Sadak 2

Sadak 2 marks the return of Mahesh Bhatt to the director’s chair after a 20-year-old break. But sadly the melodrama in his storytelling also was last seen 20 years ago. The sequel to the 1991 hit film has only one update that can be appreciated as an improvement, the cinematography. Other than that, this sequel is a largely unnecessary repetition of the 30-year-old formula with severely outdated making.

Ravi Verma who has lost his lovely wife Pooja in the recent past is in severe depression and thus he has this suicidal nature. Ravi and Pooja used to run a travel agency and a young girl named Aarya was the last booking Pooja took. So when Aarya came to Ravi asking him to take her to Kailash, Ravi eventually had to do it. But Aarya has a story of her own that is filled with a lot of terrible things. How a suicidal Ravi Verma becomes a useful aid for this girl in her journey to Kailash is the theme of Sadak 2.

Sadka 2 is almost like Transporter with no fun but heavy melodrama. In the last quarter of its runtime, we are seeing heavily clichéd scenes that were becoming a cringe-fest. Ravi Verma is screaming Har Har Mahadev after taking half a dozen bullets on his chest, the dead is motivating him in spirits and Aarya is conducting a press conference explaining everything that just happened (in case if you dozed off). The movie is struggling hard to hold its suspense elements and whenever it reveals something unexpected, one would have sensed it coming from a mile away. Remember the ’90s where someone would sing a song to say an apology or thanks? That stuff pops up here as well in two instances and facepalm was my immediate response to that.

Sanjay Dutt as the grumpy and sentimental Ravi Verma delivers a satisfactory performance. Acting in this movie is like fighting with the outdated feel in the situations and dialogues and Dutt who has gone through that style of acting back in his early days did it without much of a problem. Alia’s Aarya is a very fragile character. Her performance is a mix of some of her performances we know, especially the angry ones. The writing isn’t giving her much to get into the skin of such a character. Aditya Roy Kapoor as Vishal is as clueless as the writers are about the character, giving us a half-hearted performance. Jisshu Sengupta as Aarya’s father was effective. Makarand Deshpande as the Godman was wasted with no real significance in the story.

As I said, the dated packaging of the movie is the major problem. There isn’t a single twist that felt surprising. And most of the characters are written on a very peripheral level. When Aarya cries at one point remembering Ravi as a father figure, we hardly feel any sort of sympathy towards any of them as the writing clearly forgot to create that spark in the relationships we see on screen. Jay I Patel uses shadows and silhouettes to give the story that moody texture. The pacing given on the edit table wasn’t that exciting. The Vishesh films brand music sounds familiar and to be honest, the visual choreography of those songs was far too cheesy.

Sadak 2 is a dull tragedy with no depth to offer. It is depending heavily on the already established story of Ravi Verma. And thus we feel that they are just hurrying through the story of Aarya to give closure to Ravi’s journey. Flawed writing and inept making make Sadak 2 a tedious experience.

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