Awarapan 2 Review – Visually Rich but Creatively Bankrupt Action Romp

There’s a joy in watching Emraan Hashmi employ the lovelorn eyes with deadpan intensity. Perhaps that’s why he’s able to play the serious lover with such ease and good effect. And that’s why movies like Murder, Gangster, Awarapan, and so many others have amassed a fan following over the years. That and the mass-pleasing music are reasons enough to want to watch Awarapan 2.

But, if you decide to bite the bullet, do know you’d need teeth and nerves of steel to chew through the barrage of mediocre writing and hyper-stylised direction. Everything will look good, great even. But a lot of it won’t make much sense. 

The story, thankfully, continues where Shivam (Emraan) last left it. He’s at Aaliyah’s (Shriya Saran) grave, and he asks for some meaning and direction to his now listless existence. Lo and behold, he hears the crying of an infant abandoned in the graveyard. Surely the biological parent that chose such a location to leave a newborn behind belongs in a Quentin Tarantino film.

Getting back to Awarapan 2.0, Shivam picks up the child and deposits it in the nearby orphanage. He poetically names the girl Aaliyah, because you know, gift of serendipity. Fast-forwarding into the premise, or lack of thereof, Aaliyah grows up, but her guardian angel seems to have been buried in the same graveyard, so she has more rotten luck. She gets kidnapped by a ring of human trafficking individuals, and she’s shipped off to Bangkok with 40 other children. And Shivam finally has meaning and direction in life. He must save Aaliyah 2.0 because version 1.0 is the guardian angel’s permanent neighbour.

That’s when Awarapan 2 kicks into Taken mode, and Emraan walks out of Bangkok airport looking sexier than Liam Neeson of 2008. From there on, there’s a whole lot of one-liner dialogue and action peppered with some cool nostalgic music and a sexier-than-Emraan Hashmi Zara (Disha Patani) wearing very cool Zara-type clothes. Only problem is, every subplot, plot, screenplay twist, character motivation, and general goings on of Awarapan 2.0 turn out to be insanely predictable.

But what makes it all very much tolerable and mildly engaging is the visual tapestry. The cinematography by Vishnu Rao and his team is stupendous. Some of the early wide frames belong in a film that could have found a Cannes audience, had the writing been a little more original.

That’s why the visual imagery of Awarapan 2.0 is unmistakably one of its main strengths. What’s also very cool is to watch Shabana Azmi play a Mafia Queen with confidence and pizzazz. The very sight of her, draped like a Luc Besson character, is so much fun. Sadly, the screenplay doesn’t give her much, but even so, she delivers her half-dozen one-liners with magical effect.

Same goes for Emraan, who’s literally in 90 percent of the film’s frames. His smouldering intensity and long-haired charm work wonders. His abs, breathing, alive and deserving of a Laureus Award, are a reminder of why action heroes should once in a while go shirtless.