's attention, right? And director Gupta (No One Killed Jessica, Aamir) gets this right.
So far as the genre is concerned, it's certainly a comeback of sorts for him since India's Most Wanted (2019). Which, in a similarly realisticspace, felt relatively underwhelming.
What was the impact of the OG Raid? One tends to over-judge movies by their consumer reviews, and more so, box-office numbers.
I recently met a young Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, who actually joined the service, because he was so influenced by this pic's prequel! Would you imagine?
I've got to learn a lot more about how honest IRS officers operate from him. And my sense is, as bureaucrats like Amay in this movie show - they do have the freedom to act (against the immeasurably corrupt). In some cases, there may not be much freedom after the act!
Going back to âtruth bomb' Tau's line in this film, when the lead character has been suspended from service for going after a big cat, "For a khuddar/self-respecting man, worse than going to jail is living off your parents-in-law!" Amay does.
Why have I incessantly compared this sequel to the original that was so much more an indoorsy, talkie drama, though?
Because the filmmakers expect you to - repeating so many of the tropes/characters, as tributes, that some may feel like they're like watching a rehash, or the second season of the same show. They aren't mistaken in their view. It could also be a compliment.
But this stuff is suitably different in its sameness. It belongs more to post-pandemic cinemas of 2025. As in, written as two distinct halves - separated by an item song, and an interval.
Wherein the second instalment is more about unleashing a separate lot of characters for comedy, thriller, mysteryâ¦
Bloating up the script a bit much after half-time, hence - to make it all the more accessible to wider audiences. Yes, it's a stretch. But all of it serving the purpose of popular entertainment. So, no sweat. No sweat at all!
