Ruing that Bollywood is churning out franchises as a quick fix in the current lean phase, director Raj Kumar Gupta says he made Raid 2 only after perfecting the story over years
Ajay Devgn reprises his role of an income tax officer
With Raid 2, director Raj Kumar Gupta and actor Ajay Devgn take us back to the world of officer Amay Patnaik as he conducts another income tax raid. Quiet and assured, realistic and rooted, Devgn’s Amay is at odds with the larger-than-life characters that he usually plays. How do you strip a superstar of his aura and make him a common man on screen? “Ajay sir can transform into different roles; he can go from being a superhero to an average Joe. The heroism in this film comes purely from the story. It took us some time to get the story right. We started in 2019, chucked many ideas, and finally, in 2022, this one worked out. We wrote it for a year-and-a-half before going to Ajay sir,” he recounts.
Raj Kumar Gupta
Like Raid (2018), the sequel—also starring Riteish Deshmukh—focuses on corruption. Hindi movies of the 1970s reflected the common man’s angst in the face of corruption. The director notes that the theme has disappeared from the screen today. “Raid has a certain aggression and righteousness to it. Raids are on people who evade taxes. Thankfully, we’re self-critical as a nation, which is where such stories come from.”
Filmmakers are now betting big on franchises, believing they are the ticket to box-office success in the current shaky market. Gupta says that making a second edition for the heck of it is not his approach. “After having a successful film, people want to make a sequel without caring about the script. That’s the wrong approach. We rejected so many ideas because we wanted a film that lives up to the first.”
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