Let’s start with a disclaimer: I enjoyed Singham Again when I first watched it. However, as I reflected on the film before writing my review published last week, I felt it was important to clarify my stance. In recent months, I've noticed that established critics and many newer ones often take the contrary view to impress their pockets of fans even when they don’t mean it.
The older critics, in particular, seem hesitant to acknowledge the evolving landscape of filmmaking. For instance, a scene directed by Anurag Kashyap might resonate differently with them than one directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga. Their judgments often appear biased, influenced more by public perception of the filmmaker than by what unfolds on screen.
Traditional Bollywood filmmaking has undergone significant changes in the past few years. It’s technically better, has better resources and more vocal in approach. Singham Again is no different.
To begin with, it’s Rohit Shetty’s most nuanced storytelling, which is not a benchmark, of course, but it’s the biggest film of the year owing to its huge star-cast and targeted viewership. This is crucial because the film was designed from the outset to resonate with the masses. It had to have a plot which resonated with the general audiences, ad what could be better than drawing inspiration from the Ramayana or the Mahabharata. More than Hindutva, it was a smart choice for a commercially viable film.
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Second, the film never goes off the track to justify or attack any ideology. Calling it a Hindutva propaganda must have arisen from its villain’s origin story, who is called Danger Lanka aka Zubair Hafeez (Arjun Kapoor)! He is a mobster, ruthless killer and a projected terrorist, but him being a terrorist has been the least played part in the film. In fact, not even three scenes are dedicated in establishing him as an anti-India terrorist, who we know has a prototype. He was always a gang leader.
Not only this, at a crucial juncture in the film, Zubair says how this war was always personal and had nothing to do with being anti-India or anti-Hindus. But the critics have conveniently ignored such dialogues and scenes.
Plus, Shetty has tried to add an independent voice to his films with Singham Again. When Singham (Ajay Devgn) goes on to catch Omar Hafeez (Jackie Shroff) in Kashmir, he gets support from the locals. They say in clear terms how they want ‘this’ new enterprising India to grow and be added to the mainstream. Isn’t this the aspiration of the Kashmiri youth? Why would you object to such scenes unless you want them to keep behaving like stone-hurlers all their life!
Needless to say, the whole balancing act of good Muslim versus bad Muslim by many hit filmmakers never underwent any scrutiny.
Now is the time to call out such one-sided views. If we fail to adopt a fresh viewpoint on contemporary filmmaking as a whole, it reflects poorly on those who consider themselves cinema-educated.
